Three days the Niblung warriors the ways of the mirk-wood rideTill they come to a land of cities and the peopled country-side,And the land's-folk run from their labour, and the merchants throng the streetAnd the lords of many a city the stranger kings would meet.But nought will the Niblungs tarry; swift through Atli's weal they wend,For their hearts are exceeding eager for their journey's latter end.Three days they ride that country, and many a city leave,But the fourth dawn mighty mountains by the inner sea upheave.Then they ride a little further, and Atli's burg they seeWith the feet of the mountains mingled above the flowery lea,And yet a little further, and lo, its long white wall,And its high-built guarded gateways, and its towers o'erhung and tall;And ever all along them the glittering spear-heads run,As the sparks of the white wood-ashes when the cooking-fire is done.Then they look to the right and the left hand, and see no folk astir,And no reek from the homestead chimneys; and no toil of men they hear:But the hook hangs lone in the vineyard, and the scythe is lone in the hay,The bucket thirsts by the well-side, the void cart cumbers the way.Then doubt on the war-host falleth, and they think: Well were we then,When once we rode in the Westland and saw the brown-faced menPeer through the hawthorn hedges as the Niblung host went by.Yet they laugh and make no semblance of any fear drawn nigh.Yea, Knefrud looked upon them, and with chilly voice he spake:"Now his guests doth Atli honour, and yet more will he do for your sake,Who hath hidden all his people, and holdeth his vassals at homeOn the day that the mighty Niblungs adown his highway come,Lest men fear as the finders of Gods, and tremble and cumber the ways,And the voice of the singers fail them to sing of the Niblungs' praise."Men laughed as his voice they hearkened, and none bade turn again,But the swords in the scabbards rattled as they rode with loosened rein.Now they ride in the Burg-gate's shadow from out the sunlit fields,Till the spears aloft are hidden and Atli's painted shields;And no captain cries from the rampart, nor soundeth any horn,And the doors of oak and iron are shut this merry morn:Then the Niblungs leap from the saddle, and the threats of earls arise,And the wrath of Kings' defenders is waxing in their eyes;But Knefrud looketh and laugheth, and he saith:"So is Atli fainOf the glory of the Niblungs and their honour's utmost gain:By no feet but yours this morning will he have his threshold trod,Nay, not by the world's most glorious, nay not by a wandering God."Then Hogni looked on Knefrud as the bodily death shall gazeOn the last of the Kings of men-folk in the last of the latter days,And he caught a staff from his saddle, a mighty axe of war,And stood most huge of all men in face of Atli's door,And upreared the axe against it with such wondrous strokes and great,That the iron-knitted marvel hung shattered in the gate:Through the rent poured the Niblung children, and in Atli's burg they stood;With none to bid them welcome, or ask them what they would.But Hogni turned upon Knefrud, and spake: "I said, time was,That we twain should ride out hither to bring a deed to pass:And now one more deed abideth, and then no more for thee,And another and another, and no more deeds for me."'Gainst the liar's eyes one moment flashed out the axe-head's sheen,And then was the face of Knefrud as though it ne'er had been,And his gay-clad corpse lay glittering on the causeway in the sun.No man cried out on Hogni or asked of the deed so done,But their shielded ranks they marshalled and through Atli's burg they strode:There they see the merchant's dwelling, the rich man's fair abode,The halls of doom, and the market, the loom and the smithying-booth,The stall for the wares of the outlands, the temples high and smooth:But all is hushed and empty, and no child of man they meetAs they thread the city's tangle, and enter street on street,And leave the last forgotten, and of the next know nought.So through the silent city by the Norns their feet are brought,Till lo, on a hill's uprising a huge house they behold,And a hall with gates all brazen, and roof of ruddy gold:Then they know the house of Atli, and they trow that sooth it isThat the Lord of such a dwelling may give his guest-folk bliss:Then they loosen the swords in their scabbards, and upraise a mighty shout,And the trumpet of the Niblungs through the lonely street rings outAnd stilleth the wind in the wall-nook: but hark, as its echoes die,How forth from that hall of the Eastlands comes the sound of minstrelsy,And the brazen doors swing open: but the Niblungs are at the door,And the bidden guests of Atli o'er the fateful threshold pour;There the music faileth before them, till its sound is over and done,And fair in the city behind them lies the flood of the morning sun:No man of the Niblungs murmureth, none biddeth turn abackAnd still their hands are empty, and sleep the edges of wrack.Huge, dim is the hall of Atli, and faint and far aloof,As stars in the misty even, yet hang the lamps in the roof,And but little daylight toucheth the walls and the hangings of gold:No King and no earl-folk's children do the bidden guests behold,Till they look aloft to the high-seat, and lo, a woman alone,A white queen crowned, and silent as the ancient shapen stoneThat men find in the dale deserted, as beneath the moon they wend,When they weary even to slumber, and the journey draws to an end.Chill then are the hearts of the warriors, for they know how they look on a queen,That Gudrun well-belovèd of the days that once have been;Then were men that murmured on Sigurd, and as in some dream of the nightThey looked, but the left hand failed them, and there came no help from the right.But forth stood the mighty Gunnar, and men heard his kingly voiceAs he spake: "O child of my father, I see thee again and rejoice,Though I wot not where I have wended, or where thou dwellest on earth,Or if this be the dead men's dwelling, or the hall of Atli's mirth!"She stirred not, nothing she answered: but forth stood Hogni the King,Clear, sharp, in the house of the stranger did the voice of the fearless ring:"O sister, O daughter of Giuki, O child of my mother's womb,By what death shall the Niblungs perish, what day is the day of their doom?"Forth then from the lips of Gudrun a dreadful voice was borne:"Ye shall die to-day, O brethren, at the hands of a King forsworn."As she spake the outer door-leaves clashed to with a mighty sound,And the outer air was troubled with a new noise gathering around:As of leaves in the midmost summer ere the dusk of the even warm.When the winds in the hillsides gathered go forth before the storm;Men abode, and a wicket opened on the feast-hall's inner sideAnd the Niblungs looked for the coming of King Atli in his pride:But one man entered only, and he thin and old and spare,A swordless man and a little—yet was King Atli there.He looked not once on the Niblungs, but forth to the high-seat went,And stood aloof from Gudrun with his eyes to the hall-floor bent:Thence came a voice from his lips, and men heard, for the hush was great.And the hearts of the bold were astonished 'neath the overhanging fate."Ye are come, O Kings of the Niblungs, ye are come, O slayers of men!But how great, and where is the ransom that shall buy your departure again?"Then spake the wise-heart Hogni: "Do the bidden guests so longTo depart to the night and the silence from the fire and the wine and the song?Fear not! the feast shall be merry, and here we abide in thine hall,Till thou and the great feast-master shall bid the best befall."There were cries of men in the city, there was clang and clatter of steel.And high cried the thin-voiced Atli, the lord of the Eastland weal:"Ye are come in your pride, O Niblungs; but this day of days is mine:Will ye die? will ye live and be little? Hear now the token and sign!"Great then grew the voices without, with one name was the city filled,Yea, all the world it might be, and all sounds of the earth were stilledWith that cry of the name of Atli: but Gunnar stood for a spaceTill the cry was something sunken, then he put back the helm from his faceAnd spread out his hands before him, and his hands were empty and bareAs he stood in the front of the Niblungs like a great God smiling and fair:"We shall live and never be little, we shall die and be masters of fame:I know not thy will, O Atli, nor what thou wouldst with thy name.""Ye shall know my will," said Atli, "ye shall do it, or do no moreThe deeds of the days of the living: ye shall render the garnered store,Ye shall give forth the Gold of Sigurd, the wealth of the uttermost strand.""To give a gift," cried Hogni, "we came to King Atli's land:Tomorn for a little season thou shalt be the richest foolOf all kings ever told of; and the rest let the high Gods rule.""O King of the East," said Gunnar, "great gifts for thee draw nigh,But the treasure of the Niblungs in their guarded house shall lie.""What then will ye do?" quoth Atli; "have ye seen the fish in the net?""Eve telleth of deeds," said Gunnar, "and it is but the morning as yet."Said Atli: "Yea, will ye die? are there no deeds left you to do?""We shall smite with the sword," said the Niblung, "and tomorn will we journey anew.""Craftsmaster Hogni," said Atli, "where then are the shifts of the wise?"Said Hogni: "To smite with the sword, and go glad from the country of lies.""So died the fool," said Atli, "as Hogni dieth today.""Smote the blind and the aimless," said Hogni, "and Baldur passed away."Said Atli: "Yet may ye live in the wholesome light of the sun,And your latter days be as plenteous as the deeds your hands have done.""Dost thou hearken, O sword," said Gunnar, "and yet thou liest in peace?When then wilt thou look on the daylight, that the words of the mocker may cease?""Thou, Hogni the wise," said Atli, "art thou weary of wisdom and lore,Wilt thou die with these fools of the sword, and be mocked mid the blind of the war?""Many things have I learned," said Hogni, "but today's task, easy it is;For men die every hour and they wage no master for this.—Get hence, thou evil King, thou liar and traitor of kings,Lest the edge of my sword be thy portion and not the ruddy rings!"Then Atli shrank from before him, and the eyes of his intent,And no more words he cast them, but forth from the hall he went,And again were the Niblung children alone in the hall of their foesWith the wan and silent woman: but without great clamour arose,And the clashing of steel against steel, and the crying of man unto man,And the wind of that summer morning through the Eastland banners ran:Then so loud o'er all was winded a mighty horn of fight,That unheard were the shouts of the Niblungs as Gunnar's sword leapt white.But Hogni turned to the great-one who the Niblung trumpet bore,And he took the mighty metal, and kissed the brass of war,And its shattering blast went forward, and beat back from the gable-wallAnd shook the ancient timbers, and the carven work of the hall:Then it was to the Niblung warriors as their very hearts they heardCry out, not glad nor sorry, nor hoping, nor afeard,But touched by the hand of Odin, smit with foretaste of the day,When the fire shall burn up fooling, and the veil shall fall away;When bare-faced, all unmingled, shall the evil stand in the light,And men's deeds shall be nothing doubtful, nor the foe that they shall smite.In the hall was the voice of the trumpet, but therein might it nowise abide,But over burg and lealand it spread full far and wide,And strong men quaked as they heard it in the guarded chamber of stone,And the lord of weaponed kinsfolk was as one that sitteth aloneIn a land by the foeman wasted, and no man to his neighbour spoke,But they thought on the death of Atli and the slaughter of the folk.
Three days the Niblung warriors the ways of the mirk-wood rideTill they come to a land of cities and the peopled country-side,And the land's-folk run from their labour, and the merchants throng the streetAnd the lords of many a city the stranger kings would meet.But nought will the Niblungs tarry; swift through Atli's weal they wend,For their hearts are exceeding eager for their journey's latter end.Three days they ride that country, and many a city leave,But the fourth dawn mighty mountains by the inner sea upheave.Then they ride a little further, and Atli's burg they seeWith the feet of the mountains mingled above the flowery lea,And yet a little further, and lo, its long white wall,And its high-built guarded gateways, and its towers o'erhung and tall;And ever all along them the glittering spear-heads run,As the sparks of the white wood-ashes when the cooking-fire is done.
Then they look to the right and the left hand, and see no folk astir,And no reek from the homestead chimneys; and no toil of men they hear:But the hook hangs lone in the vineyard, and the scythe is lone in the hay,The bucket thirsts by the well-side, the void cart cumbers the way.Then doubt on the war-host falleth, and they think: Well were we then,When once we rode in the Westland and saw the brown-faced menPeer through the hawthorn hedges as the Niblung host went by.Yet they laugh and make no semblance of any fear drawn nigh.Yea, Knefrud looked upon them, and with chilly voice he spake:
"Now his guests doth Atli honour, and yet more will he do for your sake,Who hath hidden all his people, and holdeth his vassals at homeOn the day that the mighty Niblungs adown his highway come,Lest men fear as the finders of Gods, and tremble and cumber the ways,And the voice of the singers fail them to sing of the Niblungs' praise."
