Then spake a Queen of Welshland, and Herborg hight was she: 
    “O frozen heart of sorrow, the Norns dealt worse with me: 
    Of old, in the days departed, were my brave ones under shield,
    Seven sons, and the eighth, my husband, and they fell in the Southland
      field: 
    Yet lived my father and mother, yet lived my brethren four,
    And I bided their returning by the sea-washed bitter shore: 
    But the winds and death played with them, o’er the wide sea swept the
      wave,
    The billows beat on the bulwarks and took what the battle gave: 
    Alone I sang above them, alone I dight their gear
    For the uttermost journey of all men, in the harvest of the year: 
    Nor wakened spring from winter ere I left those early dead;
    With bound hands and shameful body I went as the sea-thieves led: 
    Now I sit by the hearth of a stranger; nor have I weal nor woe,
    Save the hope of the Niblung masters and the sorrow of a foe.”

    No wailing word gat Gudrun, no thought she had to weep
    O’er the sundering tide of Sigurd, and the loved lord’s lonely sleep: 
    Her heart was cold and dreadful; nor good from ill she knew,
    Since her love was taken from her and the day of deeds to do.

    Then arose a maid of the Niblungs, and Gullrond was her name,
    And betwixt that Queen of Welshland and Gudrun’s grief she came: 
    And she said:  “O foster-mother, O wise in the wisdom of old,
    Hast thou spoken a word to the dead, and known them hear and behold? 
    E’en so is this word thou speakest, and the counsel of thy face.”

    All heed gave the maids and the warriors, and hushed was the
      spear-thronged place,
    As she stretched out her hand to Sigurd, and swept the linen away
    From the lips that had holpen the people, and the eyes that had
      gladdened the day;
    She set her hand unto Sigurd, and turned the face of the dead
    To the moveless knees of Gudrun, and again she spake and said: 

    “O Gudrun, look on thy loved-one; yea, as if he were living yet
    Let his face by thy face be cherished, and thy lips on his lips be
      set!”

    Then Gudrun’s eyes fell on it, and she saw the bright-one’s hair
    All wet with the deadly dew-fall, and she saw the great eyes stare
    At that cloudy roof of the Niblungs without a smile or frown;
    And she saw the breast of the mighty and the heart’s wall rent adown: 
    She gazed and the woe gathered on her, so exceeding far away
    Seemed all she once had cherished from that which near her lay;
    She gazed, and it craved no pity, and therein was nothing sad,
    Therein was clean forgotten the hope that Sigurd had: 
    Then she looked around and about her, as though her friend to find,
    And met those woeful faces but as grey reeds in the wind,