But the thin veil of Christianity which he has flung over it fades away as we follow the hero-legend of our fathers; and the secret of their moral temper, of their conception of life breathes through every line.

Life was built with them not on the hope of a hereafter, but on the proud self-consciousness of noble souls.

"I have this folk ruled these fifty winters," sings the hero-king as he sits death-smitten beside the dragon's mound.

"Lives there no folk-king of kings about me--not any one of them--dare in the war-strife welcome my onset! Time's change and chances I have abided, held my own fairly, sought not to snare men; oath never sware I falsely against right.

So for all this may I glad be at heart now, sick though I sit here, wounded with death-wounds!" In men of such a temper, strong with the strength of manhood and full of the vigour and the love of life, the sense of its shortness and of the mystery of it all woke chords of a pathetic poetry.