So Gunnar hearkens and hearkens, and he saith, It is idle and worse: 
    If the oath of my brother be broken, let the earth then see to the
      curse! 
    But again he hearkens and hearkens, and when none may hear his thought
    He saith in the silent night-tide:  Shall my brother bring me to nought? 
    Must my stroke be a stroke of the guilty, though on sackless folk it
      fall? 
    Shall a king sit joy-forsaken mid the riches of his hall? 
    And measureless pride is in Gunnar, and it blends with doubt and shame,
    And the unseen blossom is envy and desire without a name.

    But fair-faced, calm as a God who hath none to call his foes,
    Betwixt the Kings and the people the golden Sigurd goes;
    No knowledge of man he lacketh, and the lore he gained of old
    From the ancient heart of the Serpent and the Wallower on the Gold
    Springs fresh in the soul of Sigurd; the heart of Hogni he sees,
    And the heart of his brother Gunnar, and he grieveth sore for these. 
    But he seeth the heart of Brynhild, and knoweth her lonely cry
    When the waste is all about her, and none but the Gods are anigh: 
    And he knoweth her tale of the night-tide, when desire, that day doth
      dull,
    Is stirred by hope undying, and fills her bosom full
    Of the sighs she may not utter, and the prayers that none may heed;
    Though the Gods were once so mighty the smiling world to speed. 
    And he knows of the day of her burden, and the measure of her toil,
    And the peerless pride of her heart, and her scorn of the fall and the
      foil. 
    And the shadowy wings of the Lie, that with hand unwitting he led
    To the Burg of the ancient people, brood over board and bed;
    And the hand of the hero faileth, and seared is the sight of the wise,
    And good is at one with evil till the new-born death shall arise.

    In the hall sitteth Sigurd by Brynhild, in the council of the Kings,
    And he hearkeneth her spoken wisdom, and her word of lovely things: 
    In the field they meet, and the wild-wood; on the acre and the heath;
    And scarce may he tell if the meeting be worse than the coward’s death,
    Or better than life of the righteous:  but his love is a flaming fire,
    That hath burnt up all before it of the things that feed desire.

    The heart of Gudrun he seeth, her heart of burning love,
    That knoweth of nought but Sigurd on the earth, in the heavens above,
    Save the foes that encompass his life, and the woman that wasteth away
    ’Neath the toil of a love like her love, and the unrewarded day: 
    For hate her eyes hath quickened, and no more is Gudrun blind,
    And sure, though dim it may be, she seeth the days behind: 
    And the shadowy wings of the Lie, that the hand unwitting led
    To the love and the heart of Gudrun, brood over board and bed;
    And for all the hand of the hero and the foresight of the wise,
    From the heart of a loving woman shall the death of men arise.