Then the Wise-wife hushed before her, and a little fell aside,
  And nought from the eyes of Brynhild the high-seat now did hide;
  And the face so long desired, unchanged from time agone,
  In the house of the Cloudy People from the Niblung high-seat shone: 
  She stood with her hand in Gunnar’s, and all about and around
  Were the unfamiliar faces, and the folk that day had found;
  But her heart ran back through the years, and yet her lips did move
  With the words she spake on Hindfell, when they plighted troth of love.

  Lo, Sigurd fair on the high-seat by the white-armed Gudrun’s side,
  In the midst of the Cloudy People, in the dwelling of their pride! 
  His face is exceeding glorious and awful to behold;
  For of all his sorrow he knoweth and his hope smit dead and cold: 
  The will of the Norns is accomplished, and, lo, they wend on their ways,
  And leave the mighty Sigurd to deal with the latter days: 
  The Gods look down from heaven, and the lonely King they see,
  And sorrow over his sorrow, and rejoice in his majesty. 
  For the will of the Norns is accomplished, and outworn is Grimhild’s spell,
  And nought now shall blind or help him, and the tale shall be to tell: 
  He hath seen the face of Brynhild, and he knows why she hath come,
  And that his is the hand that hath drawn her to the Cloudy People’s home: 
  He knows of the net of the days, and the deeds that the Gods have bid,
  And no whit of the sorrow that shall be from his wakened soul is hid: 
  And his glory his heart restraineth, and restraineth the hand of the strong
  From the hope of the fools of desire and the wrong that amendeth wrong.

* * * * *

  And Brynhild’s face drew near him with eyes grown stern and strange.

* * * * *

  Now she stands on the floor of the high-seat, and for e’en so little a space
  As men may note delaying, she looketh on Sigurd’s face,
  Ere she saith: 
               “I have greeted many in the Niblungs’ house today,
  And for thee is the last of my greetings ere the feast shall wear away: 
  Hail, Sigurd, son of the Volsungs! hail, lord of Odin’s storm! 
  Hail, rider of the wasteland and slayer of the Worm! 
  If aught thy soul shall desire while yet thou livest on earth,
  I pray that thou mayst win it, nor forget its might and worth.”

  All grief, sharp scorn, sore longing, stark death in her voice he knew,
  But gone forth is the doom of the Norns, and what shall he answer thereto,
  While the death that amendeth lingers? and they twain shall dwell for awhile
  In the Niblung house together by the hearth that forged the guile.

* * * * *