Digged deep adown in the desert with shining walls and smooth
    For the Serpents’ habitation, and the folk that know not ruth. 
    Therein they thrust King Gunnar, and he bare of his kingly weed,
    But they gave his harp to the Niblung, and his hands of the gyves they
      freed;
    They stood around in their war-gear to note what next should befall
    For the comfort of King Atli, and the glee of the Eastland hall.

    Still hot was that close with the sun, and thronged with the coiling
      folk,
    And about the feet of Gunnar their hissing mouths awoke: 
    But he heeded them not nor beheld them, and his hands in the
      harp-strings ran,
    As he sat him down in the midmost on a sun-scorched rock and wan: 
    And he sighed as one who resteth on a flowery bank by the way
    When the wind is in the blossoms at the even-tide of day: 
    But his harp was murmuring low, and he mused:  Am I come to the death,
    And I, who was Gunnar the Niblung? nay, nay, how I draw my breath,
    And love my life as the living! and so I ever shall do,
    Though wrack be loosed in the heavens and the world be fashioned anew.

    But the worms were beholding their prey, and they drew around and
      nigher,
    Smooth coil, and flickering tongue, and eyes as the gold in the fire;
    And he looked and beheld them and spake, nor stilled his harp
      meanwhile: 
    “What will ye?  O thralls of Atli, O images of guile?”

    Then, he rose at once to his feet, and smote the harp with his hand,
    And it rang as if with a cry in the dream of a lonely land;
    Then he fondled its wail as it faded, and orderly over the strings
    Went the marvellous sound of its sweetness, like the march of Odin’s
      kings
    New-risen for play in the morning when o’er meadows of God-home they
      wend,
    And hero playeth with hero, that their hands may be deft in the end. 
    But the crests of the worms were uplifted, though coil on coil was
      stayed,
    And they moved but as dark-green rushes by the summer river swayed.

    Then uprose the Song of Gunnar, and sang o’er his crafty hands,
    And told of the World of Aforetime, unshapen, void of lands;
    Yet it wrought, for its memory bideth, and it died and abode its doom;
    It shaped, and the Upper-Heavens, and the hope came forth from its
      womb. 
    Great then grew the voice of Gunnar, and his speech was sweet on the
      wild,
    And the moon on his harp was shining, and the hands of the Niblung
      child: 

    “So perished the Gap of the Gaping, and the cold sea swayed and sang,
    And the wind came down on the waters, and the beaten rock-walls rang;
    Then the Sun from the south came shining, and the Starry Host stood
      round,
    And the wandering Moon of