Und steigen zur Erde nieder.
Soll es aber anders werden,
Will es Gott, dass wir nicht entkommen,
So mag es uns doch lieber sein,
Dass wir dort redlich tot liegen,
Als dass wir hier diese starke Not
So jämmerlich erleiden.”
[1.] The Liver Sea, called also das geronnene Meer, or the Curdled Sea; in Latin mare pigrum et concretum. For the literature of the curious saga see Bartsch, Herzog Ernst, Wien, 1869, p. cxlv.
[ XVIII. THE LAY OF THE NIBELUNGS]
The most important poetic production of medieval Germany. It embodies legends that date back, in part, to the 5th century and were handed down from age to age by oral tradition. The different versions known to us point back to a lost original which probably took shape toward the end of the 12th century and was the work of an Austrian poet of whom nothing is known. The form is a four-line strophe, with masculine rimes paired in the order aa bb. Each line is divided into two parts by a cesura, which regularly falls after an unstressed syllable. The first seven half-lines usually have three accents each, the eighth four.