Fast was I fixed. Few indeed are there
Of men who have ever at any time
5 Beheld my home in the hard waste-land.
In the brown embrace of the billows and waves
I was locked each dawn. Little I dreamed
That early or late I ever should
With men at the mead-feast mouthless speak forth
10 Words of wisdom. It is a wondrous thing,
And strange to the sight when one sees it first
That the edge of a knife and the active hand