Men laughed as his voice they hearkened, and none bade turn again,But the swords in the scabbards rattled as they rode with loosened rein.
Now they ride in the Burg-gate's shadow from out the sunlit fields,Till the spears aloft are hidden and Atli's painted shields;And no captain cries from the rampart, nor soundeth any horn,And the doors of oak and iron are shut this merry morn:Then the Niblungs leap from the saddle, and the threats of earls arise,And the wrath of Kings' defenders is waxing in their eyes;But Knefrud looketh and laugheth, and he saith:"So is Atli fainOf the glory of the Niblungs and their honour's utmost gain:By no feet but yours this morning will he have his threshold trod,Nay, not by the world's most glorious, nay not by a wandering God."
Then Hogni looked on Knefrud as the bodily death shall gazeOn the last of the Kings of men-folk in the last of the latter days,And he caught a staff from his saddle, a mighty axe of war,And stood most huge of all men in face of Atli's door,And upreared the axe against it with such wondrous strokes and great,That the iron-knitted marvel hung shattered in the gate:Through the rent poured the Niblung children, and in Atli's burg they stood;With none to bid them welcome, or ask them what they would.
But Hogni turned upon Knefrud, and spake: "I said, time was,That we twain should ride out hither to bring a deed to pass:And now one more deed abideth, and then no more for thee,And another and another, and no more deeds for me."
'Gainst the liar's eyes one moment flashed out the axe-head's sheen,And then was the face of Knefrud as though it ne'er had been,And his gay-clad corpse lay glittering on the causeway in the sun.
No man cried out on Hogni or asked of the deed so done,But their shielded ranks they marshalled and through Atli's burg they strode:There they see the merchant's dwelling, the rich man's fair abode,The halls of doom, and the market, the loom and the smithying-booth,The stall for the wares of the outlands, the temples high and smooth:But all is hushed and empty, and no child of man they meetAs they thread the city's tangle, and enter street on street,And leave the last forgotten, and of the next know nought.
So through the silent city by the Norns their feet are brought,Till lo, on a hill's uprising a huge house they behold,And a hall with gates all brazen, and roof of ruddy gold:Then they know the house of Atli, and they trow that sooth it isThat the Lord of such a dwelling may give his guest-folk bliss:Then they loosen the swords in their scabbards, and upraise a mighty shout,And the trumpet of the Niblungs through the lonely street rings outAnd stilleth the wind in the wall-nook: but hark, as its echoes die,How forth from that hall of the Eastlands comes the sound of minstrelsy,And the brazen doors swing open: but the Niblungs are at the door,And the bidden guests of Atli o'er the fateful threshold pour;There the music faileth before them, till its sound is over and done,And fair in the city behind them lies the flood of the morning sun:No man of the Niblungs murmureth, none biddeth turn abackAnd still their hands are empty, and sleep the edges of wrack.
Huge, dim is the hall of Atli, and faint and far aloof,As stars in the misty even, yet hang the lamps in the roof,And but little daylight toucheth the walls and the hangings of gold:No King and no earl-folk's children do the bidden guests behold,Till they look aloft to the high-seat, and lo, a woman alone,A white queen crowned, and silent as the ancient shapen stoneThat men find in the dale deserted, as beneath the moon they wend,When they weary even to slumber, and the journey draws to an end.Chill then are the hearts of the warriors, for they know how they look on a queen,That Gudrun well-belovèd of the days that once have been;Then were men that murmured on Sigurd, and as in some dream of the nightThey looked, but the left hand failed them, and there came no help from the right.
But forth stood the mighty Gunnar, and men heard his kingly voiceAs he spake: "O child of my father, I see thee again and rejoice,Though I wot not where I have wended, or where thou dwellest on earth,Or if this be the dead men's dwelling, or the hall of Atli's mirth!"
She stirred not, nothing she answered: but forth stood Hogni the King,Clear, sharp, in the house of the stranger did the voice of the fearless ring:"O sister, O daughter of Giuki, O child of my mother's womb,By what death shall the Niblungs perish, what day is the day of their doom?"
Forth then from the lips of Gudrun a dreadful voice was borne:"Ye shall die to-day, O brethren, at the hands of a King forsworn."
As she spake the outer door-leaves clashed to with a mighty sound,And the outer air was troubled with a new noise gathering around:As of leaves in the midmost summer ere the dusk of the even warm.When the winds in the hillsides gathered go forth before the storm;Men abode, and a wicket opened on the feast-hall's inner sideAnd the Niblungs looked for the coming of King Atli in his pride:But one man entered only, and he thin and old and spare,A swordless man and a little—yet was King Atli there.He looked not once on the Niblungs, but forth to the high-seat went,And stood aloof from Gudrun with his eyes to the hall-floor bent:Thence came a voice from his lips, and men heard, for the hush was great.And the hearts of the bold were astonished 'neath the overhanging fate.
"Ye are come, O Kings of the Niblungs, ye are come, O slayers of men!But how great, and where is the ransom that shall buy your departure again?"
Then spake the wise-heart Hogni: "Do the bidden guests so longTo depart to the night and the silence from the fire and the wine and the song?Fear not! the feast shall be merry, and here we abide in thine hall,Till thou and the great feast-master shall bid the best befall."
There were cries of men in the city, there was clang and clatter of steel.And high cried the thin-voiced Atli, the lord of the Eastland weal:"Ye are come in your pride, O Niblungs; but this day of days is mine:Will ye die? will ye live and be little? Hear now the token and sign!"
Great then grew the voices without, with one name was the city filled,Yea, all the world it might be, and all sounds of the earth were stilledWith that cry of the name of Atli: but Gunnar stood for a spaceTill the cry was something sunken, then he put back the helm from his faceAnd spread out his hands before him, and his hands were empty and bareAs he stood in the front of the Niblungs like a great God smiling and fair:
"We shall live and never be little, we shall die and be masters of fame:I know not thy will, O Atli, nor what thou wouldst with thy name."
"Ye shall know my will," said Atli, "ye shall do it, or do no moreThe deeds of the days of the living: ye shall render the garnered store,Ye shall give forth the Gold of Sigurd, the wealth of the uttermost strand."
"To give a gift," cried Hogni, "we came to King Atli's land:Tomorn for a little season thou shalt be the richest foolOf all kings ever told of; and the rest let the high Gods rule."
"O King of the East," said Gunnar, "great gifts for thee draw nigh,But the treasure of the Niblungs in their guarded house shall lie."
"What then will ye do?" quoth Atli; "have ye seen the fish in the net?"
"Eve telleth of deeds," said Gunnar, "and it is but the morning as yet."
Said Atli: "Yea, will ye die? are there no deeds left you to do?"
"We shall smite with the sword," said the Niblung, "and tomorn will we journey anew."
"Craftsmaster Hogni," said Atli, "where then are the shifts of the wise?"
Said Hogni: "To smite with the sword, and go glad from the country of lies."
"So died the fool," said Atli, "as Hogni dieth today."
"Smote the blind and the aimless," said Hogni, "and Baldur passed away."
Said Atli: "Yet may ye live in the wholesome light of the sun,And your latter days be as plenteous as the deeds your hands have done."
"Dost thou hearken, O sword," said Gunnar, "and yet thou liest in peace?When then wilt thou look on the daylight, that the words of the mocker may cease?"
"Thou, Hogni the wise," said Atli, "art thou weary of wisdom and lore,Wilt thou die with these fools of the sword, and be mocked mid the blind of the war?"
"Many things have I learned," said Hogni, "but today's task, easy it is;For men die every hour and they wage no master for this.—Get hence, thou evil King, thou liar and traitor of kings,Lest the edge of my sword be thy portion and not the ruddy rings!"
Then Atli shrank from before him, and the eyes of his intent,And no more words he cast them, but forth from the hall he went,And again were the Niblung children alone in the hall of their foesWith the wan and silent woman: but without great clamour arose,And the clashing of steel against steel, and the crying of man unto man,And the wind of that summer morning through the Eastland banners ran:Then so loud o'er all was winded a mighty horn of fight,That unheard were the shouts of the Niblungs as Gunnar's sword leapt white.But Hogni turned to the great-one who the Niblung trumpet bore,And he took the mighty metal, and kissed the brass of war,And its shattering blast went forward, and beat back from the gable-wallAnd shook the ancient timbers, and the carven work of the hall:Then it was to the Niblung warriors as their very hearts they heardCry out, not glad nor sorry, nor hoping, nor afeard,But touched by the hand of Odin, smit with foretaste of the day,When the fire shall burn up fooling, and the veil shall fall away;When bare-faced, all unmingled, shall the evil stand in the light,And men's deeds shall be nothing doubtful, nor the foe that they shall smite.In the hall was the voice of the trumpet, but therein might it nowise abide,But over burg and lealand it spread full far and wide,And strong men quaked as they heard it in the guarded chamber of stone,And the lord of weaponed kinsfolk was as one that sitteth aloneIn a land by the foeman wasted, and no man to his neighbour spoke,But they thought on the death of Atli and the slaughter of the folk.
