“Although his wondrous prowess had smitten the whole world dead,
I will slay him: no more hot answers from that mad tongue shall be sped!”
In the eyes of the Bernese warriors blazed the onset’s light:
Upswung his buckler Wolfhart, that battle-eager knight:
With the leap of a desert lion against that taunter he leapt:
Like a torrent up to the stairway his friends behind him swept.
But with what great leaps soever to the door of the hall he sped,
Old Hildebrand before him sprang to the stairway-head:
He would suffer none to outpace him, nor to plunge mid the war-surge first
Ready the stern guests waited to quench their battle-thirst.