forecourt
alone;
Then he fares to the kingly stables, nor knoweth he his own,
Nor backeth the cloudy Greyfell, but a steed of the Kings he bestrides
And forth through the gate of the Niblungs and into the night he rides:
--Yea he with no deed before him, and he in the raiment of peace;
And the moon in the mid-sky wadeth, and is come to her most increase.

In the deedless dark he rideth, and all things he remembers save one,
And nought else hath he care to remember of all the deeds he hath done:
He hasteneth not nor stayeth; he lets the dark die out
Ere he comes to the burg of Brynhild and rides it round about;
And he lets the sun rise upward ere he rideth thence away,
And wendeth he knoweth not whither, and he weareth down the day;
Till lo, a plain and a river, and a ridge at the mountains' feet
With a burg of people builded for the lords of God-home meet.
O'er the bridge of the river he rideth, and unto the burg-gate comes
In no lesser wise up-builded than the gate of the heavenly homes:
Himseems that the gate-wards know him, for they cry out each to each,
And as whispering winds in the mountains he hears their far-off speech.
So he comes to the gate's huge hollow, and amidst its twilight goes,
And his horse is glad and remembers, and that road of King-folk knows;
And the winds are astir in its arches with the sound of swords unseen,
And the cries of kings departed, and the battles that have been.

So into a garth of warriors from that dusk he rideth out
And no man stayeth nor hindereth; there he gazeth round about,
And seeth a glorious dwelling, a mighty far-famed place,
As the last of the evening sunlight shines fair on his weary face;
And there is a hall before him, and huge in the even it lies,
A mountain grey and awful with the Dwarf-folk's masteries:
And the houses of men cling round it, and low they seem and frail,
Though the wise and the deft have built them for a long-enduring tale:
There the wind sings loud in the wall-nook, and the spears are sparks
on the wall,
And the swords are flaming torches as the sun is hard on his fall:
He falls, and the even dusketh o'er that sword-renowned close,
But Sigurd bideth and broodeth for the Niblung house he knows,
And he hath a thought within him that he rideth forth from shame,
And that men have forgotten the greeting