ye behold it here,
The sword of the ancient Giuki?  Fall on and have no fear,
But slay and be slain and be famous, if your master’s will it be! 
Yet are we the blameless Niblungs, and bidden guests are we: 
So forbear, if ye wander hood-winked, nor for nothing slay and be
slain;
For I know not what to tell you of the dead that live again.”

So he saith in the midst of the foemen with his war-flame reared on
high,
But all about and around him goes up a bitter cry
From the iron men of Atli, and the bickering of the steel
Sends a roar up to the roof-ridge, and the Niblung war-ranks reel
Behind the steadfast Gunnar:  but lo, have ye seen the corn,
While yet men grind the sickle, by the wind-streak overborne
When the sudden rain sweeps downward, and summer groweth black,
And the smitten wood-side roareth ’neath the driving thunder-wrack? 
So before the wise-heart Hogni shrank the champions of the East
As his great voice shook the timbers in the hall of Atli’s feast. 
There he smote and beheld not the smitten, and by nought were his
edges stopped;
He smote and the dead were thrust from him; a hand with its shield he
lopped;
There met him Atli’s marshal, and his arm at the shoulder he shred;
Three swords were upreared against him of the best of the kin of the
dead;
And he struck off a head to the rightward, and his sword through a
throat he thrust,
But the third stroke fell on his helm-crest, and he stooped to the
ruddy dust,
And uprose as the ancient Giant, and both his hands were wet: 
Red then was the world to his eyen, as his hand to the labour he set;
Swords shook and fell in his pathway, huge bodies leapt and fell,
Harsh grided shield and war-helm like the tempest-smitten bell,
And the war-cries ran together, and no man his brother knew,
And the dead men loaded the living, as he went the war-wood through;
And man ’gainst man was huddled, till no sword rose to smite. 
And clear stood the glorious Hogni in an island of the fight,
And there ran a river of death ’twixt the Niblung and his foes,
And therefrom the terror of men and the wrath of the Gods arose.

    Now fell the sword of Gunnar and rose up red in the air,
    And hearkened the song of the Niblung, as his voice rang glad and
      clear,
    And rejoiced and leapt at the Eastmen, and cried as it met the rings
    Of a giant of King Atli, and a murder-wolf of kings;
    But it quenched its thirst in his entrails, and knew the heart in his
      breast,
    And hearkened the praise of Gunnar, and lingered not to rest,
    But fell upon Atli’s brother and stayed not in his brain;
    Then he fell and the King leapt over, and clave a neck atwain,
    And leapt o’er the sweep of a pole-axe and thrust a lord in the throat,
    And King Atli’s banner-bearer through shield and hauberk smote;