"O Wood-Sun thou wottest our battle and the way wherein we fare: That oft at the battle's beginning the helm and the hauberk we bear; Lest the shaft of the fleeing coward or the bow at adventure bent Should slay us ere the need be, ere our might be given and spent. Yet oft ere the fight is over, and Doom hath scattered the foe, No leader of the people by his war-gear shall ye know, But by his hurts the rather, from the cot-carle and the thrall: For when all is done that a man may, 'tis the hour for a man to fall." She yet smiled as she said in answer: "O Folk-wolf, heed and hearken; for when shall thy life be spent And the Folk wherein thou dwellest with thy death be well content? Whenso folk need the fire, do they hew the apple-tree, And burn the Mother of Blossom and the fruit that is to be? Or me wilt thou bid to thy grave-mound because thy battle-wrath May nothing more be bridled than the whirl wind on his path? So hearken and do my bidding, for the hauberk shalt thou bear E'en when the other warriors cast off their battle-gear. So come thou, come unwounded from the war-field of the south, And sit with me in the beech-wood, and kiss me, eyes and mouth." And she kissed him in very deed, and made much of him, and fawned on him, and laid her hand on his breast, and he was soft and blithe with her, but at last he laughed and said: "God's Daughter, long hast thou lived, and many a matter seen, And men full often grieving for the deed that might have been; But here my heart thou wheedlest as a maid of tender years When first in the arms of her darling the horn of war she hears. Thou knowest the axe to be heavy, and the sword, how keen it is; But that Doom of which thou hast spoken, wilt thou not tell of this, God's Daughter, how it sheareth, and how it breaketh through Each wall that the warrior buildeth, yea all deeds that he may do? What might in the hammer's leavings, in the fire's thrall shall abide To turn that Folks' o'erwhelmer from the fated warrior's side?" Then she laughed in her turn, and loudly; but so sweetly that the sound of her voice mingled with the first song of a newly awakened wood-thrush sitting on a rowan twig on the edge of the Wood-lawn. But she said: "Yea, I that am God's Daughter may tell thee never a whit From what land cometh the hauberk nor what smith smithied it, That thou shalt wear in the handplay from the first stroke to the last; But this thereof I tell thee, that it holdeth firm and fast The life of the body it lappeth, if the gift of the Godfolk it be. Lo this is the yoke-mate of doom, and the gift of me unto thee."