No whit she smiled, but answered.  “Indeed thou sayst the thing: 
    Such a wealth I had in my storehouse that I feared the Kings of men.”

    He said:  “Yet for nought didst thou hide thee; had I known of the
      matter then,
    As the daughter of my father had I held thee in good sooth,
    For dear to mine eyes wert thou waxen, and my heart of thy woe was
      ruth. 
    But now shall I deal with thee better than thy dealings to me have
      been: 
    For my wife I will bid thee to be, and the people’s very queen.”

    She said:  “When the son of King Sigmund is brought forth to the
      light of day
    And the world a man hath gotten, thy will shall I nought gainsay. 
    And I thank thee for thy goodness, and I know the love of thine heart;
    And I see thy goodly kingdom, thy country set apart,
    With the day of peace begirdled from the change and the battle’s wrack: 
    ’Tis enough, and more than enough since none prayeth the past aback.”

    Then the King is fain and merry, and he deems his errand sped,
    And that night she sits on the high-seat with the crown on her
      shapely head: 
    And amidst the song and the joyance, and the sound of the people’s
      praise,
    She thinks of the days that have been, and she dreams of the coming
      days.

    So passeth the summer season, and the harvest of the year,
    And the latter days of the winter on toward the springtide wear.

BOOK II.

REGIN.

     NOW THIS IS THE FIRST BOOK OF THE LIFE AND DEATH OF SIGURD THE
     VOLSUNG, AND THEREIN IS TOLD OF THE BIRTH OF HIM, AND OF HIS
     DEALINGS WITH REGIN THE MASTER OF MASTERS, AND OF HIS DEEDS IN THE
     WASTE PLACES OF THE EARTH.

    Of the birth of Sigurd the son of Sigmund.

    Peace lay on the land of the Helper and the house of Elf his son;
    There merry men went bedward when their tide of toil was done,
    And glad was the dawn’s awakening, and the noon-tide fair and glad: 
    There no great store had the franklin, and enough the hireling had;
    And a child might go unguarded the length and breadth of the land
    With a purse of gold at his girdle and gold rings on his hand. 
    ’Twas a country of cunning craftsmen, and many a thing they wrought,
    That the lands of storm desired, and the homes of warfare sought. 
    But men deemed it o’er-well warded by more than its stems of fight,
    And told how its earth-born watchers yet lived of plenteous might. 
    So hidden was that country, and few men sailed its sea,
    And none came o’er its mountains of men-folk’s company. 
    But fair-fruited, many-peopled, it lies a goodly strip,
    ’Twixt the mountains cloudy-headed and the sea-flood’s surging lip,
    And a perilous flood is its ocean, and its mountains, who shall tell
    What things in their dales deserted and their wind-swept heaths may
      dwell.