Where the gold and the silk are framing the Swans of the Goths on the
sea,
And helms and shields of warriors, and Kings on the hazelled isle?
Why hast thou no more joyance on the damsels' glee to smile?
Why biddest thou not to the wild-wood with horse and hawk and hound?
Why biddest thou not to the heathland and the eagle-haunted ground
To meet thy noble brethren as they ride from the mountain-road?
Hast thou deemed the hall of the Niblungs a churlish poor abode?
Wouldst thou wend away from thy kindred, and scorn thy fosterer's
praise?
--Or is this the beginning of love and the first of the troublous
days?"

Then spake the fair-armed Gudrun: "Nay, nought I know of scorn
For the noble kin of the Niblungs, or the house where I was born;
No pain of love hath smit me, and no evil days begin,
And I shall be fain tomorrow of the deeds that the maidens win:
But if I wend the summer in dull unlovely seeming,
It comes of the night, O mother, and the tide of last night's
dreaming."

Then spake the ancient woman: "Thy dream to me shalt thou show;
Such oft foretell but the weather, and the airts whence the wind
shall blow."

Blood-red was waxen Gudrun, and she said: "But little it is:
Meseems I sat by the door of the hall of the Niblungs' bliss,
And from out of the north came a falcon, and a marvellous bird it was;
For his feathers were all of gold, and his eyes as the sunlit glass,
And hither and thither he flew about the kingdoms of Kings,
And the fear of men went with him, and the war-blast under his wings:
But I feared him never a deal, nay, hope came into my heart,
And meseemed in his war-bold ways I also had a part;
And my eyes still followed his wings as hither and thither he swept
O'er the doors and the dwellings of King-folk; till the heart within
me leapt,
For over the hall of the Niblungs he hung a little space,
Then stooped to my very knees, and cried out kind in my face:
And fain and full was my heart, and I took him to my breast,
And fair methought was the world and a home of infinite rest."
Her speech dropped dead as she spake, and her eyes from the nurse she
turned,
But now and again thereafter the flush in her fair cheek burned,
And her eyes were dreamy and great, as of one who looketh afar.

But the nurse laughed out and answer