marvellous sound of its sweetness, like the march of Odin's
kings
New-risen for play in the morning when o'er meadows of God-home they
wend,
And hero playeth with hero, that their hands may be deft in the end.
But the crests of the worms were uplifted, though coil on coil was
stayed,
And they moved but as dark-green rushes by the summer river swayed.

Then uprose the Song of Gunnar, and sang o'er his crafty hands,
And told of the World of Aforetime, unshapen, void of lands;
Yet it wrought, for its memory bideth, and it died and abode its doom;
It shaped, and the Upper-Heavens, and the hope came forth from its
womb.
Great then grew the voice of Gunnar, and his speech was sweet on the
wild,
And the moon on his harp was shining, and the hands of the Niblung
child:

"So perished the Gap of the Gaping, and the cold sea swayed and sang,
And the wind came down on the waters, and the beaten rock-walls rang;
Then the Sun from the south came shining, and the Starry Host stood
round,
And the wandering Moon of the heavens his habitation found;
And they knew not why they were gathered, nor the deeds of their
shaping they knew:
But lo, Mid-Earth the Noble 'neath their might and their glory grew,
And the grass spread over its face, and the Night and the Day were
born,
And it cried on the Death in the even, and it cried on the Life in the
morn:
Yet it waxed and waxed, and knew not, and it lived and had not learned;
And where were the Framers that framed, and the Soul and the Might
that had yearned?

"On the Thrones are the Powers that fashioned, and they name the Night
and the Day,
And the tide of the Moon's increasing, and the tide of his waning away:
And they name the years for the story; and the Lands they change and
change,
The great and the mean and the little, that this unto that may be
strange:
They met, and they fashioned dwellings, and the House of Glory they
built;
They met, and they fashioned the Dwarf-kind, and the Gold and the
Gifts and the Guilt.

"There were twain, and they went upon earth, and were speechless
unmighty and wan;
They were hopeless, deathless, lifeless, and the Mighty named them Man:
Then they gave them speech and power, and they gave them colour and
breath;
And deeds