William Morris

“ The Gods hearken and hear The long rumour of fear From the meadows beneath Running fierce o'er the heath, Till it beats round their dwelling-place builded aloof And at last all up-swelling breaks wild o'er their roof, And quencheth their laughter and crieth on all, As it rolleth round rafter and beam of the Hall, Like the speech of the thunder-cloud tangled on high, When the mountain-halls sunder as dread goeth by. ”

“ Come then, ye sons of the kindreds who hither bore these twain! Take up their beds of glory, and fare we home again, And feast as men delivered from toil unmeet to bear, Who through the night are looking to the dawn-tide fresh and fair And the morn and the noon to follow, and the eve and its morrow morn, All the life of our deliv'rance and the fair days yet unborn. ”

“ In the ground wherein ye lay it, the body of this man, No deed of his abideth, no glory that he wan, But evermore the Markmen shall bear his deeds o'er earth, With the joy of the deeds that are coming, the garland of his worth. ”

“ War-father gleams Where the white light streams Round kings of old All red with gold, And the Gods of the name With joy aflame. All the ancient of men Grown glorious again: Till the Slains-father crieth aloud at the last: 'Here is one that belieth no hope of the past! ”

“ But on the morrow the kindreds laid their dead men in mound betwixt the Great Roof and the Wild-wood. In one mound they laid them with the War- dukes in their midst, and Arinbiorn by Otter's right side; and Thiodolf bore Throng-plough to mound with him.
But a little way from the mound of their own dead, toward the south they laid the Romans, a great company, with their Captain in the midst: and they heaped a long mound over them not right high; so that as years wore, and the feet of men and beasts trod it down, it seemed a mere swelling of the earth not made by men's hands ”

“ But the mound whereunder the Markmen were laid was called Thiodolf's Howe for many generations of men, and many are the tales told of him; for men were loth to lose him and forget him: and in the latter days men deemed of him that he sits in that Howe not dead but sleeping, with Throng-plough laid before him on the board; and that when the sons of the Goths are at their sorest need and the falcons cease to sit on the ridge of the Great Roof of the Wolfings, he will wake and come forth from the Howe for their helping. ”

“ So now they took up the biers, and the Hall-Sun led them, and they went over the meadow before the throng of the kindreds, who followed them duly ordered, each House about its banner; and when they were come through the garth which the Romans had made to the Man's-door of the Hall, there were the women of the House freshly attired, who cast flowers on the living men of the host, and on the dead War-dukes, while they wept for pity of them. So went the freemen of the Houses into the Hall, following the Hall-Sun, and the bearers of the War-dukes ”