But Helgi puts her hands away from his face and holds her apart—
"The death-dew is dank on me,
Sigrun of Sevafell,
This is thy doing, O sun-fraught lady,
Golden woman, the tears thou sheddest
Upon thy bed stay not beside thee;
Like blood they fall, cold and deathly,
Like sobs they stab me
Through the breast!"
Then, seeing her despair, he throws up his white face towards the moon and laughs without joy—
"Ho, let us drink
Deep draughts of joy,
We that have lost
Land and life!
Let no man keen us,
Let no man pity
The wounds shining upon my body."
He clasps her close in his arms, and speaks as it were between his teeth.
"Now is a queen,
Sigrun of Sevafell,
Now is a queen
Shut in the cairn,
Living and warm with the cold dead."
But she strains him to her and cries aloud—
"Helgi, Helgi, here is thy bed made,
Thou son of Wolfings, a warm bed, a gentle—
Fast in arms, Helgi, enfold me;
As when thou livedst
Clip me in death sleep."
And then the maid sees the cairn open, and Sigrun lying in it in the dead man's arms. Helgi lifts up his face to the moonlight, and sings—
"Never on Sevafell
A great marvel—
No more wondrous
That hill of magic—
For Hogni's white daughter
Lies with a dead man;
A king's daughter
Alive in the arms of the dead."
There is no more terrible song than that, nor one in which love is brought so close to death. When she remembered it after-wards Gudrid saw well that she had indeed been lying with a dead man when that song was sung to her. For if she could have had the wits she would have felt at the time the death-dew on his face. But love had then bereft her of all wits.