HOGNI
Ye shall know that in Atli's feast-hall on the side that joined the house Were many carven doorways whose work was glorious With marble stones and gold-work, and their doors of beaten brass: Lo now, in the merry morning how the story cometh to pass! —While the echoes of the trumpet yet fill the people's ears, And Hogni casts by the war-horn, and his Dwarf-wrought sword uprears, All those doors aforesaid open, and in pour the streams of steel, The best of the Eastland champions, the bold men of Atli's weal: They raise no cry of battle nor cast forth threat of woe, And their helmed and hidden faces from each other none may know: Then a light in the hall ariseth, and the fire of battle runs All adown the front of the Niblungs in the face of the mighty ones; All eyes are set upon them, hard drawn is every breath, Ere the foremost points be mingled and death be blent with death. —All eyes save the eyes of Hogni; but e'en as the edges meet, He turneth about for a moment to the gold of the kingly seat, Then aback to the front of battle; there then, as the lightning-flash Through the dark night showeth the city when the clouds of heaven clash, And the gazer shrinketh backward, yet he seeth from end to end The street and the merry market, and the windows of his friend, And the pavement where his footsteps yester'en returning trod, Now white and changed and dreadful 'neath the threatening voice of God; So Hogni seeth Gudrun, and the face he used to know, Unspeakable, unchanging, with white unknitted brow With half-closed lips untrembling, with deedless hands and cold Laid still on knees that stir not, and the linen's moveless fold.
Turned Hogni unto the spear-wall, and smote from where he stood, And hewed with his sword two-handed as the axe-man in a wood: Before his sword was a champion, and the edges clave to the chin, And the first man fell in the feast-hall of those that should fall therein. Then man with man was dealing, and the Niblung host of war Was swept by the leaping iron, as the rock anigh the shore By the ice-cold waves of winter: yet a moment Gunnar stayed As high in his hand unblooded he shook his awful blade; And he cried: ‘O Eastland champions, do ye behold it here, The sword of the ancient Giuki? Fall on and have no fear, But slay and be slain and be famous, if your master's will it be! Yet are we the blameless Niblungs, and bidden guests are we: So forbear, if ye wander hood-winked, nor for nothing slay and be slain; For I know not what to tell you of the dead that live again.’
So he saith in the midst of the foemen with his war-flame reared on high, But all about and around him goes up a bitter cry From the iron men of Atli, and the bickering of the steel Sends a roar up to the roof-ridge, and the Niblung war-ranks reel Behind the steadfast Gunnar: but lo! have ye seen the corn, While yet men grind the sickle, by the wind-streak overborne When the sudden rain sweeps downward, and summer groweth black, And the smitten wood-side roareth 'neath the driving thunder-wrack? So before the wise-heart Hogni shrank the champions of the East, As his great voice shook the timbers in the hall of Atli's feast. There he smote, and beheld not the smitten, and by nought were his edges stopped; He smote, and the dead were thrust from him; a hand with its shield he lopped; There met him Atli's marshal, and his arm at the shoulder he shred; Three swords were upreared against him of the best of the kin of the dead; And he struck off a head to the rightward, and his sword through a throat he thrust, But the third stroke fell on his helm-crest, and he stooped to the ruddy dust, And uprose as the ancient Giant, and both his hands were wet: Red then was the world to his eyen, as his hand to the labour he set; Swords shook and fell in his pathway, huge bodies leapt and fell, Harsh grided shield and war-helm like the tempest-smitten bell, And the war-cries ran together, and no man his brother knew, And the dead men loaded the living, as he went the war-wood through; And man 'gainst man was huddled, till no sword rose to smite, And clear stood the glorious Hogni in an island of the fight, And there ran a river of death 'twixt the Niblung and his foes, And therefrom the terror of men and the wrath of the Gods arose.