Of your coming to this bower royal, what thing your hearts would crave.
I beseech you, let me hearken what the noble knights would have.”
Then spake King Gunther: “Lady, this will I tell:—we bear,
For all our knightly courage, the burden of a care.
We be minded to ride a-wooing to a strange land far away,
And fain would we have for our journey exceeding goodly array.”
“Now seat thee, belovèd brother,” that child of kings ’gan say,
“And of this thing first instruct me, what fairest of fair ones be they
Whom ye are so fain to be wooing in a strange king’s far-off land.”
And therewith those chosen chieftains did the maiden take by the hand,