the heavens his habitation found;
    And they knew not why they were gathered, nor the deeds of their
      shaping they knew: 
    But lo, Mid-Earth the Noble ’neath their might and their glory grew,
    And the grass spread over its face, and the Night and the Day were
      born,
    And it cried on the Death in the even, and it cried on the Life in the
      morn: 
    Yet it waxed and waxed, and knew not, and it lived and had not learned;
    And where were the Framers that framed, and the Soul and the Might
      that had yearned?

    “On the Thrones are the Powers that fashioned, and they name the Night
      and the Day,
    And the tide of the Moon’s increasing, and the tide of his waning away: 
    And they name the years for the story; and the Lands they change and
      change,
    The great and the mean and the little, that this unto that may be
      strange: 
    They met, and they fashioned dwellings, and the House of Glory they
      built;
    They met, and they fashioned the Dwarf-kind, and the Gold and the
      Gifts and the Guilt.

    “There were twain, and they went upon earth, and were speechless
      unmighty and wan;
    They were hopeless, deathless, lifeless, and the Mighty named them Man: 
    Then they gave them speech and power, and they gave them colour and
      breath;
    And deeds and the hope they gave them, and they gave them Life and
      Death;
    Yea, hope, as the hope of the Framers; yea, might, as the Fashioners
      had,
    Till they wrought, and rejoiced in their bodies, and saw their sons
      and were glad: 
    And they changed their lives and departed, and came back as the leaves
      of the trees
    Come back and increase in the summer:—­and I, I, I am of these;
    And I know of Them that have fashioned, and the deeds that have
      blossomed and grow;
    But nought of the Gods’ repentance, or the Gods’ undoing I know.”

    Then falleth the speech of Gunnar, and his lips the word forget,
    But his crafty hands are busy, and the harp is murmuring yet.

    And the crests of the worms have fallen, and their flickering tongues
      are still,
    The Roller and the Coiler, and Greyback, lord of ill,
    Grave-groper and Death-swaddler, the Slumberer of the Heath,
    Gold-wallower, Venom-smiter, lie still, forgetting death,
    And loose are coils of Long-back; yea, all as soft are laid
    As the kine in midmost summer about the elmy glade;
    —­All save the Grey and Ancient, that holds his crest aloft,
    Light-wavering as the flame-tongue when the evening wind is soft: 
    For he comes of the kin of the Serpent once wrought all wrong to nurse,
    The bond of earthly evil, the Midworld’s ancient curse.

    But Gunnar looked and considered, and wise and wary he grew,
    And the dark of night was waning and chill in the dawning it grew;
    But his hands were strong and mighty and the fainting harp he woke,
    And cried in the deadly desert, and the song from his soul out-broke: