Day-long they fared through the mountains, and that highway's fashioner, Forsooth, was a fearful craftsman, and his hands the waters were, And the heaped-up ice was his mattock, and the fire-blast was his man, And never a whit he heeded though his walls were waste and wan, And the guest-halls of that wayside great heaps of the ashes spent. But, each as a man alone, through the sun-bright day they went, And they rode till the moon rose upward, and the stars were small and fair, Then they slept on the long-slaked ashes beneath the heavens bare; And the cold dawn came and they wakened, and the King of the Dwarf-kind seemed As a thing of that wan land fashioned; but Sigurd glowed and gleamed Amid a shadowless twilight by Greyfell's cloudy flank, As a little space they abided while the latest star-world shrank; On the backward road looked Regin and heard how Sigurd drew The girths of Greyfell's saddle, and the voice of his sword he knew, * * * * * And his war-gear clanged and tinkled as he leapt to the saddle-stead: And the sun rose up at their backs and the grey world changed to red, And away to the west went Sigurd by the glory wreathed about, But little and black was Regin as a fire that dieth out. Day-long they rode the mountains by the crags exceeding old, And the ash that the first of the Dwarf-kind found dull and quenched and cold. Then the moon in the mid-sky swam, and the stars were fair and pale, And beneath the naked heaven they slept in an ash-grey dale; And again at the dawn-dusk's ending they stood upon their feet, And Sigurd donned his war-gear nor his eyes would Regin meet. A clear streak widened in heaven low down above the earth; And above it lay the cloud-flecks, and the sun, anigh its birth, Unseen, their hosts was staining with the very hue of blood, And ruddy by Greyfell's shoulder the Son of Sigmund stood. Then spake the Master of Masters: "What is thine hope this morn That thou dightest thee, O Sigurd, to ride this world forlorn?" "What needeth hope," said Sigurd, "when the heart of the Volsungs turns To the light of the Glittering Heath, and the house where the Waster burns? I shall slay the Foe of the Gods, as thou badst me a while agone, And then with the Gold and its wisdom shalt thou be left alone." "O Child," said the King of the Dwarf-kind, "when the day at last comes round For the dread and the Dusk of the Gods, and the kin of the Wolf is unbound, When thy sword shall hew the fire, and the wildfire beateth thy shield, Shalt thou praise the wages of hope and the Gods that pitched the field?"