E'en as he uttered the word was Signy at the door,
And with hurrying feet she gat her apace to the high-seat floor,
As wan as the dawning-hour, though never a tear she had:
And she cried: "I pray thee, Siggeir, now thine heart is merry and glad
With the death and the bonds of my kinsmen, to grant me this one
prayer,
This one time and no other; let them breathe the earthly air
For a day, for a day or twain, ere they wend the way of death,
For 'sweet to eye while seen,' the elders' saying saith."

Quoth he: "Thou art mad with sorrow; wilt thou work thy friends this
woe?
When swift and untormented e'en I would let them go:
Yet now shalt thou have thine asking, if it verily is thy will:
Nor forsooth do I begrudge them a longer tide of ill."

She said: "I will it, I will it--O sweet to eye while seen!"

Then to his earl spake Siggeir: "There lies a wood-lawn green
In the first mile of the forest; there fetter these Volsung men
To the mightiest beam of the wild-wood, till Queen Signy come again
And pray me a boon for her brethren, the end of their latter life."

So the Goth-folk led to the woodland those gleanings of the strife,
And smote down a great-boled oak-tree, the mightiest they might find,
And thereto with bonds of iron the Volsungs did they bind,
And left them there on the wood-lawn, mid the yew-trees' compassing,
And went back by the light of the moon to the dwelling of the king.

But he sent on the morn of the morrow to see how his foemen fared,