He drank as he spake the word, and forthwith the venom ran In a chill flood over his heart, and down fell the mighty man With never an uttered death-word and never a death-changed look, And the floor of the hall of the Volsungs beneath his falling shook.
Then up rose the elder of days with a great and bitter cry And lifted the head of the fallen, and none durst come anigh To hearken the words of his sorrow, if any words he said, But such as the Father of all men might speak over Baldur dead. And again, as before the death-stroke, waxed the hall of the Volsungs dim, And once more he seemed in the forest, where he spake with nought but him.
Then he lifted him up from the hall-floor and bore him on his breast, And men who saw Sinfiotli deemed his heart had gotten rest, And his eyes were no more dreadful. Forth fared the Volsung child With Signy's son through the doorway; and the wind was great and wild, And the moon rode high in the heavens, and whiles it shone out bright, And whiles the clouds drew over. So went he through the night, Until the dwellings of man-folk were a long while left behind. Then came he unto the thicket and the houses of the wind, And the feet of the hoary mountains, and the dwellings of the deer, And the heaths without a shepherd, and the houseless dales and drear. Then lo, a mighty water, a rushing flood and wide, And no ferry for the shipless; so he went along its side, As a man that seeketh somewhat: but it widened toward the sea, And the moon sank down in the west, and he went o'er a desert lea.
But lo, in that dusk ere the dawning a glimmering over the flood, And the sound of the cleaving of waters, and Sigmund the Volsung stood By the edge of the swirling eddy, and a white-sailed boat he saw, And its keel ran light on the strand with the last of the dying flaw. But therein was a man most mighty, grey-clad like the mountain-cloud, One-eyed and seeming ancient, and he spake and hailed him aloud:
"Now whither away, King Sigmund, for thou farest far to-night?"
Spake the King: "I would cross this water, for my life hath lost its light, And mayhap there be deeds for a king to be found on the further shore."
"My senders," quoth the shipman, "bade me waft a great king o'er, So set thy burden a shipboard, for the night's face looks toward day."