Ye shall know that in Atli's feast-hall on the side that joined the houseWere many carven doorways whose work was gloriousWith marble stones and gold-work, and their doors of beaten brass:Lo now, in the merry morning how the story cometh to pass!—While the echoes of the trumpet yet fill the people's ears,And Hogni casts by the war-horn, and his Dwarf-wrought sword uprears,All those doors aforesaid open, and in pour the streams of steel,The best of the Eastland champions, the bold men of Atli's weal:They raise no cry of battle nor cast forth threat of woe,And their helmed and hidden faces from each other none may know:Then a light in the hall ariseth, and the fire of battle runsAll adown the front of the Niblungs in the face of the mighty-ones;All eyes are set upon them, hard drawn is every breath,Ere the foremost points be mingled and death be blent with death.—All eyes save the eyes of Hogni; but e'en as the edges meet,He turneth about for a moment to the gold of the kingly seat,Then aback to the front of battle; there then, as the lightning-flashThrough the dark night showeth the city when the clouds of heaven clash,And the gazer shrinketh backward, yet he seeth from end to endThe street and the merry market, and the windows of his friend,And the pavement where his footsteps yestre'en returning trod,Now white and changed and dreadful 'neath the threatening voice of God;So Hogni seeth Gudrun, and the face he used to know,Unspeakable, unchanging, with white unknitted brow,With half-closed lips untrembling, with deedless hands and coldLaid still on knees that stir not, and the linen's moveless fold.Turned Hogni unto the spear-wall, and smote from where he stood,And hewed with his sword two-handed as the axe-man in a wood:Before his sword was a champion and the edges clave to the chin,And the first man fell in the feast-hall of those that should fall therein,Then man with man was dealing, and the Niblung host of warWas swept by the leaping iron, as the rock anigh the shoreBy the ice-cold waves of winter: yet a moment Gunnar stayed,As high in his hand unbloodied he shook his awful blade;And he cried:"O Eastland champions, do ye behold it here,The sword of the ancient Giuki? Fall on and have no fear,But slay and be slain and be famous, if your master's will it be!Yet are we the blameless Niblungs, and bidden guests are we:So forbear, if ye wander hood-winked, nor for nothing slay and be slain;For I know not what to tell you of the dead that live again."So he saith in the midst of the foemen with his war-flame reared on high,But all about and around him goes up a bitter cryFrom the iron men of Atli, and the bickering of the steelSends a roar up to the roof-ridge, and the Niblung war-ranks reelBehind the steadfast Gunnar: but lo, have ye seen the corn,While yet men grind the sickle, by the wind-streak overborneWhen the sudden rain sweeps downward, and summer groweth black,And the smitten wood-side roareth 'neath the driving thunder-wrack?So before the wise-heart Hogni shrank the champions of the EastAs his great voice shook the timbers in the hall of Atli's feast.There he smote and beheld not the smitten, and by nought were his edges stopped;He smote and the dead were thrust from him; a hand with its shield he lopped;There met him Atli's marshal, and his arm at the shoulder he shred;Three swords were upreared against him of the best of the kin of the dead;And he struck off a head to the rightward, and his sword through a throat he thrust,But the third stroke fell on his helm-crest, and he stooped to the ruddy dust,And uprose as the ancient Giant, and both his hands were wet:Red then was the world to his eyen, as his hand to the labour he set;Swords shook and fell in his pathway, huge bodies leapt and fell,Harsh grided shield and war-helm like the tempest-smitten bell,And the war-cries ran together, and no man his brother knew,And the dead men loaded the living, as he went the war-wood through;And man 'gainst man was huddled, till no sword rose to smite.And clear stood the glorious Hogni in an island of the fight,And there ran a river of death 'twixt the Niblung and his foes,And therefrom the terror of men and the wrath of the Gods arose.Now fell the sword of Gunnar and rose up red in the air,And hearkened the song of the Niblung, as his voice rang glad and clear,And rejoiced and leapt at the Eastmen, and cried as it met the ringsOf a giant of King Atli, and a murder-wolf of kings;But it quenched its thirst in his entrails, and knew the heart in his breast,And hearkened the praise of Gunnar, and lingered not to rest,But fell upon Atli's brother and stayed not in his brain;Then he fell and the King leapt over, and clave a neck atwain,And leapt o'er the sweep of a pole-axe and thrust a lord in the throat,And King Atli's banner-bearer through shield and hauberk smote;Then he laughed on the huddled East-folk, and against their war-shields draveWhile the white swords tossed about him, and that archer's skull he claveWhom Atli had bought in the Southlands for many a pound of gold;And the dark-skinned fell upon Gunnar and over his war-shield rolledAnd cumbered his sword for a season, and the many blades fell on,And sheared the cloudy helm-crest and rents in his hauberk won,And the red blood ran from Gunnar; till that Giuki's sword outburst,As the fire-tongue from the smoulder that the leafy heap hath nursed,And unshielded smote King Gunnar, and sent the Niblung songThrough the quaking stems of battle in the hall of Atli's wrong:Then he rent the knitted war-hedge till by Hogni's side he stood,And kissed him amidst of the spear-hail, and their cheeks were wet with blood.Then on came the Niblung bucklers, and they drave the East-folk homeAs the bows of the oar-driven long-ship beat off the waves in foam:They leave their dead behind them, and they come to the doors and the wall,And a few last spears from the fleeing amidst their shield-hedge fall:But the doors clash to in their faces, as the fleeing rout they drive,And fain would follow after; and none is left aliveIn the feast-hall of King Atli, save those fishes of the net,And the white and silent woman above the slaughter set.Then biddeth the heart-wise Hogni, and men to the windows climb,And uplift the war-grey corpses, dead drift of the stormy time,And cast them adown to their people: thence they come aback and sayThat scarce shall ye see the houses, and no whit the wheel-worn wayFor the spears and shields of the Eastlands that the merchant city throng:And back to the Niblung burg-gate the way seemed weary-long.Yet passeth hour on hour, and the doors they watch and ward,But a long while hear no mail-clash, nor the ringing of the sword;Then droop the Niblung children, and their wounds are waxen chill,And they think of the Burg by the river, and the builded holy hill,And their eyes are set on Gudrun as of men who would beseech;But unlearned are they in craving and know not dastard's speech.Then doth Giuki's first-begotten a deed most fair to be told,For his fair harp Gunnar taketh, and the warp of silver and gold;With the hand of a cunning harper he dealeth with the strings,And his voice in their midst goeth upward, as of ancient days he sings,Of the days before the Niblungs, and the days that shall be yet;Till the hour of toil and smiting the warrior hearts forget,Nor hear the gathering foemen, nor the sound of swords aloof:Then clear the song of Gunnar goes up to the dusky roof;And the coming spear-host tarries, and the bearers of the woeThrough the cloisters of King Atli with lingering footsteps go.But Hogni looketh on Gudrun, and no change in her face he sees,And no stir in her folded linen and the deedless hands on her knees:Then from Gunnar's side he hasteneth; and lo, the open door,And a foeman treadeth the pavement, and his lips are on Atli's floor,For Hogni is death in the doorway: then the Niblungs turn on the foe,And the hosts are mingled together, and blow cries out on blow.Still the song goeth up from Gunnar, though his harp to earth be laid;But he fighteth exceeding wisely, and is many a warrior's aid,And he shieldeth and delivereth, and his eyes search through the hall,And woe is he for his fellows, as his battle-brethren fall;For the turmoil hideth little from that glorious folk-king's eyes,And o'er all he beholdeth Gudrun, and his soul is waxen wise,And he saith: We shall look on Sigurd, and Sigmund of old days,And see the boughs of the Branstock o'er the ancient Volsung's praise.Woe's me for the wrath of Hogni! From the door he giveth abackThat the Eastland slayers may enter to the murder and the wrack:Then he rageth and driveth the battle to the golden kingly seat,And the last of the foes he slayeth by Gudrun's very feet,That the red blood splasheth her raiment; and his own blood therewithalHe casteth aloft before her, and the drops on her white hands fall:But nought she seeth or heedeth, and again he turns to the fight,Nor heedeth stroke nor wounding so he a foe may smite:Then the battle opens before him, and the Niblungs draw to his side;As Death in the world first fashioned, through the feast-hall doth he stride.And so once more do the Niblungs sweep that murder-flood of menFrom the hall of toils and treason, and the doors swing to again.Then again is there peace for a little within the fateful fold;But the Niblungs look about them, and but few folk they beholdUpright on their feet for the battle: now they climb aloft no more.Nor cast the dead from the windows; but they raise a rampart of war,And its stones are the fallen East-folk, and no lowly wall is that.Therein was Gunnar the mighty: on the shields of men he sat,And the sons of his people hearkened, for his hand through the harp-strings ran,And he sang in the hall of his foeman of the Gods and the making of man,And how season was sundered from season in the days of the fashioning,And became the Summer and Autumn, and became the Winter and Spring;He sang of men's hunger and labour, and their love and their breeding of broil,And their hope that is fostered of famine, and their rest that is fashioned of toil:Fame then and the sword he sang of, and the hour of the hardy and wise,When the last of the living shall perish, and the first of the dead shall arise,And the torch shall be lit in the daylight, and God unto man shall pray,And the heart shall cry out for the hand in the fight of the uttermost day.So he sang, and beheld not Gudrun, save as long ago he sawHis sister, the little maiden of the face without a flaw:But wearily Hogni beheld her, and no change in her face there was,And long thereon gazed Hogni, and set his brows as the brass,Though the hands of the King were weary, and weak his knees were grown.And he felt as a man unholpen in a waste land wending alone.Now the noon was long passed over when again the rumour arose,And through the doors cast open flowed in the river of foes:They flooded the hall of the murder, and surged round that rampart of dead;No war-duke ran before them, no lord to the onset led,But the thralls shot spears at adventure, and shot out shafts from afar,Till the misty hall was blinded with the bitter drift of war:Few and faint were the Niblung children, and their wounds were waxen acold,And they saw the Hell-gates open as they stood in their grimly hold:Yet thrice stormed out King Hogni, thrice stormed out Gunnar the King,Thrice fell they aback yet living to the heart of the fated ring;And they looked and their band was little, and no man but was wounded sore,And the hall seemed growing greater, such hosts of foes it bore,So tossed the iron harvest from wall to gilded wall;And they looked and the white-clad Gudrun sat silent over all.Then the churls and thralls of the Eastland howled out as wolves accurst,But oft gaped the Niblungs voiceless, for they choked with anger and thirst;And the hall grew hot as a furnace, and men drank their flowing blood,Men laughed and gnawed on their shield-rims, men knew not where they stoodAnd saw not what was before them; as in the dark men smote,Men died heart-broken, unsmitten; men wept with the cry in the throat,Men lived on full of war-shafts, men cast their shields asideAnd caught the spears to their bosoms; men rushed with none beside,And fell unarmed on the foemen, and tore and slew in death:And still down rained the arrows as the rain across the heath;Still proud o'er all the turmoil stood the Kings of Giuki born,Nor knit were the brows of Gunnar, nor his song-speech overworn;But Hogni's mouth kept silence, and oft his heart went forthTo the long, long day of the darkness, and the end of worldly worth.Loud rose the roar of the East-folk, and the end was coming at last;Now the foremost locked their shield-rims and the hindmost over them cast,And nigher they drew and nigher, and their fear was fading away,For every man of the Niblungs on the shaft-strewn pavement lay,Save Gunnar the King and Hogni: still the glorious King up-boreThe cloudy shield of the Niblungs set full of shafts of war;But Hogni's hands had fainted, and his shield had sunk adown,So thick with the Eastland spearwood was that rampart of renown;And hacked and dull were the edges that had rent the wall of foes;Yet he stood upright by Gunnar before that shielded close,Nor looked on the foemen's faces as their wild eyes drew anear,And their faltering shield-rims clattered with the remnant of their fear;But he gazed on the Niblung woman, and the daughter of his folk,Who sat o'er all unchanging ere the war-cloud over them broke.Now nothing might men hearken in the house of Atli's weal,Save the feet slow tramping onward, and the rattling of the steel,And the song of the glorious Gunnar, that rang as clearly nowAs the speckled storm-cock singeth from the scant-leaved hawthorn-boughWhen the sun is dusking over and the March snow pelts the land.There stood the mighty Gunnar with sword and shield in hand,There stood the shieldless Hogni with set unangry eyes,And watched the wall of war-shields o'er the dead men's rampart rise,And the white blades flickering nigher, and the quavering points of war.Then the heavy air of the feast-hall was rent with a fearful roar,And the turmoil came and the tangle, as the wall together ran:But aloft yet towered the Niblungs, and man toppled over man,And leapt and struggled to tear them; as whiles amidst the seaThe doomed ship strives its utmost with mid-ocean's mastery,And the tall masts whip the cordage, while the welter whirls and leaps,And they rise and reel and waver, and sink amid the deeps:So before the little-hearted in King Atli's murder-hallDid the glorious sons of Giuki 'neath the shielded onrush fall:Sore wounded, bound and helpless, but living yet, they lieTill the afternoon and the even in the first of night shall die.
Ye shall know that in Atli's feast-hall on the side that joined the houseWere many carven doorways whose work was gloriousWith marble stones and gold-work, and their doors of beaten brass:Lo now, in the merry morning how the story cometh to pass!—While the echoes of the trumpet yet fill the people's ears,And Hogni casts by the war-horn, and his Dwarf-wrought sword uprears,All those doors aforesaid open, and in pour the streams of steel,The best of the Eastland champions, the bold men of Atli's weal:They raise no cry of battle nor cast forth threat of woe,And their helmed and hidden faces from each other none may know:Then a light in the hall ariseth, and the fire of battle runsAll adown the front of the Niblungs in the face of the mighty-ones;All eyes are set upon them, hard drawn is every breath,Ere the foremost points be mingled and death be blent with death.—All eyes save the eyes of Hogni; but e'en as the edges meet,He turneth about for a moment to the gold of the kingly seat,Then aback to the front of battle; there then, as the lightning-flashThrough the dark night showeth the city when the clouds of heaven clash,And the gazer shrinketh backward, yet he seeth from end to endThe street and the merry market, and the windows of his friend,And the pavement where his footsteps yestre'en returning trod,Now white and changed and dreadful 'neath the threatening voice of God;So Hogni seeth Gudrun, and the face he used to know,Unspeakable, unchanging, with white unknitted brow,With half-closed lips untrembling, with deedless hands and coldLaid still on knees that stir not, and the linen's moveless fold.
