ted that Morris lengthened the saga
story in his poem by the introduction of speeches that find no place in
the original. In this book we see another lengthening process, which,
with that already noted, goes far to account for the difference in bulk
between the saga and the poem. Chap. XXVI of the saga, tells in less
than a thousands words how Sigurd comes to the Giukings and is wedded to
Gudrun. His reception is told in one hundred words; his abode with the
Giukings is set forth in even fewer words; Grimhild's plotting and
administering of the drugged drink are told in two hundred words; his
acceptance of Gudrun's hand and her brother's allegiance are as tersely
pictured; kingdoms are conquered, a son is born to Sigurd, and Grimhild
plots to have Sigurd get Brynhild for her son Gunnar, yet the record of
it all is compressed within one hundred and fifty words. Of course, the
modern poet can hem himself within no such narrow bounds as this. The
artistic value of these various incidents is priceless, and Morris has
lingered upon them lovingly and long. He spreads the story over forty
pages, or a thousand lines, and I avow, after a third reading of these
three sections of the poem, that I would spare no line of them. How we
love this Sigurd of the poet's painting! And what a noble gospel he
proclaims to the Giukings:

For peace I bear unto thee, and to all the kings of the earth,
Who bear the sword aright, and are crowned with the crown of worth;
But unpeace to the lords of evil, and the battle and the death;
And the edge of the sword to the traitor, and the flame to the
slanderous breath:
And I would that the loving were loved, and I would that the weary
should sleep,
And that man should hearken to man, and that he that soweth should
reap.

(P. 174.)

Here, by the way, is the burden of Morris's preaching in the cause of a
better society. It recurs a few pages further on in the poem, where the
Niblungs bestow praise on this new hero:

And they say, when the sun of summer shall come aback to the land,
It shall shine on the fields of the tiller that fears no heavy hand;
That the sleep shall be for the plougher, and the loaf for him that
sowed,
Through every furrowed acre where the Son of Sigmund rode.

(P. 178.)

It need hardly be remarked that this Sigurd is not the sagaman's ideal.
The Icelanders never evolved such high concept