With the dancing of the ring-mail and the smitten shields of war:
Yet though amid their high-tides of the deaths of men they sing,
And of swords in the battle broken, and the fall of many a king,
Yet they sing it wreathed with the flowers and they praise the gift
and the gain
Of the war-lord sped to Odin as he rends the battle atwain.
And their days are young and glorious, and in hope exceeding great
With sword and harp and beaker on the skirts of the Norns they wait.

Now the King of this folk is Giuki, and he sits in the Niblung hall
When the song of men goes roofward and the shields shine out from the
wall;
And his queen in the high-seat sitteth, the woman overwise,
Grimhild the kin of the God-folk, the wife of the glittering eyes:
And his sons on each hand are sitting; there is Gunnar the great and
fair,
With the lovely face of a king 'twixt the night of his wavy hair:
And there is the wise-heart Hogni; and his lips are close and thin,
And grey and awful his eyen, and a many sights they win:
And there is Guttorm the youngest, of the fierce and wandering glance,
And the heart that never resteth till the swords in the war-wind dance:
And there is Gudrun his daughter, and light she stands by the board,
And fair are her arms in the hall as the beaker's flood is poured:
She comes, and the earls keep silence; she smiles, and men rejoice;
She speaks, and the harps unsmitten thrill faint to her queenly voice.

So blossom the days of the Niblungs, and great is their hope's increase
'Twixt the merry days of battle and the tide of their guarded peace:
There is many a noon of joyance, and many an eve's delight,
And many a deed for the doing 'twixt the morning and the night.

Now betimes on a morning of summer that Giuki's daughter arose,
Alone went the fair-armed Gudrun to her flowery garden-close;
And she went by the bower of women, and her damsels saw her thence,
And her nurse went down to meet her as she came by the rose-hung fence,
And she saw that her eyes were heavy as she trod with doubtful feet
Betwixt the rose and the lily, nor blessed the blossoms sweet:
And she spake:
"What ails thee, daughter, as one asleep to tread
O'er the grass of the merry summer and the daisies white and red?
And to have no heart for the harp-play, or the needle's mastery,