and again, when he rides to the Niblungs it is with peace and comfortable words upon his lips—
For peace I bear unto thee, and to all the kings of earth
Who bear the sword aright, and are crowned with the crown
of worth;
But unpeace to the lords of evil, and the battle and the death;
And the edge of the sword to the traitor, and the flame to
the slanderous breath:
And I would that the loving were loved, and I would that the
weary should sleep,
And that man should hearken to man, and that he that
soweth should reap.
Now wide in the world I fare, to seek the dwellings of kings,
For with them would I do and undo, and be heart of their
warfarings;
So I thank thee, lord, for thy bidding, and here in thy house
will I bide,
And learn of thy ancient wisdom till forth to the field we ride.
It is in this mellowing of the fierce Volsung strain that the redemption of the cosmic spirit of the epic is found. To show this is a purpose not less noble than that of Milton when he robed himself to justify the ways of God to man, and it is one which must be clearly understood before we can hope to grasp the imaginative impulse that runs as a central thread through all the coloured jewels of Morris's masterpiece. This new chastening of the humanity in Sigurd not only makes the life among which he moves sweeter, but it reacts upon the most tragic judgments of the gods. Nothing could be finer than the way in which we are shown the ennobling influence that it has upon so terrible an event as the betrayal of Sigurd by the Niblung Gunnar and his brothers. It is an act of the blackest treachery, a violation of sacred vows sworn under the roof-tree of their home, an act which in the world of Sigmund would have been merely horrible. But here it is transfigured by the elemental humanity working along the logical ways of cause and effect in the heart of Sigurd and from him into the action of his betrayers, into pure tragedy. Before this quickening, enmity between man and man was a sullen and savage thing, some blinding of their eyes by the hands of mocking gods, but now it springs from the clear conflict of essential emotions and it has in it a new element of pity. Gunnar knows that the ravelled web can be straightened only in this way, but there is no loveless exultation in his mood, and in after days he cherishes the great memory of the man whom he has slain. And Sigurd knows of the coming end, but there is no hatred in him—
the heart of Hogin he sees,
And the heart of his brother Gunnar, and he grieveth sore for
these.
In detail Morris discovers a wealth of inventiveness that appears to be inexhaustible. He never allows his beauty of expression to be isolated in such a way as to interfere with the swiftness of narration, but there are many more instances of separable splendours in Sigurd than in any other of his poems. When Sigurd tells King Elf, his stepfather, that he would go out into the world, the King answers—
Forsooth no more may we hold thee than the hazel copse
may hold
The sun of the early dawning, that turneth it all into gold.
And how exquisite is this of Gudrun's beauty—
And her face is a rose of the morning by the night-tide
framed about.
and how perfect in imagination this of the Volsung King's sword—
Therewith from the belt of battle he raised the golden sheath,
And showed the peace-strings glittering around the hidden death.