Turned Hogni unto the spear-wall, and smote from where he stood,And hewed with his sword two-handed as the axe-man in a wood:Before his sword was a champion and the edges clave to the chin,And the first man fell in the feast-hall of those that should fall therein,Then man with man was dealing, and the Niblung host of warWas swept by the leaping iron, as the rock anigh the shoreBy the ice-cold waves of winter: yet a moment Gunnar stayed,As high in his hand unbloodied he shook his awful blade;And he cried:"O Eastland champions, do ye behold it here,The sword of the ancient Giuki? Fall on and have no fear,But slay and be slain and be famous, if your master's will it be!Yet are we the blameless Niblungs, and bidden guests are we:So forbear, if ye wander hood-winked, nor for nothing slay and be slain;For I know not what to tell you of the dead that live again."
So he saith in the midst of the foemen with his war-flame reared on high,But all about and around him goes up a bitter cryFrom the iron men of Atli, and the bickering of the steelSends a roar up to the roof-ridge, and the Niblung war-ranks reelBehind the steadfast Gunnar: but lo, have ye seen the corn,While yet men grind the sickle, by the wind-streak overborneWhen the sudden rain sweeps downward, and summer groweth black,And the smitten wood-side roareth 'neath the driving thunder-wrack?So before the wise-heart Hogni shrank the champions of the EastAs his great voice shook the timbers in the hall of Atli's feast.There he smote and beheld not the smitten, and by nought were his edges stopped;He smote and the dead were thrust from him; a hand with its shield he lopped;There met him Atli's marshal, and his arm at the shoulder he shred;Three swords were upreared against him of the best of the kin of the dead;And he struck off a head to the rightward, and his sword through a throat he thrust,But the third stroke fell on his helm-crest, and he stooped to the ruddy dust,And uprose as the ancient Giant, and both his hands were wet:Red then was the world to his eyen, as his hand to the labour he set;Swords shook and fell in his pathway, huge bodies leapt and fell,Harsh grided shield and war-helm like the tempest-smitten bell,And the war-cries ran together, and no man his brother knew,And the dead men loaded the living, as he went the war-wood through;And man 'gainst man was huddled, till no sword rose to smite.And clear stood the glorious Hogni in an island of the fight,And there ran a river of death 'twixt the Niblung and his foes,And therefrom the terror of men and the wrath of the Gods arose.
Now fell the sword of Gunnar and rose up red in the air,And hearkened the song of the Niblung, as his voice rang glad and clear,And rejoiced and leapt at the Eastmen, and cried as it met the ringsOf a giant of King Atli, and a murder-wolf of kings;But it quenched its thirst in his entrails, and knew the heart in his breast,And hearkened the praise of Gunnar, and lingered not to rest,But fell upon Atli's brother and stayed not in his brain;Then he fell and the King leapt over, and clave a neck atwain,And leapt o'er the sweep of a pole-axe and thrust a lord in the throat,And King Atli's banner-bearer through shield and hauberk smote;Then he laughed on the huddled East-folk, and against their war-shields draveWhile the white swords tossed about him, and that archer's skull he claveWhom Atli had bought in the Southlands for many a pound of gold;And the dark-skinned fell upon Gunnar and over his war-shield rolledAnd cumbered his sword for a season, and the many blades fell on,And sheared the cloudy helm-crest and rents in his hauberk won,And the red blood ran from Gunnar; till that Giuki's sword outburst,As the fire-tongue from the smoulder that the leafy heap hath nursed,And unshielded smote King Gunnar, and sent the Niblung songThrough the quaking stems of battle in the hall of Atli's wrong:Then he rent the knitted war-hedge till by Hogni's side he stood,And kissed him amidst of the spear-hail, and their cheeks were wet with blood.
Then on came the Niblung bucklers, and they drave the East-folk homeAs the bows of the oar-driven long-ship beat off the waves in foam:They leave their dead behind them, and they come to the doors and the wall,And a few last spears from the fleeing amidst their shield-hedge fall:But the doors clash to in their faces, as the fleeing rout they drive,And fain would follow after; and none is left aliveIn the feast-hall of King Atli, save those fishes of the net,And the white and silent woman above the slaughter set.
Then biddeth the heart-wise Hogni, and men to the windows climb,And uplift the war-grey corpses, dead drift of the stormy time,And cast them adown to their people: thence they come aback and sayThat scarce shall ye see the houses, and no whit the wheel-worn wayFor the spears and shields of the Eastlands that the merchant city throng:And back to the Niblung burg-gate the way seemed weary-long.
Yet passeth hour on hour, and the doors they watch and ward,But a long while hear no mail-clash, nor the ringing of the sword;Then droop the Niblung children, and their wounds are waxen chill,And they think of the Burg by the river, and the builded holy hill,And their eyes are set on Gudrun as of men who would beseech;But unlearned are they in craving and know not dastard's speech.Then doth Giuki's first-begotten a deed most fair to be told,For his fair harp Gunnar taketh, and the warp of silver and gold;With the hand of a cunning harper he dealeth with the strings,And his voice in their midst goeth upward, as of ancient days he sings,Of the days before the Niblungs, and the days that shall be yet;Till the hour of toil and smiting the warrior hearts forget,Nor hear the gathering foemen, nor the sound of swords aloof:Then clear the song of Gunnar goes up to the dusky roof;And the coming spear-host tarries, and the bearers of the woeThrough the cloisters of King Atli with lingering footsteps go.
But Hogni looketh on Gudrun, and no change in her face he sees,And no stir in her folded linen and the deedless hands on her knees:Then from Gunnar's side he hasteneth; and lo, the open door,And a foeman treadeth the pavement, and his lips are on Atli's floor,For Hogni is death in the doorway: then the Niblungs turn on the foe,And the hosts are mingled together, and blow cries out on blow.
Still the song goeth up from Gunnar, though his harp to earth be laid;But he fighteth exceeding wisely, and is many a warrior's aid,And he shieldeth and delivereth, and his eyes search through the hall,And woe is he for his fellows, as his battle-brethren fall;For the turmoil hideth little from that glorious folk-king's eyes,And o'er all he beholdeth Gudrun, and his soul is waxen wise,And he saith: We shall look on Sigurd, and Sigmund of old days,And see the boughs of the Branstock o'er the ancient Volsung's praise.
Woe's me for the wrath of Hogni! From the door he giveth abackThat the Eastland slayers may enter to the murder and the wrack:Then he rageth and driveth the battle to the golden kingly seat,And the last of the foes he slayeth by Gudrun's very feet,That the red blood splasheth her raiment; and his own blood therewithalHe casteth aloft before her, and the drops on her white hands fall:But nought she seeth or heedeth, and again he turns to the fight,Nor heedeth stroke nor wounding so he a foe may smite:Then the battle opens before him, and the Niblungs draw to his side;As Death in the world first fashioned, through the feast-hall doth he stride.And so once more do the Niblungs sweep that murder-flood of menFrom the hall of toils and treason, and the doors swing to again.
Then again is there peace for a little within the fateful fold;But the Niblungs look about them, and but few folk they beholdUpright on their feet for the battle: now they climb aloft no more.Nor cast the dead from the windows; but they raise a rampart of war,And its stones are the fallen East-folk, and no lowly wall is that.
Therein was Gunnar the mighty: on the shields of men he sat,And the sons of his people hearkened, for his hand through the harp-strings ran,And he sang in the hall of his foeman of the Gods and the making of man,And how season was sundered from season in the days of the fashioning,And became the Summer and Autumn, and became the Winter and Spring;He sang of men's hunger and labour, and their love and their breeding of broil,And their hope that is fostered of famine, and their rest that is fashioned of toil:Fame then and the sword he sang of, and the hour of the hardy and wise,When the last of the living shall perish, and the first of the dead shall arise,And the torch shall be lit in the daylight, and God unto man shall pray,And the heart shall cry out for the hand in the fight of the uttermost day.
So he sang, and beheld not Gudrun, save as long ago he sawHis sister, the little maiden of the face without a flaw:But wearily Hogni beheld her, and no change in her face there was,And long thereon gazed Hogni, and set his brows as the brass,Though the hands of the King were weary, and weak his knees were grown.And he felt as a man unholpen in a waste land wending alone.
Now the noon was long passed over when again the rumour arose,And through the doors cast open flowed in the river of foes:They flooded the hall of the murder, and surged round that rampart of dead;No war-duke ran before them, no lord to the onset led,But the thralls shot spears at adventure, and shot out shafts from afar,Till the misty hall was blinded with the bitter drift of war:Few and faint were the Niblung children, and their wounds were waxen acold,And they saw the Hell-gates open as they stood in their grimly hold:
Yet thrice stormed out King Hogni, thrice stormed out Gunnar the King,Thrice fell they aback yet living to the heart of the fated ring;And they looked and their band was little, and no man but was wounded sore,And the hall seemed growing greater, such hosts of foes it bore,So tossed the iron harvest from wall to gilded wall;And they looked and the white-clad Gudrun sat silent over all.
Then the churls and thralls of the Eastland howled out as wolves accurst,But oft gaped the Niblungs voiceless, for they choked with anger and thirst;And the hall grew hot as a furnace, and men drank their flowing blood,Men laughed and gnawed on their shield-rims, men knew not where they stoodAnd saw not what was before them; as in the dark men smote,Men died heart-broken, unsmitten; men wept with the cry in the throat,Men lived on full of war-shafts, men cast their shields asideAnd caught the spears to their bosoms; men rushed with none beside,And fell unarmed on the foemen, and tore and slew in death:And still down rained the arrows as the rain across the heath;Still proud o'er all the turmoil stood the Kings of Giuki born,Nor knit were the brows of Gunnar, nor his song-speech overworn;But Hogni's mouth kept silence, and oft his heart went forthTo the long, long day of the darkness, and the end of worldly worth.
Loud rose the roar of the East-folk, and the end was coming at last;Now the foremost locked their shield-rims and the hindmost over them cast,And nigher they drew and nigher, and their fear was fading away,For every man of the Niblungs on the shaft-strewn pavement lay,Save Gunnar the King and Hogni: still the glorious King up-boreThe cloudy shield of the Niblungs set full of shafts of war;But Hogni's hands had fainted, and his shield had sunk adown,So thick with the Eastland spearwood was that rampart of renown;And hacked and dull were the edges that had rent the wall of foes;Yet he stood upright by Gunnar before that shielded close,Nor looked on the foemen's faces as their wild eyes drew anear,And their faltering shield-rims clattered with the remnant of their fear;But he gazed on the Niblung woman, and the daughter of his folk,Who sat o'er all unchanging ere the war-cloud over them broke.
