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The Collected Works of William Morris

With Introductions by his Daughter May Morris

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So now, when all things were ready, in the first of the autumn tide
Adown unto the swan-bath the Volsung Children ride;
And lightly go a-shipboard, a goodly company,
Though the tale thereof be scanty and their ships no more than three:
But kings' sons dealt with the sail-sheets and earls and dukes of war
Were the halers of the hawsers and the tuggers at the oar.
So they drew the bridges shipward, and left the land behind,
And fair astern of the longships sprang up a following wind;
So swift o'er Ægir's acre those mighty sailors ran,
And speedier than all other ploughed down the furrows wan.
And they came to the land of the Goth-folk on the even of a day;
And lo by the inmost skerry a skiff with a sail of grey
That as they neared the foreshore ran Volsung's ship aboard,
And there was come white-hand Signy with her latest warning word.