this,
That men ever care for the morrow, nor nurse their toil-won bliss!
Lo now, this hour I speak in is the first of the seven-days' feast,
And the spring of our exultation o'er the glory of the East:
Draw nigh, O wise, O mighty, and gather words to praise
The hope of the King accomplished in the harvest of his days:
Bear forth this slave of the Niblungs to the pit and the chamber of
death,
That he hearken the council of night, and the rede that tomorrow saith,
And think of the might of King Atli, and his hand that taketh his own,
Though the hill-fox bark at his going, and his path with the bramble
be grown."

So they led the Niblung away from the light and the joy of the feast,
In the chamber of death they cast him, and the pit of the Lord of the
East:
And thralls were the high King's warders; yet sons of the wise withal
Came down to sit with Hogni in the doomed man's darkling hall;
For they looked in his face and feared, lest Atli smite too nigh
The kin of the Gods of Heaven, and more than a man's child die.

But 'neath the golden roof-sun, at beginning of the night,
Is the seven-days' feast of triumph in the hall of Atli dight;
And his living Earls come thither in peaceful gold attire,
And the cups on the East-King's tables shine out as a river of fire,
And sweet is the song of the harp-strings, and the singers' honeyed
words;
While wide through all the city do wives bewail their lords,
And curse the untimely hour and the day of the land forlorn,
And the year that the Earth shall rue of, and children never born.

But Atli spake to his thrall-folk, and they went, and were little
afraid
To take the glorious Gunnar, and the King in shackles laid:
They deemed they should live for ever, and eat and sleep as the swine,
To them were the tales of the singers no token and no sign;
For the blossom of the Niblungs they rolled amid the dust,
That well-renowned Gunnar 'neath Atli's chair they thrust;
The feet of the Eastland liar on Gunnar's neck are set,
And by Atli Gudrun sitteth, and nought she stirreth yet.

Outbrake the glee of the dastards, and they that had not dared
To meet the swords of the Niblungs, no whit the God-folk feared:
They forgat that the Norns were awake, and they praised the master of
guile
The war-spent conquering Atli and t