outlands and their uncouth praying
      meets. 
    There he wonders at their life-days and their fond imaginings,
    As he bears the love of Brynhild through the houses of the kings,
    Where his word shall do and undo, and with crowns of kings shall he
      deal;
    And he laughs to scorn the treasure where thieves break through and
      steal,
    And the moth and the rust are corrupting:  and he thinks the time is
      long
    Till the dawning of love’s summer from the cloudy days of wrong.

    So they raise and abase and alter, then turn about and ride,
    Mid the peace of the sword triumphant, to the shell-strown ocean’s
      side;
    And they bear their glory away to the mouth of the fishy stream,
    And again in the Niblung lealand doth the Welsh-wrought war-gear gleam,
    And they come to the Burg of the Niblungs and the mighty gate of war,
    And betwixt the gathered maidens through its dusky depths they pour,
    And with war-helms done with blossoms round the Niblung hall they sing
    In the windless cloudless even and the ending of the spring;
    Yea, they sing the song of Sigurd and the face without a foe,
    And they sing of the prison’s rending and the tyrant laid alow,
    And the golden thieves’ abasement, and the stilling of the churl,
    And the mocking of the dastard where the chasing edges whirl;
    And they sing of the outland maidens that thronged round Sigurd’s hand,
    And sung in the streets of the foemen of the war-delivered land;
    And they tell how the ships of the merchants come free and go at their
      will,
    And how wives in peace and safety may crop the vine-clad hill;
    How the maiden sits in her bower, and the weaver sings at his loom,
    And forget the kings of grasping and the greedy days of gloom;
    For by sea and hill and township hath the Son of Sigmund been. 
    And looked on the folk unheeded, and the lowly people seen.

    Then into the hall of the Niblungs go the battle-staying earls,
    And they cast the spoil in the midmost; the webs of the out-sea pearls,
    And the gold-enwoven purple that on hated kings was bright;
    Fair jewelled swords accursed that never flashed in fight;
    Crowns of old kings of battle that dastards dared to wear;
    Great golden shields dishonoured, and the traitors’ battle-gear;
    Chains of the evil judges, and the false accusers’ rings,
    And the cloud-wrought silken raiment of the cruel whores of kings. 
    And they cried:  “O King of the people, O Giuki old of years,
    Lo, the wealth that Sigurd brings thee from the fashioners of tears! 
    Take thou the gift, O Niblung, that the Volsung seed hath brought! 
    For we fought on the guarded fore-shore, in the guileful wood we
      fought;
    And we fought in the traitorous city, and the murder-halls of kings;