Now nothing might men hearken in the house of Atli's weal,Save the feet slow tramping onward, and the rattling of the steel,And the song of the glorious Gunnar, that rang as clearly nowAs the speckled storm-cock singeth from the scant-leaved hawthorn-boughWhen the sun is dusking over and the March snow pelts the land.There stood the mighty Gunnar with sword and shield in hand,There stood the shieldless Hogni with set unangry eyes,And watched the wall of war-shields o'er the dead men's rampart rise,And the white blades flickering nigher, and the quavering points of war.Then the heavy air of the feast-hall was rent with a fearful roar,And the turmoil came and the tangle, as the wall together ran:But aloft yet towered the Niblungs, and man toppled over man,And leapt and struggled to tear them; as whiles amidst the seaThe doomed ship strives its utmost with mid-ocean's mastery,And the tall masts whip the cordage, while the welter whirls and leaps,And they rise and reel and waver, and sink amid the deeps:So before the little-hearted in King Atli's murder-hallDid the glorious sons of Giuki 'neath the shielded onrush fall:Sore wounded, bound and helpless, but living yet, they lieTill the afternoon and the even in the first of night shall die.
Lo now, 'tis an hour or twain, and a labour lightly wonBy the serving-men of Atli, and the Niblung blood is goneFrom the golden house of his greatness, and the Eastland dead no moreLie in great heaps together on Atli's mazy floor:Then they cast fair summer blossoms o'er the footprints of the dead,They wreathe round Atli's high-seat and the benches fair bespread,And they light the odorous torches, and the sun of the golden roof,Till the candles of King Atli hold dusky night aloof.So they toil and are heavy-hearted, nor know what next shall betide,As they look on the stranger-woman in the heart of Atli's pride.Now stand they aback for the trumpet and the merry minstrelsy,For they tremble before King Atli, and golden-clad is he,And his golden crown is heavy and he strides exceeding slow,With the wise and the mighty about him, through the house of the Niblungs' woe.There then by the Niblung woman on the throne he sat him down,And folk heard the gold gear tinkle and the rings of the Eastland crown:Folk looked on his rich adornment, on King Atli's pride they gazed,And the bright beams wearied their eyen, by the glory were they dazed;There the councillors kept silence and the warriors clad in steel,All men lowly, all men mighty, that had care of Atli's weal;Yea there in the hall were they waiting for the word to come from his lips,As they of the merchant-city behold the shield-hung shipsSweep slow through the windless haven with their gaping heads of gold,And they know not their nation and names, nor hath aught of their errand been told.But King Atli looketh before him, and is grown too great to rejoice,And he speaks and the world is troubled, though thin and scant be his voice:"Bring forth the fallen and conquered, bring forth the bounden thrall,That they who were once the Niblungs did once King Hogni call."So they brought him fettered and bound; and scarce on his feet he stood,But men stayed him up by the King; for the sword had drunk of his blood,And the might of his body had failed him, and yet so great was heThat the East-folk cowered before him and the might of his majesty.Then spake the all-great Atli: "Thou yielded thrall of war,I would hear thee tell of the Treasure, the Hoard of the kings of yore!"But words were grown heavy to Hogni, and scarce he spake with a smile:"Let the living seek their desire; for indeed thou shalt live for a while.""Wilt thou speak and live," said Atli, "nor pay for the blood thou hast spilt?"Said he: "Thou art waxen so mighty, thou mayst have the Gold when thou wilt."Said the King: "I will give thee thy life, and forgive thee measureless woe.""It was gathered for thee," said Hogni, "and fashioned long ago.""Speak, man o'ercome," quoth Atli: "Is life so little a thing?""Art thou mighty? put forth thine hand and gather the Gold!" said the King."Wilt thou tell of the Gold," said the East-King, "the desire of many eyes?""Yea, once on a day," said Hogni, "when the dead from the sea shall arise."Said he: "So great is my longing, that, O foe, I would have thee live,Yea, live and be great as aforetime, if this word thou yet wouldst give."Said the Niblung: "Thee shall I heed, or the longing of thy pride?I, who heeded Sigurd nothing, who thrust mine oath aside,When the years were young and goodly and the summer bore increase!Shall I crave my life of the greedy and pray for days of peace?I, who whetted the sword for Sigurd, and bared the blade in the morn,And smote ere the sun's uprising, and left my sister forlorn:'Yea I lied,' quoth the God-loved Singer, 'when the will of the Gods I told!'—Stretch forth thine hand, O Mighty, and take thy Treasure of Gold!"Then was Atli silent a little, for anger dulled his thought,And the heaped-up wealth of the Eastland seemed an idle thing and nought:He turned and looked upon Gudrun as one who was fain to beseech,But he saw her eyes that beheld not, and her lips that knew no speech,And fear shot across his anger, and guile with his wrath was blent,And he spake aloud to the war-lords:"O ye, shall the eve be spent,Nor behold the East rejoicing? what a mock for the Gods is this,That men ever care for the morrow, nor nurse their toil-won bliss!Lo now, this hour I speak in is the first of the seven-days' feast,And the spring of our exultation o'er the glory of the East:Draw nigh, O wise, O mighty, and gather words to praiseThe hope of the King accomplished in the harvest of his days:Bear forth this slave of the Niblungs to the pit and the chamber of death,That he hearken the council of night, and the rede that tomorrow saith,And think of the might of King Atli, and his hand that taketh his own,Though the hill-fox bark at his going, and his path with the bramble be grown."So they led the Niblung away from the light and the joy of the feast,In the chamber of death they cast him, and the pit of the Lord of the East:And thralls were the high King's warders; yet sons of the wise withalCame down to sit with Hogni in the doomed man's darkling hall;For they looked in his face and feared, lest Atli smite too nighThe kin of the Gods of Heaven, and more than a man's child die.But 'neath the golden roof-sun, at beginning of the night,Is the seven-days' feast of triumph in the hall of Atli dight;And his living Earls come thither in peaceful gold attire,And the cups on the East-King's tables shine out as a river of fire,And sweet is the song of the harp-strings, and the singers' honeyed words;While wide through all the city do wives bewail their lords,And curse the untimely hour and the day of the land forlorn,And the year that the Earth shall rue of, and children never born.But Atli spake to his thrall-folk, and they went, and were little afraidTo take the glorious Gunnar, and the King in shackles laid:They deemed they should live for ever, and eat and sleep as the swine,To them were the tales of the singers no token and no sign;For the blossom of the Niblungs they rolled amid the dust,That well-renownèd Gunnar 'neath Atli's chair they thrust;The feet of the Eastland liar on Gunnar's neck are set,And by Atli Gudrun sitteth, and nought she stirreth yet.Outbrake the glee of the dastards, and they that had not daredTo meet the swords of the Niblungs, no whit the God-folk feared:They forgat that the Norns were awake, and they praised the master of guileThe war-spent conquering Atli and the face without a smile;And the tumult of their triumph and the wordless mingled roarWent forth from that hall of the Eastlands and smote the heavenly floor.At last spake Atli the mighty: "Stand up, thou war-won thrall,Whom they that were once the Niblungs did once King Gunnar call!"From the dust they dragged up Gunnar, and set him on his feet,And the heart within him was living and the pride for a war-king meet;And his glory was nothing abated, and fair he seemed and young,As the first of the Cloudy Kings, fresh shoot from the sower sprung.But Atli looked upon him, and a smile smoothed out his browAs he said: "What thoughtest thou, Gunnar, when thou layst in the dust e'en now?"He said: "Of Valhall I thought, and the host of my fathers' land,And of Hogni that thou hast slaughtered, and my brother Sigurd's hand."Said Atli: "Think of thy life, and the days that shall be yet,And thyself, maybe, as aforetime, in the throne of thy father set.""O Eastland liar," said Gunnar, "no more will I live and rue."Said Atli: "The word I have spoken, thy word may yet make true.""I weary of speech," said the Niblung, "with those that are lesser than I.""Yet words of mine shalt thou hearken," said Atli, "or ever thou die.""So crieth the fool," said Gunnar, "on the God that his folly hath slain."Said Atli: "Forth shall my word, nor yet shall be gathered again.""Yet meeter were thy silence; for thy folk make ready to sing.""O Gunnar, I long for the Gold with the heart and the will of a king.""This were good to tell," said Gunnar, "to the Gods that fashioned the earth!""Make me glad with the Gold," said Atli, "live on in honour and worth!"With a dreadful voice cried Gunnar: "O fool, hast thou heard it toldWho won the Treasure aforetime and the ruddy rings of the Gold?It was Sigurd, child of the Volsungs, the best sprung forth from the best:He rode from the North and the mountains and became my summer-guest.My friend and my brother sworn: he rode the Wavering FireAnd won me the Queen of Glory and accomplished my desire;The praise of the world he was, the hope of the biders in wrong,The help of the lowly people, the hammer of the strong:Ah, oft in the world henceforward shall the tale be told of the deed,And I, e'en I, will tell it in the day of the Niblungs' Need:For I sat night-long in my armour, and when light was wide o'er the landI slaughtered Sigurd my brother, and looked on the work of mine hand.And now, O mighty Atli, I have seen the Niblungs' wreck,And the feet of the faint-heart dastard have trodden Gunnar's neck;And if all be little enough, and the Gods begrudge me rest,Let me see the heart of Hogni cut quick from his living breast,And laid, on the dish before me: and then shall I tell of the Gold,And become thy servant, Atli, and my life at thy pleasure hold.O goodly story of Gunnar, and the King of the broken trothIn the heavy Need of the Niblungs, and the Sorrow of Odin the Goth!"Grim then waxed Atli bemocked, yet he pondered a little while,For yet with his bitter anger strove the hope of his greedy guile,And as one who falleth a-dreaming he hearkened Gunnar's word,While his eyes beheld that Treasure, and the rings of the Ancient Hoard.But he spake low-voiced to his sword-carles, and they heard and understood,And departed swift from the feast-hall to do the work he would.To the chamber of death they gat them, to the pit they went adown,And saw the wise men sitting round the war-king of renown:Then they spake: "We are Atli's bondmen, and Atli's doom we bring:We shall carve the heart from thy body, and thou living yet, O King."Then Hogni laughed, for they feared him; and he said: "Speed ye the work!For fain would I look on the storehouse where such marvels used to lurk,And the forge of fond desires, and the nurse of life that fails.Take heed now! deeds are doing for the fashioners of tales."But they feared as they looked on the Niblung, and the wise men hearkened and spake,And bade them abide for a season, yea even for Atli's sake,For the night-slaying is as the murder; and they looked on each other and feared,For Atli's bitter whisper their very hearts had heard:Then they said: "The King makes merry, as a well the white wine springs,And the red wine runs as a river; and what are the hearts of kings,That men may know them naked from the hearts of bond and thrall?Nor go we empty-handed to King Atli in his hall."So the sword-carles spake to each other, and they looked and a man they saw,Who should hew the wood if he lived, and for thralls the water should draw,A thrall-born servant of servants, begetter of thralls on the earth:And they said: "If this one were away, scarce greater were waxen the dearthThat this morning hath wrought on the Eastland; for the years shall eke out his woe,And no day his toil shall lessen, and worse and worse shall he grow."They drew the steel new-whetted, on the thrall they laid the hand;For they said: "All hearts be fashioned as the heart of the King of the land."But the thrall was bewildered with anguish, and wept and bewailed him soreFor the loss of his life of labour, and the grief that long he bore.But wroth was the son of Giuki and he spake: "It is idle and vain,And two men for one shall perish, and the knife shall be whetted again.It is better to die than be sorry, and to hear the trembling cry,And to see the shame of the poor: O fools, must the lowly dieBecause kings strove with swords? I bid you to hasten the end,For my soul is sick with confusion, and fain on the way would I wend."But the life of the thrall is over, and his fearful heart they setOn a fair wide golden platter, and bear it ruddy wetTo the throne of the triumphing East-King; he looketh, and feareth withalLest the house should fail about him and the golden roof should fall:But Gunnar laughed beside him, and spake o'er the laden gold:"O heart of a feeble