Nought the sun on that morn delayeth, but light o’er the world’s face
      flies. 
    And awake by the side of King Hogni the wedded woman lies,
    And her bosom is weary with sighing, and her eyes with dream-born
      tears. 
    And a sound as of all confusion is ever in her ears: 
    Then she turneth and crieth to Hogni, as she layeth a hand on his
      breast;
    “Wake, wake, thou son of Giuki! save thy speech-friend all unrest!”

    Then he waketh up as a child that hath slept in the summer grass,
    And he saith:  “What tidings, O Bera, what tidings come to pass?”

    She saith, “Wilt thou wend with Gunnar to Atli over the main?”

    Said Hogni:  “Hast thou not heard it, how rich we shall come again?”

    “Ye shall never come back,” said Bera, “ye shall die by the inner sea.”

    “Yea, here or there,” said Hogni, “my death no doubt shall be.”

    “O Hogni,” she said, “forbear it, that snare of the Eastland wrong! 
    In the health and the wealth of the sunlight at home mayst thou tarry
      for long: 
    For waking or sleeping I dreamed, and dreaming, the tokens I saw.”

    “Oft,” he said, “in the hands of the house-wife comes the crock by its
      fatal flaw: 
    An hundred earls shall slay me, or the fleeing night-thief’s shaft,
    The sickness that wasteth cities, or the unstrained summer draught: 
    Now as mighty shall be King Atli and the gathered Eastland force
    As the fly in the wine desired, or the weary stumbling horse.”

    She said:  “Wilt thou stay in the land, lest the noble faint and fail,
    And the Gods have nought to tell of in the ending of the tale? 
    O King, save thou thine hand-maid, lest the bloom of Kings decay!”

    He said:  “Good yet were the earth, though all we should die in a day: 
    But so fares it with you, ye women:  when your husband or brother shall
      die,
    Ye deem that the world shall perish, and the race of man go by.”

    “Sure then is thy death,” she answered, “for I saw the Eastland flood
    Break over the Burg of the Niblungs, and fill the hall with blood.”

    He said:  “Shall we wade the meadows to the feast of Atli the King? 
    Then the blood-red blossoming sorrel about our legs shall cling.”

    Said Bera:  “I saw thee coming with the face of other days;
    But the flame was in thy raiment, and thy kingly cloak was ablaze.”

    “How else,” said he, “O woman, wouldst thou have a Niblung stride,
    Save in ruddy gold sun-lighted, through the house of Atli’s pride?”