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The Collected Works of William Morris

With Introductions by his Daughter May Morris

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331

CHAPTER XIX. OF THE SLAYING OF REGIN, SON OF HREIDMAR.

[Songs extracted from the prose narrative.]


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[The wood-peckers a-singing.]

[The first:]
“Bind thou, Sigurd,
The bright red rings!
Not meet it is
Many things to fear.
A fair may know I,
Fair of all the fairest,
Girt about with gold,
Good for thy getting.”

And the second:

“Green go the ways
Toward the hall of Giuki,
That the fates show forth
To those who fare thither;
There the rich king
Reareth a daughter;
Thou shalt deal, Sigurd,
With gold for that sweetling.”

And the third:

“A high hall is there
Reared upon Hindfell,
Without all around it
Sweeps the red flame aloft;
Wise men wrought
That wonder of halls
With the unhidden gleam
Of the glory of gold.”

Then the fourth sang:

“Soft on the fell
A shield-may sleepeth,
The lime-trees' red plague
Playing about her:
The sleep-thorn set Odin

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Into that maiden
For her choosing in war
The one he willed not.”
“Go, son, behold
That may under helm
Whom from battle
Vinskornir bore,
From her may not turn
The torment of sleep,
Dear offspring of kings,
In the dread Norns' despite.”