trembler, no heart of Hogni the bold!A gold dish bears thee quaking, yet indeed thou quakedst moreWhen the breast of the helpless dastard the burden of thee bore."The great hall was smitten silent and its mirth to fear was turned,For the wrath of the King was kindled, and the eyes of Atli burned,And he cried as they trembled before him: "Let me see the heart of my foe!Fear ye to mock King Atli till his head in the dust be alow!"Then the sword-carles flee before him, and are angry with their dread,For they fear the living East-King yet more than the Niblung dead:They come to the pit and the death-house, and the whetted steel they bear;They are pale before King Hogni; as winter-wolves they glareWhom the ravening hunger driveth, when the chapmen journey slow,And their horses faint in the moon-dusk, and stumble through the snow.But Hogni laughed before them, and he saith: "Now welcome again,Now welcome again, war-fellows! Was Atli hood-winked then?I looked that ye should be speedy; and, forsooth, ye needs must haste,Lest more lives than one this even for Atli's will ye waste."About him throng the sword-men, and they shout as the war-fain cryIn the heart of the bitter battle when their hour is come to die,And they cast themselves upon him, as on some wide-shielded manThat fierce in the storm of Odin upreareth edges wan.With the bound man swift is the steel: sore tremble the sons of the wise,And their hearts grow faint within them; yet no man hideth his eyesAs the edges deal with the mighty: nor dreadful is he now,For the mock from his mouth hath faded, and the threat hath failed from his brow,And his face is as great and Godlike as his fathers of old days,As fair as an image fashioned in remembrance of their praise:But fled is the spirit of Hogni, and every deed he did,The seed of the world it lieth, in the hand of Odin hid.On the gold is the heart of Hogni, and men bear it forth to the King,As he sits in the hall of his triumph mid the glee and the harp-playing:Lo, the heart of a son of Giuki! and Gunnar liveth yet,And the white unangry Gudrun by the Eastland King is set:Upriseth the soul of Atli, and his breast is swollen with pride,And he laughs in the face of Gunnar and the woman set by his side:Then he looks on his living earls, and they cast their cry to the roof,And it clangs o'er the woeful city and wails through the night aloof;All the world of man-folk hearkeneth, and hath little joy therein,Though the men of the East in glory high-tide with Atli win.But fair is the face of Gunnar as the token draweth anigh;And he saith: "O heart of Hogni, on the gold indeed dost thou lie,And as little as there thou quakest far less wert thou wont to quakeWhen thou lay'st in the breast of the mighty, and wert glad for his gladness' sake,And wert sorry with his sorrow; O mighty heart, farewell!Farewell for a little season, till thy latest deed I tell."Then was Gunnar silent a little, and the shout in the hall had died,And he spoke as a man awakening, and turned on Atli's pride."Thou all-rich King of the Eastlands, e'en such a man might I beThat I might utter a word, and the heart should be glad in thee,And I should live and be sorry; for I, I only am leftTo tell of the ransom of Odin, and the wealth from the toiler reft.Lo, once it lay in the water, hid, deep adown it lay,Till the Gods were grieved and lacking, and men saw it and the day:Let it lie in the water once more, let the Gods be rich and in peace!But I at least in the world from the words and the babble shall cease."So he spake and Atli beheld him, and before his eyes he shrank:Still deep of the cup of desire the mighty Atli drank,And to overcome seemed little if the Gold he might not have,And his hard heart craved for a while to hold the King for a slave,A bondman blind and guarded in his glorious house and great:But he thought of the overbold, and of kings who have dallied with fate,And died bemocked and smitten; and he deemed it worser than wellWhile the last of the sons of Giuki hangeth back from his journey to Hell:So he turneth away from the stranger, and beholdeth Gudrun his wife,Not glad nor sorry by seeming, no stirrer nor stayer of strife:Then he looked at his living earl-folk, and thought of his groves of war,And his realm and the kindred nations, and his measureless guarded store:And he thought: Shall Atli perish, shall his name be cast to the dead,Though the feeble folk go wailing? Then he cried aloud and said:"Why tarry ye, Sons of the Morning? the wain for the bondman is dight;And the folk that are waiting his body have need of no sunshine to smite.Go forth 'neath the stars and the night-wind; go forth by the cloud and the moon,And come back with the word in the dawning, that my house may be merry at noon!"Then the sword-folk rise round Gunnar, round the fettered and bound they throng,As men in the bitter battle round the God-kin over-strong;They bore him away to the doorway, and the winds were awake in the night,And the wood of the thorns of battle in the moon shone sharp and bright;But Gunnar looked to the heavens, and blessed the promise of rain,And the windy drift of the clouds, and the dew on the builded wain:And the sword-folk tarried a little, and the sons of the wise were there,And beheld his face o'er the war-helms, and the wavy night of his hair.Then they feared for the weal of Atli, and the Niblung's harp they brought,And they dealt with the thralls of the sword, and commanded and besought,Till men loosened the gyves of Gunnar, and laid the harp by his side,Then the yoke-beasts lowed in the forecourt and the wheels of the waggon cried,And the war-thorns clashed in the night, and the men went dark on their way,And the city was silent before them, on the roofs the white moon lay.Now they left the gate and the highway, and came to a lonely place,Where the sun all day had been shining on the desert's empty face;Then the moon ran forth from a cloud, the grey light shone and showedThe pit of King Atli's adders in the land without a road,Digged deep adown in the desert with shining walls and smoothFor the Serpents' habitation, and the folk that know not ruth.Therein they thrust King Gunnar, and he bare of his kingly weed,But they gave his harp to the Niblung, and his hands of the gyves they freed;They stood around in their war-gear to note what next should befallFor the comfort of King Atli, and the glee of the Eastland hall.Still hot was that close with the sun, and thronged with the coiling folk,And about the feet of Gunnar their hissing mouths awoke:But he heeded them not nor beheld them, and his hands in the harp-strings ran,As he sat him down in the midmost on a sun-scorched rock and wan:And he sighed as one who resteth on a flowery bank by the wayWhen the wind is in the blossoms at the even-tide of day:But his harp was murmuring low, and he mused: Am I come to the death,And I, who was Gunnar the Niblung? nay, nay, how I draw my breath,And love my life as the living! and so I ever shall do,Though wrack be loosed in the heavens and the world be fashioned anew.But the worms were beholding their prey, and they drew around and nigher,Smooth coil, and flickering tongue, and eyes as the gold in the fire;And he looked and beheld them and spake, nor stilled his harp meanwhile:"What will ye? O thralls of Atli, O images of guile?"Then, he rose at once to his feet, and smote the harp with his hand,And it rang as if with a cry in the dream of a lonely land;Then he fondled its wail as it faded, and orderly over the stringsWent the marvellous sound of its sweetness, like the march of Odin's kingsNew-risen for play in the morning when o'er meadows of God-home they wend,And hero playeth with hero, that their hands may be deft in the end.But the crests of the worms were uplifted, though coil on coil was stayed,And they moved but as dark-green rushes by the summer river swayed.Then uprose the Song of Gunnar, and sang o'er his crafty hands,And told of the World of Aforetime, unshapen, void of lands;Yet it wrought, for its memory bideth, and it died and abode its doom;It shaped, and the Upper-Heavens, and the hope came forth from its womb.Great then grew the voice of Gunnar, and his speech was sweet on the wild,And the moon on his harp was shining, and the hands of the Niblung child:"So perished the Gap of the Gaping, and the cold sea swayed and sang,And the wind came down on the waters, and the beaten rock-walls rang;Then the Sun from the south came shining, and the Starry Host stood round,And the wandering Moon of the heavens his habitation found;And they knew not why they were gathered, nor the deeds of their shaping they knew:But lo, Mid-Earth the Noble 'neath their might and their glory grew,And the grass spread over its face, and the Night and the Day were born,And it cried on the Death in the even, and it cried on the Life in the morn:Yet it waxed and waxed, and knew not, and it lived and had not learned;And where were the Framers that framed, and the Soul and the Might that had yearned?"On the Thrones are the Powers that fashioned, and they name the Night and the Day,And the tide of the Moon's increasing, and the tide of his waning away:And they name the years for the story; and the Lands they change and change,The great and the mean and the little, that this unto that may be strange:They met, and they fashioned dwellings, and the House of Glory they built;They met, and they fashioned the Dwarf-kind, and the Gold and the Gifts and the Guilt."There were twain, and they went upon earth, and were speechless unmighty and wan;They were hopeless, deathless, lifeless, and the Mighty named them Man:Then they gave them speech and power, and they gave them colour and breath;And deeds and the hope they gave them, and they gave them Life and Death;Yea, hope, as the hope of the Framers; yea, might, as the Fashioners had,Till they wrought, and rejoiced in their bodies, and saw their sons and were glad:And they changed their lives and departed, and came back as the leaves of the treesCome back and increase in the summer:—and I, I, I am of these;And I know of Them that have fashioned, and the deeds that have blossomed and grow;But nought of the Gods' repentance, or the Gods' undoing I know."Then falleth the speech of Gunnar, and his lips the word forget,But his crafty hands are busy, and the harp is murmuring yet.And the crests of the worms have fallen, and their flickering tongues are still,The Roller and the Coiler, and Greyback, lord of ill,Grave-groper and Death-swaddler, the Slumberer of the Heath,Gold-wallower, Venom-smiter, lie still, forgetting death,And loose are coils of Long-back; yea, all as soft are laidAs the kine in midmost summer about the elmy glade;—All save the Grey and Ancient, that holds his crest aloft,Light-wavering as the flame-tongue when the evening wind is soft:For he comes of the kin of the Serpent once wrought all wrong to nurse,The bond of earthly evil, the Midworld's ancient curse.But Gunnar looked and considered, and wise and wary he grew,And the dark of night was waning and chill in the dawning it grew;But his hands were strong and mighty and the fainting harp he woke,And cried in the deadly desert, and the song from his soul out-broke:"O Hearken, Kindreds and Nations, and all Kings of the plenteous earth.Heed, ye that shall come hereafter, and are far and far from the birth!I have dwelt in the world aforetime, and I called it the garden of God;I have stayed my heart with its sweetness, and fair on its freshness I trod;I have seen its tempest and wondered, I have cowered adown from its rain,And desired the brightening sunshine, and seen it and been fain;I have waked, time was, in its dawning; its noon and its even I wore;I have slept unafraid of its darkness, and the days have been many and more:I have dwelt with the deeds of the mighty; I have woven the web of the sword;I have borne up the guilt nor repented; I have sorrowed nor spoken the word;And I fought and was glad in the morning, and I sing in the night and the end:So let him stand forth, the Accuser, and do on the death-shoon to wend;For not here on the earth shall I hearken, nor on earth for the dooming shall stay,Nor stretch out mine hand for the pleading; for I see the spring of the dayRound the doors of the golden Valhall, and I see the mighty arise,And I hearken the voice of Odin, and his mouth on Gunnar cries,And he nameth the Son of Giuki, and cries on deeds long done,And the fathers of my fathers, and the sons of yore agone."O Odin, I see, and I hearken; but, lo thou, the bonds on my feet,And the walls of the wilderness round me, ere the light of thy land I meet!I crave and I weary, Allfather, and long and dark is the road;And the feet of the mighty are weakened, and the back is bent with the load."Then fainted the song of Gunnar, and the harp from his hand fell down,And he cried: "Ah, what hath betided? for cold the world hath grown,And cold is the heart within me, and my hand is heavy and strange;What voice is the voice I hearken in the chill and the dusk and the change?Where art thou, God of the war-fain? for this is the death indeed;And I unsworded, unshielded, in the Day of the Niblungs' Need!"He fell to the earth as he spake, and life left Gunnar the King,For his heart was chilled for ever by the sleepless serpent's sting,The grey Worm, Great and Ancient—and day in the East began,And the moon was low in the heavens, and the light clouds over him ran.
