“Now his guests doth Atli honour, and yet more will he do for your
      sake,
    Who hath hidden all his people, and holdeth his vassals at home
    On the day that the mighty Niblungs adown his highway come,
    Lest men fear as the finders of Gods, and tremble and cumber the ways,
    And the voice of the singers fail them to sing of the Niblungs’
      praise.”

    Men laughed as his voice they hearkened, and none bade turn again,
    But the swords in the scabbards rattled as they rode with loosened
      rein.

Now they ride in the Burg-gate’s shadow from out the sunlit fields,
Till the spears aloft are hidden and Atli’s painted shields;
And no captain cries from the rampart, nor soundeth any horn,
And the doors of oak and iron are shut this merry morn: 
Then the Niblungs leap from the saddle, and the threats of earls arise,
And the wrath of Kings’ defenders is waxing in their eyes;
But Knefrud looketh and laugheth, and he saith: 
“So is Atli fain
Of the glory of the Niblungs and their honour’s utmost gain: 
By no feet but yours this morning will he have his threshold trod,
Nay, not by the world’s most glorious, nay not by a wandering God.”

Then Hogni looked on Knefrud as the bodily death shall gaze
On the last of the Kings of men-folk in the last of the latter days,
And he caught a staff from his saddle, a mighty axe of war,
And stood most huge of all men in face of Atli’s door,
And upreared the axe against it with such wondrous strokes and great,
That the iron-knitted marvel hung shattered in the gate: 
Through the rent poured the Niblung children, and in Atli’s burg they
stood;
With none to bid them welcome, or ask them what they would.

    But Hogni turned upon Knefrud, and spake:  “I said, time was,
    That we twain should ride out hither to bring a deed to pass: 
    And now one more deed abideth, and then no more for thee,
    And another and another, and no more deeds for me.”

    ’Gainst the liar’s eyes one moment flashed out the axe-head’s sheen,
    And then was the face of Knefrud as though it ne’er had been,
    And his gay-clad corpse lay glittering on the causeway in the sun.

    No man cried out on Hogni or asked of the deed so done,
    But their shielded ranks they marshalled and through Atli’s burg they
      strode: 
    There they see the merchant’s dwelling, the rich man’s fair abode,
    The halls of doom, and the market, the loom and the smithying-booth,
    The stall for the wares of the outlands, the temples high and smooth: 
    But all is hushed and empty, and no child of man they meet
    As they thread the city’s tangle, and enter street on street,
    And leave the last forgotten, and of the next know nought.