dark to dark bright Sigurd broke,
Of Brynhild's glorious soul with love distraught,
Of Gudrun's weary wandering unto naught,
Of utter love defeated utterly,
Of Grief too strong to give Love time to die!

4.

Six years later, in 1877 (English edition), Morris published the long
poem, _The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and The Fall of the Niblungs_,
and in it gave the peerless crown of all English poems springing from
Old Norse sources. The poet considered this his most important work, and
he was prouder of it than of any other literary work that he did. One
who studies it can understand this pride, but he cannot understand the
neglect by the reading public of this remarkable poem. The history of
book-selling in the last decade shows strange revivals of interest in
authors long dead; it will be safe to prophesy such a revival for
William Morris, because valuable treasures will not always remain
hidden. In his case, however, it will not be a revival, because there
has not been an awakening yet. That awakening must come, and thousands
will see that William Morris was a great poet who have not yet heard of
his name. Let us look at his greatest work with some degree of
minuteness.

The opening lines are a good model of the meter, and we find it
different from any that we have considered so far. There are certain
peculiarities about it that make it seem a perfect medium for
translating the Old Norse spirit. Most of these peculiarities are in the
opening lines, and so we may transfer them to this page:[32]

There was a dwelling of Kings ere the world was waxen old;
Dukes were the door-wards there, and the roofs were thatched with gold;
Earls were the wrights that wrought it, and silver nailed its doors;
Earls' wives were the weaving-women, queens' daughters strewed its
floors,
And the masters of its song-craft were the mightiest men that cast
The sails of the storm of battle adown the bickering blast.

Everybody knows that alliteration was a principle of Icelandic verse. It
strikes the ear that hears Icelandic poetry for the first time--or the
eye that sees it, since most of us read it silently--as unpleasantly
insistent, but on fuller acquaintance, we lose this sense of
obtrusiveness. Morris, in this poem, uses alliteration, but so skilfully
that only the reader that seeks it discovers it. A less superb artist
would have made it stick out in every line, so that the