Lo now, 'tis an hour or twain, and a labour lightly wonBy the serving-men of Atli, and the Niblung blood is goneFrom the golden house of his greatness, and the Eastland dead no moreLie in great heaps together on Atli's mazy floor:Then they cast fair summer blossoms o'er the footprints of the dead,They wreathe round Atli's high-seat and the benches fair bespread,And they light the odorous torches, and the sun of the golden roof,Till the candles of King Atli hold dusky night aloof.
So they toil and are heavy-hearted, nor know what next shall betide,As they look on the stranger-woman in the heart of Atli's pride.
Now stand they aback for the trumpet and the merry minstrelsy,For they tremble before King Atli, and golden-clad is he,And his golden crown is heavy and he strides exceeding slow,With the wise and the mighty about him, through the house of the Niblungs' woe.There then by the Niblung woman on the throne he sat him down,And folk heard the gold gear tinkle and the rings of the Eastland crown:Folk looked on his rich adornment, on King Atli's pride they gazed,And the bright beams wearied their eyen, by the glory were they dazed;There the councillors kept silence and the warriors clad in steel,All men lowly, all men mighty, that had care of Atli's weal;Yea there in the hall were they waiting for the word to come from his lips,As they of the merchant-city behold the shield-hung shipsSweep slow through the windless haven with their gaping heads of gold,And they know not their nation and names, nor hath aught of their errand been told.
But King Atli looketh before him, and is grown too great to rejoice,And he speaks and the world is troubled, though thin and scant be his voice:
"Bring forth the fallen and conquered, bring forth the bounden thrall,That they who were once the Niblungs did once King Hogni call."
So they brought him fettered and bound; and scarce on his feet he stood,But men stayed him up by the King; for the sword had drunk of his blood,And the might of his body had failed him, and yet so great was heThat the East-folk cowered before him and the might of his majesty.
Then spake the all-great Atli: "Thou yielded thrall of war,I would hear thee tell of the Treasure, the Hoard of the kings of yore!"
But words were grown heavy to Hogni, and scarce he spake with a smile:"Let the living seek their desire; for indeed thou shalt live for a while."
"Wilt thou speak and live," said Atli, "nor pay for the blood thou hast spilt?"
Said he: "Thou art waxen so mighty, thou mayst have the Gold when thou wilt."
Said the King: "I will give thee thy life, and forgive thee measureless woe."
"It was gathered for thee," said Hogni, "and fashioned long ago."
"Speak, man o'ercome," quoth Atli: "Is life so little a thing?"
"Art thou mighty? put forth thine hand and gather the Gold!" said the King.
"Wilt thou tell of the Gold," said the East-King, "the desire of many eyes?"
"Yea, once on a day," said Hogni, "when the dead from the sea shall arise."
Said he: "So great is my longing, that, O foe, I would have thee live,Yea, live and be great as aforetime, if this word thou yet wouldst give."
Said the Niblung: "Thee shall I heed, or the longing of thy pride?I, who heeded Sigurd nothing, who thrust mine oath aside,When the years were young and goodly and the summer bore increase!Shall I crave my life of the greedy and pray for days of peace?I, who whetted the sword for Sigurd, and bared the blade in the morn,And smote ere the sun's uprising, and left my sister forlorn:'Yea I lied,' quoth the God-loved Singer, 'when the will of the Gods I told!'—Stretch forth thine hand, O Mighty, and take thy Treasure of Gold!"
Then was Atli silent a little, for anger dulled his thought,And the heaped-up wealth of the Eastland seemed an idle thing and nought:He turned and looked upon Gudrun as one who was fain to beseech,But he saw her eyes that beheld not, and her lips that knew no speech,And fear shot across his anger, and guile with his wrath was blent,And he spake aloud to the war-lords:"O ye, shall the eve be spent,Nor behold the East rejoicing? what a mock for the Gods is this,That men ever care for the morrow, nor nurse their toil-won bliss!Lo now, this hour I speak in is the first of the seven-days' feast,And the spring of our exultation o'er the glory of the East:Draw nigh, O wise, O mighty, and gather words to praiseThe hope of the King accomplished in the harvest of his days:Bear forth this slave of the Niblungs to the pit and the chamber of death,That he hearken the council of night, and the rede that tomorrow saith,And think of the might of King Atli, and his hand that taketh his own,Though the hill-fox bark at his going, and his path with the bramble be grown."
So they led the Niblung away from the light and the joy of the feast,In the chamber of death they cast him, and the pit of the Lord of the East:And thralls were the high King's warders; yet sons of the wise withalCame down to sit with Hogni in the doomed man's darkling hall;For they looked in his face and feared, lest Atli smite too nighThe kin of the Gods of Heaven, and more than a man's child die.
But 'neath the golden roof-sun, at beginning of the night,Is the seven-days' feast of triumph in the hall of Atli dight;And his living Earls come thither in peaceful gold attire,And the cups on the East-King's tables shine out as a river of fire,And sweet is the song of the harp-strings, and the singers' honeyed words;While wide through all the city do wives bewail their lords,And curse the untimely hour and the day of the land forlorn,And the year that the Earth shall rue of, and children never born.
But Atli spake to his thrall-folk, and they went, and were little afraidTo take the glorious Gunnar, and the King in shackles laid:They deemed they should live for ever, and eat and sleep as the swine,To them were the tales of the singers no token and no sign;For the blossom of the Niblungs they rolled amid the dust,That well-renownèd Gunnar 'neath Atli's chair they thrust;The feet of the Eastland liar on Gunnar's neck are set,And by Atli Gudrun sitteth, and nought she stirreth yet.
Outbrake the glee of the dastards, and they that had not daredTo meet the swords of the Niblungs, no whit the God-folk feared:They forgat that the Norns were awake, and they praised the master of guileThe war-spent conquering Atli and the face without a smile;And the tumult of their triumph and the wordless mingled roarWent forth from that hall of the Eastlands and smote the heavenly floor.
At last spake Atli the mighty: "Stand up, thou war-won thrall,Whom they that were once the Niblungs did once King Gunnar call!"
From the dust they dragged up Gunnar, and set him on his feet,And the heart within him was living and the pride for a war-king meet;And his glory was nothing abated, and fair he seemed and young,As the first of the Cloudy Kings, fresh shoot from the sower sprung.But Atli looked upon him, and a smile smoothed out his browAs he said: "What thoughtest thou, Gunnar, when thou layst in the dust e'en now?"
He said: "Of Valhall I thought, and the host of my fathers' land,And of Hogni that thou hast slaughtered, and my brother Sigurd's hand."
Said Atli: "Think of thy life, and the days that shall be yet,And thyself, maybe, as aforetime, in the throne of thy father set."
"O Eastland liar," said Gunnar, "no more will I live and rue."
Said Atli: "The word I have spoken, thy word may yet make true."
"I weary of speech," said the Niblung, "with those that are lesser than I."
"Yet words of mine shalt thou hearken," said Atli, "or ever thou die."
"So crieth the fool," said Gunnar, "on the God that his folly hath slain."
Said Atli: "Forth shall my word, nor yet shall be gathered again."
"Yet meeter were thy silence; for thy folk make ready to sing."
"O Gunnar, I long for the Gold with the heart and the will of a king."
"This were good to tell," said Gunnar, "to the Gods that fashioned the earth!"
"Make me glad with the Gold," said Atli, "live on in honour and worth!"
With a dreadful voice cried Gunnar: "O fool, hast thou heard it toldWho won the Treasure aforetime and the ruddy rings of the Gold?It was Sigurd, child of the Volsungs, the best sprung forth from the best:He rode from the North and the mountains and became my summer-guest.My friend and my brother sworn: he rode the Wavering FireAnd won me the Queen of Glory and accomplished my desire;The praise of the world he was, the hope of the biders in wrong,The help of the lowly people, the hammer of the strong:Ah, oft in the world henceforward shall the tale be told of the deed,And I, e'en I, will tell it in the day of the Niblungs' Need:For I sat night-long in my armour, and when light was wide o'er the landI slaughtered Sigurd my brother, and looked on the work of mine hand.And now, O mighty Atli, I have seen the Niblungs' wreck,And the feet of the faint-heart dastard have trodden Gunnar's neck;And if all be little enough, and the Gods begrudge me rest,Let me see the heart of Hogni cut quick from his living breast,And laid, on the dish before me: and then shall I tell of the Gold,And become thy servant, Atli, and my life at thy pleasure hold.O goodly story of Gunnar, and the King of the broken trothIn the heavy Need of the Niblungs, and the Sorrow of Odin the Goth!"
Grim then waxed Atli bemocked, yet he pondered a little while,For yet with his bitter anger strove the hope of his greedy guile,And as one who falleth a-dreaming he hearkened Gunnar's word,While his eyes beheld that Treasure, and the rings of the Ancient Hoard.
But he spake low-voiced to his sword-carles, and they heard and understood,And departed swift from the feast-hall to do the work he would.To the chamber of death they gat them, to the pit they went adown,And saw the wise men sitting round the war-king of renown:Then they spake: "We are Atli's bondmen, and Atli's doom we bring:We shall carve the heart from thy body, and thou living yet, O King."
Then Hogni laughed, for they feared him; and he said: "Speed ye the work!For fain would I look on the storehouse where such marvels used to lurk,And the forge of fond desires, and the nurse of life that fails.Take heed now! deeds are doing for the fashioners of tales."
But they feared as they looked on the Niblung, and the wise men hearkened and spake,And bade them abide for a season, yea even for Atli's sake,For the night-slaying is as the murder; and they looked on each other and feared,For Atli's bitter whisper their very hearts had heard:Then they said: "The King makes merry, as a well the white wine springs,And the red wine runs as a river; and what are the hearts of kings,That men may know them naked from the hearts of bond and thrall?Nor go we empty-handed to King Atli in his hall."
So the sword-carles spake to each other, and they looked and a man they saw,Who should hew the wood if he lived, and for thralls the water should draw,A thrall-born servant of servants, begetter of thralls on the earth:And they said: "If this one were away, scarce greater were waxen the dearthThat this morning hath wrought on the Eastland; for the years shall eke out his woe,And no day his toil shall lessen, and worse and worse shall he grow."
They drew the steel new-whetted, on the thrall they laid the hand;For they said: "All hearts be fashioned as the heart of the King of the land."But the thrall was bewildered with anguish, and wept and bewailed him soreFor the loss of his life of labour, and the grief that long he bore.
But wroth was the son of Giuki and he spake: "It is idle and vain,And two men for one shall perish, and the knife shall be whetted again.It is better to die than be sorry, and to hear the trembling cry,And to see the shame of the poor: O fools, must the lowly dieBecause kings strove with swords? I bid you to hasten the end,For my soul is sick with confusion, and fain on the way would I wend."
But the life of the thrall is over, and his fearful heart they setOn a fair wide golden platter, and bear it ruddy wetTo the throne of the triumphing East-King; he looketh, and feareth withalLest the house should fail about him and the golden roof should fall:But Gunnar laughed beside him, and spake o'er the laden gold:
"O heart of a feeble trembler, no heart of Hogni the bold!A gold dish bears thee quaking, yet indeed thou quakedst moreWhen the breast of the helpless dastard the burden of thee bore."
The great hall was smitten silent and its mirth to fear was turned,For the wrath of the King was kindled, and the eyes of Atli burned,And he cried as they trembled before him: "Let me see the heart of my foe!Fear ye to mock King Atli till his head in the dust be alow!"
