Queen,
While swiftly the feet of the witch-wife brushed over the moonlit
green,
But the soul mid the gleam of the torches, her thought was of gain
and of gold;
And the soul of the wind-driven woman, swift-foot in the moonlight
cold,
Her thoughts were of men's lives' changing, and the uttermost ending
of earth,
And the day when death should be dead, and the new sun's nightless
birth.

Men say that about that midnight King Sigmund wakened and heard
The voice of a soft-speeched woman, shrill-sweet as a dawning bird;
So he rose, and a woman indeed he saw by the door of the cave
With her raiment wet to her midmost, as though with the river-wave:
And he cried: "What wilt thou, what wilt thou? be thou womankind or
fay,
Here is no good abiding, wend forth upon thy way!"

She said: "I am nought but a woman, a maid of the earl-folk's kin:
And I went by the skirts of the woodland to the house of my sister
to win,
And have strayed from the way benighted: and I fear the wolves and
the wild
By the glimmering of thy torchlight from afar was I beguiled.
Ah, slay me not on thy threshold, nor send me back again
Through the rattling waves of thy ford, that I crossed in terror and
pain;
Drive me not to the night and the darkness, for the wolves of the