That I might utter a word, and the heart should be glad in thee,
And I should live and be sorry; for I, I only am left
To tell of the ransom of Odin, and the wealth from the toiler reft.
Lo, once it lay in the water, hid, deep adown it lay,
Till the Gods were grieved and lacking, and men saw it and the day:
Let it lie in the water once more, let the Gods be rich and in peace!
But I at least in the world from the words and the babble shall cease."

So he spake and Atli beheld him, and before his eyes he shrank:
Still deep of the cup of desire the mighty Atli drank,
And to overcome seemed little if the Gold he might not have,
And his hard heart craved for a while to hold the King for a slave,
A bondman blind and guarded in his glorious house and great:
But he thought of the overbold, and of kings who have dallied with
fate,
And died bemocked and smitten; and he deemed it worser than well
While the last of the sons of Giuki hangeth back from his journey to
Hell:
So he turneth away from the stranger, and beholdeth Gudrun his wife,
Not glad nor sorry by seeming, no stirrer nor stayer of strife:
Then he looked at his living earl-folk, and thought of his groves of
war,
And his realm and the kindred nations, and his measureless guarded
store:
And he thought: Shall Atli perish, shall his name be cast to the dead,
Though the feeble folk go wailing? Then he cried aloud and said:

"Why tarry ye, Sons of the Morning? the wain for the bondman is dight;
And the folk that are waiting his body have need of no sunshine to
smite.
Go forth 'neath the stars and the night-wind; go forth by the cloud and
the moon,
And come back with the word in the dawning, that my house may be merry
at noon!"

Then the sword-folk rise round Gunnar, round the fettered and bound
they throng,
As men in the bitter battle round the God-kin over-strong;
They bore him away to the doorway, and the winds were awake in the
night,
And the wood of the thorns of battle in the moon shone sharp and
bright;
But Gunnar looked to the heavens, and blessed the promise of rain,
And the windy drift of the clouds, and the dew on the builded wain:
And the sword-folk tarried a little, and the sons of the wise were
there,
And beheld his face o'er the war-helms, and the wavy night of