To survive for easy death, long deferred, perhaps, I should have my empty dish and bed of care at once.

Lacking the battle death, I could at least mimic it, as they did of old, that Odin's choosers of the slain might lead me to Valhalla.

There should I forever fight at dawn and be healed at noon, if wounded, to be ready for the feast and song.

The world was not big enough for us two if we must stay apart.

Life was not to be lived in a beggarly and ignoble compromise.