O my Sigurd, what now shall give me back
One word of thy loving-kindness from the tangle and the wrack?
O Norns, fast bound from helping, O Gods that never weep,
Ye have left stark death to help us, and the semblance of our sleep!
Yet I sleep and remember Sigurd; and I wake and nought is there,
Save the golden bed of the Niblungs, and the hangings fashioned fair:
If I stretch out mine hand to take it, that sleep that the sword-edge
gives,
How then shall I come on Sigurd, when again my sorrow lives
In the dreams of the slumber of death? O nameless, measureless woe,
To abide on the earth without him, and alone from earth to go!"

So wailed the wife of Gunnar, as she fled through the summer night,
And unwitting around she wandered, till again in the dawning light
She stood by the Burg of the Niblungs, and the dwelling of her lord.

Awhile bode the white-armed Gudrun on the edge of the daisied sward,
Till she shrank from the lonely flowers and the chill, speech-burdened
wind.
Then she turned to the house of her fathers and her golden chamber
kind;
And for long by the side of Sigurd hath she lain in light-breathed
sleep,
While yet the winds of night-tide round the wandering Brynhild sweep.

_Gunnar talketh with Brynhild._

On the morrow awakeneth Gudrun; and she speaketh with Sigurd and saith:
"For what cause is Brynhild heavy, and as one who abideth but death?"

"Yea," Sigurd said, "is it so? as a great queen she goes upon earth,
And thoughtful of weighty matters, and things that are most of worth."

"It was other than this," said Gudrun, "that I deemed her yesterday;
All men would have said great trouble on the wife of Gunnar lay."

"Is it so?" said Sigurd the Volsung, "Ah, I sore misdoubt me then,
That thereof shall we hear great tidings that shall be for the ruin
of men."

"Why grieveth she so," said Gudrun, "a queen so mighty and wise,
The Chooser of the war-host, the desire of many eyes,
The Queen of the glorious Gunnar, the wife of the man she chose?
And she sits by his side on the high-seat, as the lily blooms by the
rose."

"Where then in the world was Brynhild," said he, "when she spake that
word,
And said that her beloved was her very earthly lord?"

Then was Sigurd silent a little, and Gudrun spake no more;
For despite the