Said he:  “So great is my longing, that, O foe, I would have thee live,
    Yea, live and be great as aforetime, if this word thou yet wouldst
      give.”

    Said the Niblung:  “Thee shall I heed, or the longing of thy pride? 
    I, who heeded Sigurd nothing, who thrust mine oath aside,
    When the years were young and goodly and the summer bore increase! 
    Shall I crave my life of the greedy and pray for days of peace? 
    I, who whetted the sword for Sigurd, and bared the blade in the morn,
    And smote ere the sun’s uprising, and left my sister forlorn: 
    ‘Yea I lied,’ quoth the God-loved Singer, ’when the will of the Gods I
      told!’
    —­Stretch forth thine hand, O Mighty, and take thy Treasure of Gold!”

Then was Atli silent a little, for anger dulled his thought,
And the heaped-up wealth of the Eastland seemed an idle thing and
nought: 
He turned and looked upon Gudrun as one who was fain to beseech,
But he saw her eyes that beheld not, and her lips that knew no speech,
And fear shot across his anger, and guile with his wrath was blent,
And he spake aloud to the war-lords: 
“O ye, shall the eve be spent,
Nor behold the East rejoicing? what a mock for the Gods is this,
That men ever care for the morrow, nor nurse their toil-won bliss! 
Lo now, this hour I speak in is the first of the seven-days’ feast,
And the spring of our exultation o’er the glory of the East: 
Draw nigh, O wise, O mighty, and gather words to praise
The hope of the King accomplished in the harvest of his days: 
Bear forth this slave of the Niblungs to the pit and the chamber of
death,
That he hearken the council of night, and the rede that tomorrow saith,
And think of the might of King Atli, and his hand that taketh his own,
Though the hill-fox bark at his going, and his path with the bramble
be grown.”

    So they led the Niblung away from the light and the joy of the feast,
    In the chamber of death they cast him, and the pit of the Lord of the
      East: 
    And thralls were the high King’s warders; yet sons of the wise withal
    Came down to sit with Hogni in the doomed man’s darkling hall;
    For they looked in his face and feared, lest Atli smite too nigh
    The kin of the Gods of Heaven, and more than a man’s child die.

    But ’neath the golden roof-sun, at beginning of the night,
    Is the seven-days’ feast of triumph in the hall of Atli dight;
    And his living Earls come thither in peaceful gold attire,
    And the cups on the East-King’s tables shine out as a river of fire,
    And sweet is the song of the harp-strings, and the singers’ honeyed
      words;
    While wide through all the city do wives bewail their lords,
    And curse the untimely hour and the day of the land forlorn,
    And the year that the Earth shall rue of, and children never born.