Mr. Morris had shown, in various ways, the strength of his sympathy with the heroic sagas of Iceland.  He had rendered one into verse, in “The Earthly Paradise,” above all, “Grettir the Strong” and “The Volsunga” he had done into English prose.  His next great poem was “The Story of Sigurd,” a poetic rendering of the theme which is, to the North, what the Tale of Troy is to Greece, and to all the world.  Mr. Morris took the form of the story which is most archaic, and bears most birthmarks of its savage origin—­the version of the “Volsunga,” not the German shape of the “Nibelungenlied.”  He showed extraordinary skill, especially in making human and intelligible the story of Regin, Otter, Fafnir, and the Dwarf Andvari’s Hoard.

“It was Reidmar the Ancient begat me; and now was he waxen old, And a covetous man and a king; and he bade, and I built him a hall, And a golden glorious house; and thereto his sons did he call, And he bade them be evil and wise, that his will through them might be wrought.  Then he gave unto Fafnir my brother the soul that feareth nought, And the brow of the hardened iron, and the hand that may never fail, And the greedy heart of a king, and the ear that hears no wail.

“But next unto Otter my brother he gave the snare and the net, And the longing to wend through the wild-wood, and wade the highways wet; And the foot that never resteth, while aught be left alive That hath cunning to match man’s cunning or might with his might to strive.

“And to me, the least and the youngest, what gift for the slaying of ease?  Save the grief that remembers the past, and the fear that the future sees; And the hammer and fashioning-iron, and the living coal of fire; And the craft that createth a semblance, and fails of the heart’s desire; And the toil that each dawning quickens, and the task that is never done; And the heart that longeth ever, nor will look to the deed that is won.

   “Thus gave my father the gifts that might never be taken again;
   Far worse were we now than the Gods, and but little better than men. 
   But yet of our ancient might one thing had we left us still: 
   We had craft to change our semblance, and could shift us at our will
   Into bodies of the beast-kind, or fowl, or fishes cold;
   For belike no fixed semblance we had in the days of old,
   Till the Gods were waxen busy, and all things their form must take
   That knew of good and evil, and longed to gather and make.”

But when we turn to the passage of the eclaircissement between Sigurd and Brynhild, that most dramatic and most modern moment in the ancient tragedy, the moment where the clouds of savage fancy scatter in the light of a hopeless human love, then, I must confess, I prefer the simple, brief prose of Mr. Morris’s translation of the “Volsunga” to his rather periphrastic paraphrase.  Every student of poetry