But the Niblungs look about them, and but few
folk they behold Upright on their feet for the battle : now they climb
aloft no more, Nor cast the dead from the windows; but they
raise a rampart of war, And its stones are the fallen East-folk, and no lowly
wall is that.
Therein was Gunnar the mighty: on the shields of
men he sat, And the sons of his people hearkened, for his hand
through the harp-strings ran, And he sang in the hall of his foeman of the Gods
and the making of man, And how season was sundered from season in the
days of the fashioning, And became the Summer and Autumn, and became
the Winter and Spring; He sang of men's hunger and labour, and their love
and their breeding of broil, And their hope that is fostered of famine, and their
rest that is fashioned of toil: Fame then and the sword he sang of, and the hour
of the hardy and wise, When the last of the living shall perish, and the
first of the dead shall nrise, And the torch shall be lit in the daylight, and God
unto man shall pray, And the he.irt shall cry out for the hand in the
fight of the uttermost day.
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