In the treatment of the poem throughout, however, the quality that is predominant may be most fittingly described as magnificence of imagination. This is, of course, a thing quite distinct from mere magnificence of phrase. Not only is the utterance splendid, but the thing uttered and the thing suggested are splendid too. The voices are indeed tremendous, but that is because they are the voices of tremendous people. We feel always that we are moving among a humanity not in any way idealized, but framed in the proportions of giants, purged of everything inessential and tautened in all its sinews. And when the spirits of these people are drawn up to some unwonted height of emotional intensity the result is a cry from a world the knowledge of which moves us to a heroic hope for our race. The grief of Gudrun over Sigurd dead, with the wonderful refrain interwoven by the narrator, is a grief that in itself is a triumph over any blows that destiny can inflict. Once man can sorrow in this fashion, we feel he has conquered his fate. And the death-song of Gunnar is yet more magnificent. The poet who wrote that wonderful chant of man in the face of death has fathomed the very depths of song-craft. Readers who know Morris's poetry will forgive me for taking them through these lines once again-- So perished the Gap of the Gaping, and the cold sea swayed and sang, And the wind came down on the waters, and the beaten rock-walls rang; There the Sun from the south came shining, and the Starry Host stood round, And the wandering Moon of the heavens his habitation found; And they knew not why they were gathered, nor the deeds of their shaping they knew: But lo, Mid-Earth the Noble 'neath their might and their glory grew, And the grass spread over its face, and the Night and the Day were born, And it cried on the Death in the even, and it cried on the Life in the morn; Yet it waxed and waxed, and knew not, and it lived and had not learned; And where were the Framers that framed, and the Soul and the Might that had yearned? On the Thrones are the Powers that fashioned, and they name the Night and the Day, And the tide of the Moon's increasing, and the tide of his waning away; And they name the years for the story; and the Lands they change and change, The great and the mean and the little, that this unto that may be strange: They met, and they fashioned dwellings, and the House of Glory they built; They met, and they fashioned the Dwarf-kind, and the Gold and the Gifts and the Guilt.