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Poetic Edda

Thought he would give,  and the ravens gladden,There is ever a wolf  where his ears I spy."
  A fifth spake:36.[1] "Less wise must be  the tree of battleThan to me would seem  the leader of men,If forth he lets  one brother fare,When he of the other  the slayer is."
  A sixth spake:37.[2] "Most foolish he seems  if he shall spare His foe, the bane of the folk;There Regin lies,  who hath wronged him so, Yet falsehood knows he not."
  A seventh spake:38.[3] "Let the head from the frost-cold  giant be hewed, And let him of rings be robbed;Then all the wealth  which Fafnir's was Shall belong to thee alone."
  Sigurth spake:39. "Not so rich a fate  shall Regin have

    Wolf, etc.: the phrase is nearly equivalent to "there must be fire where there is smoke." The proverb appears elsewhere in Old Norse.

  1. ↑ Tree of battle: warrior.
  2. ↑ Here, as in stanza 34, some editions turn the speech from the third person into the second.
  3. ↑ Giant: Regin was certainly not a frost-giant, and the whole stanza looks like some copyist's blundering reproduction of stanza 34.

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