Still she stood as a carven image, as a stone of ancient days When the sun is bright about it and the wind sweeps low o'er the ways. All hushed was Gunnar the Niblung and knew not how to beseech, But still Hogni faced his sister, nor faltered aught in his speech:
"Thou art young," he said, "O sister; thou wert called a mighty queen When the nurses first upraised thee and first thy body was seen: If thou bide with these toiling women when a great king bids thee to wife, Then first is it seen of the Niblungs that they cringe and cower from strife: By the deeds of the Golden Sigurd I charge thee hinder us not, When the Norns have dight the way-beasts, and our hearts for the journey are hot!"
She answered not with speaking, she questioned not with eyes, Nought did her deadly anger to her brow unknitted rise, Then forth came Grimhild the Mighty, and the cup was in her hand, Wherein with the sea's dread mingled was the might and the blood of the land; And the guile of the summer serpent and the herb of the sunless dale Were blent for the deadening slumber that forgetteth joy and bale; And cold words of ancient wisdom that the very Gods would dim Were the foreshores of that wine-sea and the cliffs that girt its rim: Therewith in the hall stood Grimhild, and cried aloud and spake:
"It was I that bore thee, daughter; I laboured once for thy sake, I groaned to bear thee a queen, I sickened sore for thy fame: By me and my womb I command thee that thou worship the Niblung name, And take the gift we would give thee, and be wed to a king of the earth, And rejoice in kings hereafter when thy sons are come to the birth: Lo, then as thou lookest upon them, and thinkest of glory to come, It shall be as if Sigmund were living, and Sigurd sat in thine home."
Nought answered the white-armed Gudrun, no master of masters might see The hate in her soul swift-growing or the rage of her misery. But great waxed the wrath of Grimhild; there huge in the hall she stood, And her fathers' might stirred in her, and the well-spring of her blood; And she cried out blind with anger: "Though all we die on one day, Though we live for ever in sorrow, yet shalt thou be given away To Atli the King of the mighty, high lord of the Eastland gold: Drink now, that my love and my wisdom may thaw thine heart grown cold; And take those great gifts of our giving, the cities long builded for thee, The wine-burgs digged for thy pleasure, the fateful wealthy lea, The darkling woods of the deer, the courts of mighty lords, The hosts of men war-shielded, the groves of fallow swords!"