Still she stood as a carven image, as a stone of ancient days
When the sun is bright about it and the wind sweeps low o'er the ways.
All hushed was Gunnar the Niblung and knew not how to beseech,
But still Hogni faced his sister, nor faltered aught in his speech:
"Thou art young," he said, "O sister; thou wert called a mighty queen
When the nurses first upraised thee and first thy body was seen:
If thou bide with these toiling women when a great king bids thee to wife,
Then first is it seen of the Niblungs that they cringe and cower from strife:
By the deeds of the Golden Sigurd I charge thee hinder us not,
When the Norns have dight the way-beasts, and our hearts for the journey are hot!"
She answered not with speaking, she questioned not with eyes,
Nought did her deadly anger to her brow unknitted rise,
Then forth came Grimhild the Mighty, and the cup was in her hand,
Wherein with the sea's dread mingled was the might and the blood of the land;
And the guile of the summer serpent and the herb of the sunless dale
Were blent for the deadening slumber that forgetteth joy and bale;
And cold words of ancient wisdom that the very Gods would dim
Were the foreshores of that wine-sea and the cliffs that girt its rim:
Therewith in the hall stood Grimhild, and cried aloud and spake:
"It was I that bore thee, daughter; I laboured once for thy sake,
I groaned to bear thee a queen, I sickened sore for thy fame:
By me and my womb I command thee that thou worship the Niblung name,
And take the gift we would give thee, and be wed to a king of the earth,
And rejoice in kings hereafter when thy sons are come to the birth:
Lo, then as thou lookest upon them, and thinkest of glory to come,
It shall be as if Sigmund were living, and Sigurd sat in thine home."
Nought answered the white-armed Gudrun, no master of masters might see
The hate in her soul swift-growing or the rage of her misery.
But great waxed the wrath of Grimhild; there huge in the hall she stood,
And her fathers' might stirred in her, and the well-spring of her blood;
And she cried out blind with anger: "Though all we die on one day,
Though we live for ever in sorrow, yet shalt thou be given away
To Atli the King of the mighty, high lord of the Eastland gold:
Drink now, that my love and my wisdom may thaw thine heart grown cold;
And take those great gifts of our giving, the cities long builded for thee,
The wine-burgs digged for thy pleasure, the fateful wealthy lea,
The darkling woods of the deer, the courts of mighty lords,
The hosts of men war-shielded, the groves of fallow swords!"
Nought changed the eyes of Gudrun, but she reached her hand to the cup
And drank before her kindred, and the blood from her heart went up,
And was blent with the guile of the serpent, and many a thing she forgat,
But never the day of her sorrow, and of how o'er Sigurd she sat:
But the land's-folk looked on the Niblungs as the daughter of Giuki drank,
And before their wrath they trembled, and before their joy they shrank.
Then yet again spake Gudrun, and they that stood thereby,
—O how their hearts were heavy as though the sun should die!
She said: "O Kings of my kindred, I shall nought gainsay your will;
With the fruit of your fond desires your hearts shall ye fulfil;
Bear me back to the Burg of the Niblungs, and the house of my fathers of old,
That the men of King Atli may take me with the tokens and treasure of gold."
Then the cry goeth up from the Niblungs, and no while in that house they abide;
Forth fare the Cloudy People and the stony slopes they ride,
And the sun is bright behind them o'er queen Thora's lowly dale,
Where the sound of their speech abideth as an ancient woeful tale.
But the Niblungs ride the forest and the dwellings of the deer,
And the wife of the Golden Sigurd to the ancient Burg they bear;
She speaks not of good nor of evil, and no change in her face men see,
Nay, not when the Niblung towers rise up above the lea;
Nay, not when they come to the gateway, and that builded gloom again
Swallows up the steed and its rider, and sword, and gilded wain;
Nay, not when to earth she steppeth, and her feet again pass o'er
The threshold of the Niblungs and the holy house of yore;
Nay, not when alone she lieth in the chamber, on the bed
Where she lay, a little maiden, ere her hope was born and dead:
Yea, how fair is her face on the morrow, how it winneth all people's praise,
As the moon that forebodeth nothing on the night of the last of days.
Nought tarry the lords of King Atli, and the Niblungs stay them nought;
The doors of the treasure are opened and the gold and the tokens are brought;
And all men in the hall are assembled, where Gunnar speaketh and saith:
"Go hence, O men of King Atli, and tell of our love and our faith
To thy master, the mighty of men: go take him this treasure of gold,
And show him how we have hearkened, and nought from his heart may withhold,
Nay, not our best and our dearest, nay, not the crown of our worth,
Our sister, the white-armed Gudrun, the wise and the Queen of the earth."