MIME [Starts up in great terror.
The splinters! The sword!
Alas! my head reels!
What shall I do?
What can I say?
Accursèd sword!
I was mad to steal it!
A perilous pass
It has brought me to.
Always too hard
To yield to my hammer!
Rivet, solder—
Useless are both.
[He throws his tools about as if he had gone crazy, and breaks out in utter despair.
The cleverest smith
Living has failed;
And, that being so,
Who shall succeed?
How rede aright such a riddle?
WANDERER [Has risen quietly from the hearth.
Three things thou wert to ask me;
Thrice was I to reply.
Thy questions were
Of far-off things,
But what stood here at thy hand—
Needed much—that was forgot,
Now that I guess it,
Thou goest crazed,
And won by me
Is the cunning one's head.
Now, Fafner's dauntless subduer,
Hear, thou death-doomed dwarf.
By him who knows not
How to fear
Nothung shall be forged.
[Mime stares at him; he turns to go.
So ward thy head
Well from to-day.
I leave it forfeit to him
Who has never learned to fear.
[He turns away smiling, and disappears quickly in the wood. Mime has sunk on to the bench overwhelmed.