and there is surely no more lovely description in poetry than this—
So the hall dusk deepens upon them till the candles come arow,
And they drink the wine of departing and gird themselves to go;
And they dight the dark-blue raiment and climb to the wains aloft
While the horned moon hangs in the heaven and the
summer wind blows soft.
Then the yoke-beasts strained at the collar, and the dust
in the moon arose,
And they brushed the side of the acre and the blooming dewy close;
Till at last, when the moon was sinking and the night was
waxen late,
The warders of the earl-folk looked forth from the Niblung gate
And saw the gold pale-gleaming, and heard the wain-wheels crush
The weary dust of the summer amidst the midnight hush.
In Sigurd, too, Morris's power of investing his language with the utmost dramatic compression at exactly the right moment is developed to its highest point. One example may be given. Regin means to use Sigurd for his own ends—to make him secure the treasure of Fafnir. But Sigurd as yet has no will for action—
the wary foot is surest, and the hasty oft turns back.
Then the craft of Regin is concentrated into six lines—
The deed is ready to hand,
Yet holding my peace is the best, for well thou lovest the land:
And thou lovest thy life moreover, and the peace of thy
youthful days,
And why should the full-fed feaster his hand to the rye-bread raise?
Yet they say that Sigmund begat thee and he looked to fashion a man.
Fear nought; he lieth quiet in his mound by the sea-waves wan.
and Sigurd cries back—
Tell me, thou Master of Masters, what deed is the deed I
shall do?
Nor mock thou the son of Sigmund lest the day of his
birth thou rue.
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?