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chriemhild.
CHRIEMHILD.
YOU know the strange old Nibelungen story,
The fitful, billowy song of love and hate,—
Of rare Chriemhild, and her rose-garden's glory
By wrath laid desolate?
The fitful, billowy song of love and hate,—
Of rare Chriemhild, and her rose-garden's glory
By wrath laid desolate?
Glad shines that garden, with its leagues of roses,
Midway the old time and the new between;
Yet not a flower its silken bar encloses,
So sweet as the Rose-Queen.
Midway the old time and the new between;
Yet not a flower its silken bar encloses,
So sweet as the Rose-Queen.
She walks there in the young world's radiant morning,
Intwining hero-garlands, redly gay,
For her twelve knights, who, armed for battle-warning,
To watch the garden stay.
Intwining hero-garlands, redly gay,
For her twelve knights, who, armed for battle-warning,
To watch the garden stay.
She seeks, undaunted, its remotest edges,
Cut from the forest's still and murky gloom,
Where, right against weird glens and caverned ledges,
The freshest roses bloom.
Cut from the forest's still and murky gloom,
Where, right against weird glens and caverned ledges,
The freshest roses bloom.
