d,
like:

Adown unto the swan-bath the Volsung Children ride;

and this other for the same thing, the sea:

While sleepeth the fields of the fishes amidst the summer-tide.

Still others for the water are _swan-mead_, and "bed-gear of the swan."

"The serpent of death" and _war-flame_, for sword; _earth-bone_, for
rock; _fight-sheaves_, for armed hosts; _seaburg_, for boats, are other
striking examples.

So much for the mechanical details of this poem. Its literary features
are so exceptional that we must examine them at length.

Book I is entitled "Sigmund" and the description is set at the head of
it. "In this book is told of the earlier days of the Volsungs, and of
Sigmund the father of Sigurd, and of his deeds, and of how he died while
Sigurd was yet unborn in his mother's womb."

There are many departures from the _Voelsunga Saga_ in this poetic
version, and all seem to be accounted for by a desire to impress
present-day readers with this story. The poem begins with Volsung,
omitting, therefore, the marvelous birth of that king and the oath of
the unborn child to "flee in fear from neither fire nor the sword." The
saga makes the wolf kill one of Volsung's sons every night; the poem
changes the number to two. A magnificent scene is invented by Morris in
the midnight visit of Signy to the wood where her brothers had been
slain. She speaks to the brother that is left, desiring to know what he
is doing:

O yea, I am living indeed, and this labor of mine hand
Is to bury the bones of the Volsungs; and lo, it is well nigh done.
So draw near, Volsung's daughter, and pile we many a stone
Where lie the gray wolf s gleanings of what was once so good.

(P. 23.)

The dialogue of brother and sister is a mighty conception, and surely
the old Icelanders would have called Morris a rare singer. Sigmund tells
the story of the deaths of his brothers, adding:

But now was I wroth with the Gods, that had made the Volsungs for
nought;
And I said: in the Day of their Doom a man's help shall they miss.

(P. 24.)

But Signy is reconciled to the workings of Fate:

I am nothing so wroth as thou art with the ways of death and hell,
For thereof had I a deeming when all things were seeming well.

The day to come shall set their woes right:

There as thou drawest thy sword, thou shall think of the days that were
And the foul shall still seem foul, and the fair shall