Amid a glimmering world of dead;
Horrible to receive a stone,
Howe’er I hunger after bread.—
How true, how deadly true, his strain,—
But yet how vacant and how vain.
Dim broods God’s dove of piercing eyes;
Alas, to me she never flies.—
O, had I but one faithful breast—
To give me strength, to give me rest.
Einar, pale, emaciated, dressed in black, comes along the road and stops on perceiving Brand.