biding, and gone by is the bloom of her youth,
And she dwells with a folk untrusty, and a King that knows not ruth:
Great are his gains in the world, and few men may his might withstand,
But he weigheth sore on his people and cumbers the hope of his land;
He craves as the sea-flood craveth, he gripes as the dying hour,
All folk lie faint before him as he seeketh a soul to devour:
Like breedeth like in his house, and venom, and guile, and the knife
Oft lie 'twixt brother and brother, and the son and the father's life:
As dogs doth Gudrun heed them, and looks with steadfast eyes
On the guile and base contention, and the strife of murder and lies.

So pass the days and the moons, and the seasons wend on their ways,
And there as a woman alone she sits mid the glory and praise:
There oft in the hall she sitteth, and as empty images
Are grown the shapes of the strangers, till her fathers' hall she sees:
Void then seems the throne of the King, and no man sits by her side
In the house of the Cloudy People and the place of her brethren's
pride;
But a dead man lieth before her, and there cometh a voice and a hand,
And the cloth is plucked from the dead, and, lo, the beloved of the
land,
The righter of wrongs, the deliverer, yea he that gainsayed no grace:
In a stranger's house is Gudrun and no change comes over her face,
But her heart cries: Woe, woe, woe, O woe unto me and to all!
On the fools, on the wise, on the evil let the swift destruction fall!

Cold then is her voice in the high-seat, and she hears not what it
saith;
But Atli heedeth and hearkeneth, for she tells of the Glittering Heath,
And the Load of the mighty Greyfell, and the Ransom of Odin the Goth:
Cold yet is her voice as she telleth of murder and breaking of troth,
Of the stubborn hearts of the Niblungs, and their hands that never
yield,
Of their craving that nought fulfilleth, of their hosts arrayed for the
field.
--What then are the words of King Atli that the cold voice answereth
thus?

"King, so shalt thou do, and be sackless of the vengeance that lieth
with us:
What words are these of my brethren, what words are these of my kin?
For kin upon kin hath pity, and good deeds do brethren win
For the babes of their mothers' bosoms, and the children of one womb:
But no man on me had pity