Chapter V: Book II: is entitled "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."

Morris was deeply read in Old Norse literature, and out of his stores of knowledge he brought vivifying details for this poem. Such, for instance, is the description of Sigurd's eyes, not found just here in the saga:

In the bed there lieth a man-child, and his eyes look straight on
the sun.

. . . . . . . . . . . . .

Yet they shrank in their rejoicing before the eyes of the child.

. . . . . . . . . . . . .

In the naming of the child by an ancient name, the meaning of that name is indicated:

O _Sigurd_, Son of the Volsungs, O Victory yet to be!

The festivities over the birth of the child are wonderfully described in the brief lines, and they are a picture out of another book than the saga:

Earls think of marvellous stories, and along the golden strings
Flit words of banded brethren and names of war-fain Kings.

Over and over again in this poem Morris records the Icelanders' desire "to leave a tale to tell," and here are Sigurd's words to Regin who has been egging him on to deeds:

Yet I know that the world is wide, and filled with deeds unwrought;
And for e'en such work was I fashioned, lest the songcraft come to
nought,
When the harps of God-home tinkle, and the Gods are at stretch to
hearken:
Lest the hosts of the Gods be scanty when their day hath begun to
darken.

(P. 82.)

In Book II we have other great speeches that the poet has put into the mouth of his characters with little or no justification in the original saga. Chap. XIV of the saga contains Regin's tale of his brothers, and of the gold called "Andvari's Hoard," and that tale is severely brief and plain. The account in the poem is expanded greatly, and the conception of Regin materially altered. In the saga he was not the discontented youngest son of his father, prone to talk of his woes and to lament his lot. In the poem he does this in so eloquent a fashion that almost we are persuaded to sympathize with him. Certainly his lines were hard, to have outlived his great deeds, and to hear his many inventions ascribed to the gods. The speech of the released Odin to Reidmar is modeled on Job's conception of omnipotence, and it is one of the memorable parts of this book. Gripir's prophecy, too, is a majestic work, and its original was three sentences in the saga and the poem _Grípisspá_ in the heroic songs of the _Edda_. Here Morris rises to the heights of Sigurd's greatness:

Sigurd, Sigurd! O great, O early born!
O hope of the Kings first fashioned! O blossom of the morn!
Short day and long remembrance, fair summer of the North!
One day shall the worn world wonder how first thou wentest forth!

(P. 111.)

Those who have read William Morris know that he is a master of nature description. The "Glittering Heath" offered a fine opportunity for this sort of work, and in this piece we have another departure from the saga, Morris made hundreds of pictures in this poem, but the pages describing the journey to the "Glittering Heath" are packed with them to an extraordinary degree. Here is Iceland in very fact, all dust and ashes to the eye:

More changeless than mid-ocean, as fruitless as its floor.

We confess that there is something in the scene that holds us, all shorn of beauty though it is. We do not want to go the length of Thomas Hardy, however, who, in that wonderful first chapter of _The Return of the Native_ has a similar heath to describe. "The new vale of Tempe," says he, "may be a gaunt waste in Thule: human souls may find themselves in closer and closer harmony with external things wearing a sombreness distasteful to our race when it was young.... The time seems near, if it has not actually arrived, when the mournful sublimity of a moor, a sea, or a mountain, will be all of nature that is absolutely consonant with the moods of the more thinking among mankind. And ultimately, to the commonest tourist, spots like Iceland may become what the vineyards and myrtlegardens of South Europe are to him now." Is it not a suggestive thought that England and the nineteenth century evolved a pessimism which poor Iceland on its ash-heap never could conceive? William Morris was an Icelander, not an Englishman, in his philosophy.

In this same scene, a notable deviation from the saga is the conversation between Regin and Sigurd concerning the relations that shall be between them after the slaying of Fafnir. Here Morris impresses the lesson of Regin's greed, taking the un-Icelandic device of preaching to serve his purpose:

Let it lead thee up to heaven, let it lead thee down to hell,
The deed shall be done tomorrow: thou shalt have that measureless Gold,
And devour the garnered wisdom that blessed thy realm of old,
That hath lain unspent and begrudged in the, very heart of hate:
With the blood and the might of thy brother thine hunger shalt thou
sate:
And this deed shall be mine and thine; but take heed for what followeth
then!

(P. 119.)

In still another place has Morris departed far from the saga story. According to the poem, Sigurd meets each warning of Fafnir that the gold will be the curse of its possessor with the assurance that he will cast the gold abroad, and let none of it cling to his fingers. The saga, however, has this very frank confession: "Home would I ride and lose all that wealth, if I deemed that by the losing thereof I should never die; but every brave and true man will fain have his hand on wealth till that last day." Here, again, we see an adaptation of the story of the poem to modern conceptions of nobility. It remains to be said that the ernes move Sigurd to take the gold for the gladdening of the world, and they assure him that a son of the Volsung had nought to fear from the Curse. The seven-times-repeated "Bind the red rings, O Sigurd," is an admirable poem, but it does not contain information concerning Brynhild, as do the strophes of _Reginsmál_ which are the model for this lay.

Let us look at the art of Morris as it is shown in telling "How Sigurd awoke Brynhild upon Hindfell." As in the saga, so in the English poem, this incident has a setting most favorable to the display of its remarkable beauties. It is a picture as pure and sweet as it has ever entered into the mind of man to conceive. The conception belongs to the poetic lore of many nations, and children are early introduced to the story of "Sleeping Beauty." There are some features of the Old Norse version that are especially charming, and first among them is the address of the awakened Brynhild to the sun and the earth. We are told that this maiden loved the radiant hero that here awoke her from her age-long sleep, but not for him is her first greeting. A finer thrill moves her than love for a man, and in Morris's poem, this feeling finds singularly beautiful expression:

All hail O Day and thy Sons, and thy kin of the coloured things!
Hail, following Night, and thy Daughter that leadeth thy wavering
wings!
Look down with unangry eyes on us today alive,
And give us the hearts victorious, and the gain for which we strive!
All hail, ye Lords of God-home, and ye Queens of the House of Gold!
Hail thou dear Earth that bearest, and thou Wealth of field and fold!
Give us, your noble children, the glory of wisdom and speech,
And the hearts and the hands of healing, and the mouths and hands that
teach!

(P. 140.)

In order to see just what the art of Morris has done for this poem, let us compare this address with the rendering of the _Sigrdrifumál_, which tell the same story and which Morris and Magnusson have incorporated into their translation of the _Völsunga Saga_. The verses are not in the original saga:

Hail to the day come back!
Hail, sons of the daylight!
Hail to thee, dark night, and thy daughter!
Look with kind eyes a-down,
On us sitting here lonely,
And give unto us the gain that we long for.
Hail to the Æsir,
And the sweet Asyniur!
Hail to the fair earth fulfilled of plenty!
Fair words, wise hearts,
Would we win from you,
And healing hands while life we hold.

To get the full benefit of the comparison of the old and the new, let us set in conjunction with these versions a severely literal translation of the _Edda_ strophes themselves:

Hail, O Day,
Hail, O Sons of the Day,
Hail Night and kinswoman!
With unwroth eyes
look on us here
and give to us sitting ones victory.
Hail, O Gods,
Hail, O Goddesses,
Hail, O bounteous Earth!
Speech and wisdom
give to us, the excellent twain,
and healing hands during life.

These stages in the progress of the gold from mine to mint furnish their own commentary. The finished product will pass current with the most exacting of assayers, as well as gladden the hearts of the poor one whose hand seldom touches gold.

If the skill of the poet in this case have merited resemblance to that of the refiner of gold, what name less than alchemy can characterize his achievement in the rest of this scene? From the first words of Brynhild's life-story:

I am she that loveth; I was born of the earthly folk;

to the tender words that tell of the coming of another day:

And fresh and all abundant abode the deeds of Day,

there is a succession of beautiful scenes and glorious speeches such as only a master of magic could have gotten out of the original story. The Eddaic account of the Valkyr's disobedience to All-Father, pictures a saucy and self-willed maiden. Sentence has been pronounced upon her, and thus the story continues: "But I said I would vow a vow against it, and marry no man that knew fear." The _Völsunga Saga_ gives exactly the same account, but the poetic version of Morris saves the maiden for our respect and admiration. It is not effrontery, but repentance that speaks in the voice of Brynhild here:

The thoughts of my heart overcame me, and the pride of my wisdom and
speech,
And I scorned the earth-folk's Framer, and the Lord of the world I must
teach.

In the Icelandic version, Odin makes no speech at the dooming, but Morris puts into his mouth this magnificent address:

And he cried: "Thou hast thought in thy folly that the Gods have
friends and foes,
That they wake, and the world wends onward, that they sleep, and
the world slips back,
That they laugh, and the world's weal waxeth, that they frown and
fashion the wrack:
Thou hast cast up the curse against me; it shall aback on thine head;
Go back to the sons of repentance, with the children of sorrow wed!
For the Gods are great unholpen, and their grief is seldom seen,
And the wrong that they will and must be is soon as it hath not been."

(P. 141.)

Morris has here again exercised the poet's privilege of adding to the story that was the pride of an entire age, in order to serve his own the better. If he was wise in these additions, he was no less wise in subtractions and in preservations. The saga has a long address by Brynhild, opening with mystical advice concerning the power of runes, and closing grandly with wise words that sound like a page from the Old Testament. The former find no place in _Sigurd the Volsung_, but the latter are turned into mighty phrases that wonderfully preserve the spirit of the original.

One passage more from Book II:

So they climb the burg of Hindfell, and hand in hand they fare,
Till all about and above them is nought but the sunlit air,
And there close they cling together rejoicing in their mirth;
For far away beneath them lie the kingdoms of the earth,
And the garths of men-folk's dwellings and the streams that water them,
And the rich and plenteous acres, and the silver ocean's hem,
And the woodland wastes and the mountains, and all that holdeth all;
The house and the ship and the island, the loom and the mine and the
stall,
The beds of bane and healing, the crafts that slay and save,
The temple of God and the Doom-ring, the cradle and the grave.

(P. 145.)

These ten lines serve to illustrate very well one of the most remarkable powers of Morris. Just consider for a moment the number of details that are crowded into this picture, and then notice how few are the strokes required to put them there. For this rapid painting of a crowded canvas Morris is second to none among English poets. This power to put a whole landscape or a complex personality into a few lines is the direct outcome of his study of Old Norse literature. Icelandic poetry is characterized by this quality. One has but to compare the account of the end of the world as it is found in the last strophes of _Völuspá_, or in the _Prose Edda_, with the similar account in _Revelations_ to see how much two languages may differ in this respect. It would seem as if the short verses characteristic of Icelandic poetry forbade lengthy descriptions. The effect must be produced by a number of quick strokes: there is never time to go over a line once made. A simile is never elaborated, a new one is made when the poet wishes to insist on the figure. Take the second strophe of the "Ancient Lay of Gudrun" as an example, in the translation by Morris and Magnusson:

Such was my Sigurd
Among the Sons of Giuki
As is the green leek
O'er the low grass waxen,
Or a hart high-limbed
Over hurrying deer,
Or gleed-red gold
Over grey silver.

That is the Icelandic fashion; William Morris has caught it in the _Story of Sigurd_. Matthew Arnold has not seen fit to use it in his "Balder Dead," as these lines show:

Him the blind Hoder met, as he came up
From the sea cityward, and knew his step;
Nor yet could Hermod see his brother's face,
For it grew dark; but Hermod touched his arm.
And as a spray of honeysuckle flowers
Brushes across a tired traveller's face
Who shuffles thro the deep-moistened dust,
On a May-evening, in the darkened lanes,
And starts him that he thinks a ghost went by--
So Hoder brushed by Hermod's side.

These are noble lines, but altogether foreign to Icelandic.