Then the sword-carles flee before him, and are angry with their dread,For they fear the living East-King yet more than the Niblung dead:They come to the pit and the death-house, and the whetted steel they bear;They are pale before King Hogni; as winter-wolves they glareWhom the ravening hunger driveth, when the chapmen journey slow,And their horses faint in the moon-dusk, and stumble through the snow.
But Hogni laughed before them, and he saith: "Now welcome again,Now welcome again, war-fellows! Was Atli hood-winked then?I looked that ye should be speedy; and, forsooth, ye needs must haste,Lest more lives than one this even for Atli's will ye waste."
About him throng the sword-men, and they shout as the war-fain cryIn the heart of the bitter battle when their hour is come to die,And they cast themselves upon him, as on some wide-shielded manThat fierce in the storm of Odin upreareth edges wan.
With the bound man swift is the steel: sore tremble the sons of the wise,And their hearts grow faint within them; yet no man hideth his eyesAs the edges deal with the mighty: nor dreadful is he now,For the mock from his mouth hath faded, and the threat hath failed from his brow,And his face is as great and Godlike as his fathers of old days,As fair as an image fashioned in remembrance of their praise:But fled is the spirit of Hogni, and every deed he did,The seed of the world it lieth, in the hand of Odin hid.
On the gold is the heart of Hogni, and men bear it forth to the King,As he sits in the hall of his triumph mid the glee and the harp-playing:Lo, the heart of a son of Giuki! and Gunnar liveth yet,And the white unangry Gudrun by the Eastland King is set:Upriseth the soul of Atli, and his breast is swollen with pride,And he laughs in the face of Gunnar and the woman set by his side:Then he looks on his living earls, and they cast their cry to the roof,And it clangs o'er the woeful city and wails through the night aloof;All the world of man-folk hearkeneth, and hath little joy therein,Though the men of the East in glory high-tide with Atli win.
But fair is the face of Gunnar as the token draweth anigh;And he saith: "O heart of Hogni, on the gold indeed dost thou lie,And as little as there thou quakest far less wert thou wont to quakeWhen thou lay'st in the breast of the mighty, and wert glad for his gladness' sake,And wert sorry with his sorrow; O mighty heart, farewell!Farewell for a little season, till thy latest deed I tell."
Then was Gunnar silent a little, and the shout in the hall had died,And he spoke as a man awakening, and turned on Atli's pride."Thou all-rich King of the Eastlands, e'en such a man might I beThat I might utter a word, and the heart should be glad in thee,And I should live and be sorry; for I, I only am leftTo tell of the ransom of Odin, and the wealth from the toiler reft.Lo, once it lay in the water, hid, deep adown it lay,Till the Gods were grieved and lacking, and men saw it and the day:Let it lie in the water once more, let the Gods be rich and in peace!But I at least in the world from the words and the babble shall cease."
So he spake and Atli beheld him, and before his eyes he shrank:Still deep of the cup of desire the mighty Atli drank,And to overcome seemed little if the Gold he might not have,And his hard heart craved for a while to hold the King for a slave,A bondman blind and guarded in his glorious house and great:But he thought of the overbold, and of kings who have dallied with fate,And died bemocked and smitten; and he deemed it worser than wellWhile the last of the sons of Giuki hangeth back from his journey to Hell:So he turneth away from the stranger, and beholdeth Gudrun his wife,Not glad nor sorry by seeming, no stirrer nor stayer of strife:Then he looked at his living earl-folk, and thought of his groves of war,And his realm and the kindred nations, and his measureless guarded store:And he thought: Shall Atli perish, shall his name be cast to the dead,Though the feeble folk go wailing? Then he cried aloud and said:
"Why tarry ye, Sons of the Morning? the wain for the bondman is dight;And the folk that are waiting his body have need of no sunshine to smite.Go forth 'neath the stars and the night-wind; go forth by the cloud and the moon,And come back with the word in the dawning, that my house may be merry at noon!"
Then the sword-folk rise round Gunnar, round the fettered and bound they throng,As men in the bitter battle round the God-kin over-strong;They bore him away to the doorway, and the winds were awake in the night,And the wood of the thorns of battle in the moon shone sharp and bright;But Gunnar looked to the heavens, and blessed the promise of rain,And the windy drift of the clouds, and the dew on the builded wain:And the sword-folk tarried a little, and the sons of the wise were there,And beheld his face o'er the war-helms, and the wavy night of his hair.Then they feared for the weal of Atli, and the Niblung's harp they brought,And they dealt with the thralls of the sword, and commanded and besought,Till men loosened the gyves of Gunnar, and laid the harp by his side,Then the yoke-beasts lowed in the forecourt and the wheels of the waggon cried,And the war-thorns clashed in the night, and the men went dark on their way,And the city was silent before them, on the roofs the white moon lay.
Now they left the gate and the highway, and came to a lonely place,Where the sun all day had been shining on the desert's empty face;Then the moon ran forth from a cloud, the grey light shone and showedThe pit of King Atli's adders in the land without a road,Digged deep adown in the desert with shining walls and smoothFor the Serpents' habitation, and the folk that know not ruth.Therein they thrust King Gunnar, and he bare of his kingly weed,But they gave his harp to the Niblung, and his hands of the gyves they freed;They stood around in their war-gear to note what next should befallFor the comfort of King Atli, and the glee of the Eastland hall.
Still hot was that close with the sun, and thronged with the coiling folk,And about the feet of Gunnar their hissing mouths awoke:But he heeded them not nor beheld them, and his hands in the harp-strings ran,As he sat him down in the midmost on a sun-scorched rock and wan:And he sighed as one who resteth on a flowery bank by the wayWhen the wind is in the blossoms at the even-tide of day:But his harp was murmuring low, and he mused: Am I come to the death,And I, who was Gunnar the Niblung? nay, nay, how I draw my breath,And love my life as the living! and so I ever shall do,Though wrack be loosed in the heavens and the world be fashioned anew.
But the worms were beholding their prey, and they drew around and nigher,Smooth coil, and flickering tongue, and eyes as the gold in the fire;And he looked and beheld them and spake, nor stilled his harp meanwhile:"What will ye? O thralls of Atli, O images of guile?"
Then, he rose at once to his feet, and smote the harp with his hand,And it rang as if with a cry in the dream of a lonely land;Then he fondled its wail as it faded, and orderly over the stringsWent the marvellous sound of its sweetness, like the march of Odin's kingsNew-risen for play in the morning when o'er meadows of God-home they wend,And hero playeth with hero, that their hands may be deft in the end.But the crests of the worms were uplifted, though coil on coil was stayed,And they moved but as dark-green rushes by the summer river swayed.
Then uprose the Song of Gunnar, and sang o'er his crafty hands,And told of the World of Aforetime, unshapen, void of lands;Yet it wrought, for its memory bideth, and it died and abode its doom;It shaped, and the Upper-Heavens, and the hope came forth from its womb.Great then grew the voice of Gunnar, and his speech was sweet on the wild,And the moon on his harp was shining, and the hands of the Niblung child:
"So perished the Gap of the Gaping, and the cold sea swayed and sang,And the wind came down on the waters, and the beaten rock-walls rang;Then the Sun from the south came shining, and the Starry Host stood round,And the wandering Moon of the heavens his habitation found;And they knew not why they were gathered, nor the deeds of their shaping they knew:But lo, Mid-Earth the Noble 'neath their might and their glory grew,And the grass spread over its face, and the Night and the Day were born,And it cried on the Death in the even, and it cried on the Life in the morn:Yet it waxed and waxed, and knew not, and it lived and had not learned;And where were the Framers that framed, and the Soul and the Might that had yearned?
"On the Thrones are the Powers that fashioned, and they name the Night and the Day,And the tide of the Moon's increasing, and the tide of his waning away:And they name the years for the story; and the Lands they change and change,The great and the mean and the little, that this unto that may be strange:They met, and they fashioned dwellings, and the House of Glory they built;They met, and they fashioned the Dwarf-kind, and the Gold and the Gifts and the Guilt.
"There were twain, and they went upon earth, and were speechless unmighty and wan;They were hopeless, deathless, lifeless, and the Mighty named them Man:Then they gave them speech and power, and they gave them colour and breath;And deeds and the hope they gave them, and they gave them Life and Death;Yea, hope, as the hope of the Framers; yea, might, as the Fashioners had,Till they wrought, and rejoiced in their bodies, and saw their sons and were glad:And they changed their lives and departed, and came back as the leaves of the treesCome back and increase in the summer:—and I, I, I am of these;And I know of Them that have fashioned, and the deeds that have blossomed and grow;But nought of the Gods' repentance, or the Gods' undoing I know."
Then falleth the speech of Gunnar, and his lips the word forget,But his crafty hands are busy, and the harp is murmuring yet.
And the crests of the worms have fallen, and their flickering tongues are still,The Roller and the Coiler, and Greyback, lord of ill,Grave-groper and Death-swaddler, the Slumberer of the Heath,Gold-wallower, Venom-smiter, lie still, forgetting death,And loose are coils of Long-back; yea, all as soft are laidAs the kine in midmost summer about the elmy glade;—All save the Grey and Ancient, that holds his crest aloft,Light-wavering as the flame-tongue when the evening wind is soft:For he comes of the kin of the Serpent once wrought all wrong to nurse,The bond of earthly evil, the Midworld's ancient curse.
But Gunnar looked and considered, and wise and wary he grew,And the dark of night was waning and chill in the dawning it grew;But his hands were strong and mighty and the fainting harp he woke,And cried in the deadly desert, and the song from his soul out-broke:
"O Hearken, Kindreds and Nations, and all Kings of the plenteous earth.Heed, ye that shall come hereafter, and are far and far from the birth!I have dwelt in the world aforetime, and I called it the garden of God;I have stayed my heart with its sweetness, and fair on its freshness I trod;I have seen its tempest and wondered, I have cowered adown from its rain,And desired the brightening sunshine, and seen it and been fain;I have waked, time was, in its dawning; its noon and its even I wore;I have slept unafraid of its darkness, and the days have been many and more:I have dwelt with the deeds of the mighty; I have woven the web of the sword;I have borne up the guilt nor repented; I have sorrowed nor spoken the word;And I fought and was glad in the morning, and I sing in the night and the end:So let him stand forth, the Accuser, and do on the death-shoon to wend;For not here on the earth shall I hearken, nor on earth for the dooming shall stay,Nor stretch out mine hand for the pleading; for I see the spring of the dayRound the doors of the golden Valhall, and I see the mighty arise,And I hearken the voice of Odin, and his mouth on Gunnar cries,And he nameth the Son of Giuki, and cries on deeds long done,And the fathers of my fathers, and the sons of yore agone.
"O Odin, I see, and I hearken; but, lo thou, the bonds on my feet,And the walls of the wilderness round me, ere the light of thy land I meet!I crave and I weary, Allfather, and long and dark is the road;And the feet of the mighty are weakened, and the back is bent with the load."
Then fainted the song of Gunnar, and the harp from his hand fell down,And he cried: "Ah, what hath betided? for cold the world hath grown,And cold is the heart within me, and my hand is heavy and strange;What voice is the voice I hearken in the chill and the dusk and the change?Where art thou, God of the war-fain? for this is the death indeed;And I unsworded, unshielded, in the Day of the Niblungs' Need!"
He fell to the earth as he spake, and life left Gunnar the King,For his heart was chilled for ever by the sleepless serpent's sting,The grey Worm, Great and Ancient—and day in the East began,And the moon was low in the heavens, and the light clouds over him ran.