and the hope they gave them, and they gave them Life and
Death;
Yea, hope, as the hope of the Framers; yea, might, as the Fashioners
had,
Till they wrought, and rejoiced in their bodies, and saw their sons
and were glad:
And they changed their lives and departed, and came back as the leaves
of the trees
Come back and increase in the summer:--and I, I, I am of these;
And I know of Them that have fashioned, and the deeds that have
blossomed and grow;
But nought of the Gods' repentance, or the Gods' undoing I know."

Then falleth the speech of Gunnar, and his lips the word forget,
But his crafty hands are busy, and the harp is murmuring yet.

And the crests of the worms have fallen, and their flickering tongues
are still,
The Roller and the Coiler, and Greyback, lord of ill,
Grave-groper and Death-swaddler, the Slumberer of the Heath,
Gold-wallower, Venom-smiter, lie still, forgetting death,
And loose are coils of Long-back; yea, all as soft are laid
As the kine in midmost summer about the elmy glade;
--All save the Grey and Ancient, that holds his crest aloft,
Light-wavering as the flame-tongue when the evening wind is soft:
For he comes of the kin of the Serpent once wrought all wrong to nurse,
The bond of earthly evil, the Midworld's ancient curse.

But Gunnar looked and considered, and wise and wary he grew,
And the dark of night was waning and chill in the dawning it grew;
But his hands were strong and mighty and the fainting harp he woke,
And cried in the deadly desert, and the song from his soul out-broke:

"O Hearken, Kindreds and Nations, and all Kings of the plenteous earth.
Heed, ye that shall come hereafter, and are far and far from the birth!
I have dwelt in the world aforetime, and I called it the garden of God;
I have stayed my heart with its sweetness, and fair on its freshness I
trod;
I have seen its tempest and wondered, I have cowered adown from its
rain,
And desired the brightening sunshine, and seen it and been fain;
I have waked, time was, in its dawning; its noon and its even I wore;
I have slept unafraid of its darkness, and the days have been many and
more:
I have dwelt with the deeds of the mighty; I have woven the web of the
sword;
I have borne up the guilt nor repented; I have sorrowed nor spoken the