l foes have passed away.

It was then in the noon-tide moment; o'er the earth high hung the sun,
When the song o'er the mighty Niblungs in a stranger-house was begun,
And their deeds were told by the foemen, and the names of hope they had
Rang sweet in the hall of the murder to make King Atli glad:
It is little after the noon-tide when thereof they sing no more,
Nor tell of the strife that has been, and the leaping flames of war,
And the vengeance lulled for ever and the wrath that shall never awake:
For where is the kin of Hogni, and who liveth for Gunnar's sake?

So men in the hall make merry, nor note the afternoon,
And the time when men grow weary with the task that ends not soon;
The sun falls down unnoted, and night and her daughter are nigh,
And a dull grey mist and awful hangeth over the east of the sky,
And spreadeth, though winds are sleeping, and riseth higher and higher;
But the clouds hang high in the west as a sea of rippling fire,
That the face of the gazer is lighted, if unto the west ye gaze,
And white walls in the lonely meadows grow ruddy under the blaze;
Yet brighter e'en than the cloud-sea, far-off and clear serene,
Mid purple clouds unlitten the light lift lieth between;
And who looks, save the lonely shepherd on the brow of the houseless
hill,
Who hath many a day seen no man to tell him of good or of ill?

Day dies, and the storm-threats perish, and the stars to the heaven
are come,
And the white moon climbeth upward and hangs o'er the Eastland home;
But no man in the hall of King Atli shall heed the heavens without,
For Atli's roof is their heaven, and thereto they cast the shout,
And this, the glory they builded, is become their God to praise,
The hope of their generations, the giver of goodly days:
No more they hearken the harp-strings, no more they hearken the song;
All the might of the deedful Niblungs is a tale forgotten long,
And yester-morning's murder is as though it ne'er had been;
They heed not the white-armed Gudrun, the glorious Stranger-Queen,
They heed not Atli triumphant, for they also, they are Kings,
They are brethren of the God-folk and the fashioners of things;
Nay, the Gods,--and the Gods have sorrow, and these shall rue no more,
These world-kings, these prevailers, these beaters-down of war:
What golden house shall hold the