So men in the hall make merry, nor note the afternoon,
    And the time when men grow weary with the task that ends not soon;
    The sun falls down unnoted, and night and her daughter are nigh,
    And a dull grey mist and awful hangeth over the east of the sky,
    And spreadeth, though winds are sleeping, and riseth higher and higher;
    But the clouds hang high in the west as a sea of rippling fire,
    That the face of the gazer is lighted, if unto the west ye gaze,
    And white walls in the lonely meadows grow ruddy under the blaze;
    Yet brighter e’en than the cloud-sea, far-off and clear serene,
    Mid purple clouds unlitten the light lift lieth between;
    And who looks, save the lonely shepherd on the brow of the houseless
      hill,
    Who hath many a day seen no man to tell him of good or of ill?

    Day dies, and the storm-threats perish, and the stars to the heaven
      are come,
    And the white moon climbeth upward and hangs o’er the Eastland home;
    But no man in the hall of King Atli shall heed the heavens without,
    For Atli’s roof is their heaven, and thereto they cast the shout,
    And this, the glory they builded, is become their God to praise,
    The hope of their generations, the giver of goodly days: 
    No more they hearken the harp-strings, no more they hearken the song;
    All the might of the deedful Niblungs is a tale forgotten long,
    And yester-morning’s murder is as though it ne’er had been;
    They heed not the white-armed Gudrun, the glorious Stranger-Queen,
    They heed not Atli triumphant, for they also, they are Kings,
    They are brethren of the God-folk and the fashioners of things;
    Nay, the Gods,—­and the Gods have sorrow, and these shall rue no more,
    These world-kings, these prevailers, these beaters-down of war: 
    What golden house shall hold them, what nightless shadowless heaven? 
    —­So they feast in the hall of Atli, and that eve is the first of the
      seven.

    So they feast, and weary, and know not how weary they are grown,
    As they stretch out hands to gather where their hands have never sown;
    They are drunken with wine and with folly, and the hope they would
      bring to pass
    Of the mirth no man may compass, and the joy that never was,
    Till their heads hang heavy with slumber, and their hands from the
      wine-cup fail,
    And blind stray their hands in the harp-strings and their mouths may
      tell no tale.

    Now the throne of Atli is empty, low lieth the world-king’s head
    Mid the woven gold and the purple, and the dreams of Atli’s bed,
    And Gudrun lieth beside him as the true by the faithful and kind,
    And every foe is departed, and no fear is left behind: 
    Lo, lo, the rest of the night-tide for which all kings would long,
    And all warriors of the people that have fought with fear and wrong.