I did the worst to him I loved the most.

These are the very words of Gudrun in the saga, and summing up as they
do her opinion of Kiartan, they stand as a model of that compression
which is so admired in our poetry. Many such _multum in parvo_ lines are
found in Morris' poem, and at times they have a beauty that is
marvelous. Joined with this quality is the special merit of
Morris--picturesqueness, and so the reader often feels, when he has
finished a book by Morris, like the Cook tourist after he has "done" a
country of Europe--it must be done again and again to give it its due.

Of the other two Old Norse poems in _The Earthly Paradise_ not much need
be said. "The Land East of the Sun and West of the Moon" is a fairy
tale, in the strain of Morris' prose romances. It was suggested by
Thorpe's _Yule-tide Stories_, the tale coming from the _Voelundar Saga_.
There is a witchery about it that makes it pleasant reading in a dreamy
hour, but except the names and a few scenes about the farmstead, there
is nothing Icelandic about it. The virile element of the best Icelandic
literature is wanting here, and the hero's excuse for leaving weapons at
home when he goes to his watch is not at all natural:

Withal I shall not see
Men-folk belike, but faerie,
And all the arms within the seas
Should help me naught to deal with these;
Rather of such love were I fain
As fell to Sigurd Fafnir's-bane
When of the dragon's heart he ate.

(Vol. II, p. 33.)

This passage is nominally in the same meter as the opening lines of the
poem:

In this your land there once did dwell
A certain carle who lived full well,
And lacked few things to make him glad;
And three fair sons this goodman had.

According to old time English prosody, it is the same, too, as the meter
of Scott's Marmion!

In the passages quoted from "The Lovers of Gudrun" we see a measure
called the same as that of Pope's _Essay on Man_! Not seldom in "The
Lovers" do we forget that the lines are rhymed in twos; indeed, often we
do not note the rhyme at all. We are sometimes tempted to think that in
this piece, if not in "The Land East of the Sun," rhyme might have been
dispensed with altogether, since it often forces archaic words and
expressions into use. But it is to be said generally of Morris's
management of the meter in the Old Norse pieces, that it was adequate to
gain his end always, whether that end was to tell