"The days of the world thrust onward, and men are born therein A many and a many, and divers deeds they win In the fashioning of stories for the kindreds of the earth, A garland interwoven of sorrow and of mirth. To the world a warrior cometh; from the world he passeth away, And no man then may sunder his good from his evil day. By the Gods hath he been tormented, and been smitten by the foe: He hath seen his maiden perish, he hath seen his speech-friend go: His heart hath conceived a joyance and hath brought it unto birth: But he hath not carried with him his sorrow or his mirth. He hath lived, and his life hath fashioned the outcome of the deed, For the blossom of the people, and the coming kindreds' seed. "Thus-wise the world is fashioned, and the new sun of the morn Where earth last night was desert beholds a kindred born, That to-morrow and to-morrow blossoms all gloriously With many a man and maiden for the kindreds yet to be, And fair the Goth-folk groweth. And yet the story saith That the deeds that make the summer make too the winter's death, That summer-tides unceasing from out the grave may grow And the spring rise up unblemished from the bosom of the snow. "Thus as to every kindred the day comes once for all When yesterday it was not, and to-day it builds the hall, So every kindred bideth the night-tide of the day, Whereof it knoweth nothing, e'en when noon is past away. E'en thus the House of the Wolfings 'twixt dusk and dark doth stand, And narrow is the pathway with the deep on either hand. On the left are the days forgotten, on the right the days to come, And another folk and their story in the stead of the Wolfing home. Do the shadows darken about it, is the even here at last? Or is this but a storm of the noon-tide that the wind is driving past?