University of Virginia Library


96

How should that one spring to the sunlight and bear the blossom of peace!
No more should the long-lived wisdom o'er the waste of the wilderness stray;
Nor the clear-eyed hero hasten to the deedless ending of day.
And what if the hearts of the Volsungs for this deed of deeds were born,
How then were their life-days evil and the end of their lives forlorn?”