urt the world's delight to bear,
And my brethren shook the world-ways as they rode to Brynhild's bower,
--An ill day--an evil woman--a most untimely hour!"

But she wailed: "The seat is empty, and empty is the bed,
And earth is hushed henceforward of the words my speech-friend said!
Lo, the deeds of the sons of Giuki, and my brethren of one womb!
Lo, the deeds of the sons of Giuki for the latter days of doom!
O hearken, hearken Gunnar! May the dear Gold drag thee adown,
And Greyfell's ruddy Burden, and the Treasure of renown,
And the rings that ye swore the oath on! yea, if all avengers die,
May Earth, that ye bade remember, on the blood of Sigurd cry!
Be this land as waste as the trothplight that the lips of fools have
sworn!
May it rain through this broken hall-roof, and snow on the hearth
forlorn!
And may no man draw anigh it to tell of the ruin and the wrack!
Yea, may I be a mock for the idle if my feet come ever aback,
If my heart think kind of the chambers, if mine eyes shall yearn to
behold
The fair-built house of my fathers, the house beloved of old!"

Then she waileth out before them, and hideth her face from the day,
And she casteth her down from the high-seat and fleeth fast away;
And forth from the Hall of the Niblungs, and forth from the Burg is
she gone,
And forth from the holy dwellings, and a long way forth alone,
Till she comes to the lonely wood-waste, the desert of the deer
By the feet of the lonely mountains, that no man draweth anear;
But the wolves are about and around her, and death seems better than
life,
And folding the hands and forgetting a merrier thing than strife;
And for long and long thereafter no man of Gudrun knows,
Nor who are the friends of her life-days, nor whom she calleth her
foes.

But how great in the hall of the Niblungs is the voice of weeping and
wail!
Men bide on the noon's departing, men bide till the eve shall fail,
Then they wend one after other to the sleep that all men win,
Till few are the hall-abiders, and the moon is white therein,
And no sound in the house may ye hearken save the ernes that stir
o'erhead,
And the far-off wail o'er Guttorm and the wakeners o'er the dead:
But still by the carven pillar doth the all-wise Brynhild stand
A-gaze on the wound of Sigurd, nor moveth foo