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The Collected Works of William Morris

With Introductions by his Daughter May Morris

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Nought spake she, nothing she moved, and the tears were dried on her cheek;
But the very words of Grimhild did Gunnar's memory seek;
He sought and he found and considered; and mighty he was and young,
And he thought of the deeds of his fathers and the tales of the Niblungs sung;

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How they bore no God's constraining, and rode through the wrong and the right
That the storm of their wrath might quicken, and their tempest carry the light.
The words of his mother he gathered and the wrath-flood over him rolled,
And with it came many a longing, that his heart had never told,
Nay, scarce to himself in the night-tide, for the gain of the ruddy rings,
And the fame of the earth unquestioned and the mastery over kings,
And he sole King in the world-throne, unequalled, unconstrained;
And with wordless wrath he fretted at the bonds that his glory had chained,
And the bitter anger stirred him, and at last he spake and cried: