But swift on his ways went Sigurd, and to Regin's house he came, Where the Master stood in the doorway and behind him leapt the flame, And dark he looked and little: no more his speech was sweet, No words on his lip were gathered the Volsung child to greet, Till he took the sword from Sigurd and the shards of the days of old; Then he spake: "Will nothing serve thee save this blue steel and cold, The bane of thy father's father, the fate of all his kin, The baleful blade I fashioned, the Wrath that the Gods would win?" * * * * * Then answered the eye-bright Sigurd: "If thou thy craft wilt do Nought save these battle-gleanings shall be my helper true: And what if thou begrudgest, and my battle-blade be dull, Yet the hand of the Norns is lifted and the cup is over-full. Repentst thou ne'er so sorely that thy kin must lie alow, How much soe'er thou longest the world to overthrow, And, doubting the gold and the wisdom, wouldst even now appease Blind hate and eyeless murder, and win the world with these; O'er-late is the time for repenting the word thy lips have said: Thou shalt have the Gold and the wisdom and take its curse on thine head. I say that thy lips have spoken, and no more with thee it lies To do the deed or leave it: since thou hast shown mine eyes The world that was aforetime, I see the world to be; And woe to the tangling thicket, or the wall that hindereth me! And short is the space I will tarry; for how if the Worm should die Ere the first of my strokes be stricken? Wilt thou get to thy mastery And knit these shards together that once in the Branstock stood? But if not and a smith's hands fail me, a king's hand yet shall be good; And the Norns have doomed thy brother. And yet I deem this sword Is the slayer of the Serpent, and the scatterer of the Hoard." Great waxed the gloom of Regin, and he said: "Thou sayest sooth For none may turn him backward: the sword of a very youth Shall one day end my cunning, as the Gods my joyance slew, When nought thereof they were deeming, and another thing would do. But this sword shall slay the Serpent; and do another deed, And many an one thereafter till it fail thee in thy need. But as fair and great as thou standest, yet get thee from mine house, For in me too might ariseth, and the place is perilous With the craft that was aforetime, and shall never be again, When the hands that have taught thee cunning have failed from the world of men. Thou art wroth; but thy wrath must slumber till fate its blossom bear; Not thus were the eyes of Odin when I held him in the snare. Depart! lest the end overtake us ere thy work and mine be done, But come again in the night-tide and the slumber of the sun, When the sharded moon of April hangs round in the undark May."