The Story of Sigurd the Volsung (excerpt)

But therewith the sun rose upward and lightened all the earth,
    And the light flashed up to the heavens from the rims of the glorious girth;
    But they twain arose together, and with both her palms outspread,
    And bathed in the light returning, she cried aloud and said:
    "All hail, O Day and thy Sons, and thy kin of the coloured things!
    Hail, following Night, and thy Daughter that leadeth thy wavering wings!
    Look down With unangry eyes on us today alive,
    And give us the hearts victorious, and the gain for which we strive!
    All hail, ye Lords of God-home, and ye Queens of the House of Gold!
  Hail, thou dear Earth that bearest, and thou Wealth of field and fold!
  Give us, your noble children, the glory of wisdom and speech,
  And the hearts and the hands of healing, and the mouths and hands that teach!"

  Then they turned and were knit together; and oft and o'er again
  They craved, and kissed rejoicing, and their hearts were full and fain.
  Then Sigurd looketh upon her, and the words from his heart arise:
  "Thou art the fairest of earth, and the wisest of the wise;
  O who art thou that lovest? I am Sigurd, e'en as I told;
  I have slain the Foe of the Gods, and gotten the Ancient Gold;
  And great were the gain of thy love, and the gift of mine earthly days,
  If we twain should never sunder as we wend on the changing ways.
  O who art thou that lovest, thou fairest of all things born?
  And what meanest thy sleep and thy slumber in the wilderness forlorn?"

  She said: "I am one that loveth: I was born of the earthly folk,
  But of old Allfather took me from the Kings and their wedding yoke:
  And he called me the Victory-Wafter, and I went and came as he would,
  And I chose the slain for his war-host, and the days were glorious and good,
  Till the thoughts of my heart overcame me, and the pride of my wisdom and speech,
  And I scorned the earth-folk's Framer and the Lord of the world I must teach:
  For the death-doomed I caught from the sword, and the fated life I slew,
  And I deemed that my deeds were goodly, and that long I should do and undo.
  But Allfather came against me and the God in his wrath arose;
  And he cried: `Thou hast thought in thy folly that the Gods have friends and foes,
  That they wake, and the world wends onward, that they sleep, and the world slips back,
  That they laugh, and the world's weal waxeth, that they frown and fashion the the wrack:
  Thou hast cast up the curse against me; it shall fall aback on thine head;
  Go back to the sons of repentance, with the children of sorrow wed!
  For the Gods are great unholpen, and their grief is seldom seen,
  And the wrong that they will and must be is soon as it had not been.'

  "Yet I thought: `Shall I wed in the world,shall I gather grief on the earth?
  Then the fearless heart shall I wed, and bring the best to birth,
  And fashion such tales for the telling, that Earth shall be holpen at least,
  If the Gods think scorn of its fairness, as they sit at the changeless feast.'
  "Then somewhat smiled Allfather; and he spake: 'So let it be!
  The doom thereof abideth; the doom of me and thee.
  Yet long shall the time pass over ere thy waking day be born:
  Fare forth, and forget and be weary 'neath the Sting of the Sleepful Thorn!'

  'So I came to the head of Hindfell and the ruddy shields and white,
  And the wall of the wildfire wavering around the isle of night;
  And there the Sleep-thorn pierced me, and the slumber on me fell,
  And the night of nameless sorrows that hath no tale to tell.
  Now I am she that loveth; and the day is nigh at hand
  When I, who have ridden the sea-realm and the regions of the land,
  And dwelt in the measureless mountains and the forge of stormy days,
  Shall dwell in the house of my fathers and the land of the people's praise;
  And there shall hand meet hand, and heart by heart shall beat,
  And the lying-down shall be joyous, and the morn's uprising sweet.
  Lo now, I look on thine heart and behold of thine inmost will,
  That thou of the days wouldst hearken that our portion shall fulfil;
  But O, be wise of man-folk, and the hope of thine heart refrain!
  As oft in the battle's beginning ye vex the steed with the rein,
    Lest at last in the latter ending, when the sword hath hushed the horn,
  His limbs should be weary and fail, and his might be over-worn.
  O be wise, lest thy love constrain me, and my vision wax o'er-clear,
  And thou ask of the thing that thou shouldst not, and the thing that thou wouldst not hear.

  Know thou, most mighty of men, that the Norns shall order all,