Loud rose the roar of the East-folk, and the end was coming at last;
    Now the foremost locked their shield-rims and the hindmost over them
      cast,
    And nigher they drew and nigher, and their fear was fading away,
    For every man of the Niblungs on the shaft-strewn pavement lay,
    Save Gunnar the King and Hogni:  still the glorious King up-bore
    The cloudy shield of the Niblungs set full of shafts of war;
    But Hogni’s hands had fainted, and his shield had sunk adown,
    So thick with the Eastland spearwood was that rampart of renown;
    And hacked and dull were the edges that had rent the wall of foes;
    Yet he stood upright by Gunnar before that shielded close,
    Nor looked on the foemen’s faces as their wild eyes drew anear,
    And their faltering shield-rims clattered with the remnant of their
      fear;
    But he gazed on the Niblung woman, and the daughter of his folk,
    Who sat o’er all unchanging ere the war-cloud over them broke.

    Now nothing might men hearken in the house of Atli’s weal,
    Save the feet slow tramping onward, and the rattling of the steel,
    And the song of the glorious Gunnar, that rang as clearly now
    As the speckled storm-cock singeth from the scant-leaved hawthorn-bough
    When the sun is dusking over and the March snow pelts the land. 
    There stood the mighty Gunnar with sword and shield in hand,
    There stood the shieldless Hogni with set unangry eyes,
    And watched the wall of war-shields o’er the dead men’s rampart rise,
    And the white blades flickering nigher, and the quavering points of
      war. 
    Then the heavy air of the feast-hall was rent with a fearful roar,
    And the turmoil came and the tangle, as the wall together ran: 
    But aloft yet towered the Niblungs, and man toppled over man,
    And leapt and struggled to tear them; as whiles amidst the sea
    The doomed ship strives its utmost with mid-ocean’s mastery,
    And the tall masts whip the cordage, while the welter whirls and leaps,
    And they rise and reel and waver, and sink amid the deeps: 
    So before the little-hearted in King Atli’s murder-hall
    Did the glorious sons of Giuki ’neath the shielded onrush fall: 
    Sore wounded, bound and helpless, but living yet, they lie
    Till the afternoon and the even in the first of night shall die.

    Of the Slaying of the Niblung Kings.

    Lo now, ’tis an hour or twain, and a labour lightly won
    By the serving-men of Atli, and the Niblung blood is gone
    From the golden house of his greatness, and the Eastland dead no more
    Lie in great heaps together on Atli’s mazy floor: 
    Then they cast fair summer blossoms o’er the footprints of the dead,
    They wreathe round Atli’s high-seat and the benches fair bespread,
    And they light the odorous torches, and the sun of the golden roof,
    Till the candles of King Atli hold dusky night aloof.