'Oft to my mind My loss doth come, How I brotherless bide Bereaved and lone. Thereon I bethink me, When thickens the fight Thereon with much searching My soul doth muse:
<strong>14.</strong>
'Who staunch stands by me
In stress of fight,
Shoulder to shoulder,
Side by side?
Such want doth weaken
In war's dread hour;
Weak-winged I fly,
Whom friends all fail.
<strong>15.</strong>
'Son's place to his sire
(Saith a proverb true)
Another son born
Alone can fill.
Of kinsmen none
(Though ne'er so kind)
To brother can stand
In brother's stead.
<strong>16.</strong>
'O'er all our ice-fields,
Our northern snows,
Few now I find
Faithful and true.
Dark deeds men love,
Doom death to their kin,
A brother's body
Barter for gold.
<strong>17.</strong>
'Unpleasing to me
Our people's mood,
Each seeking his own
In selfish peace.
To the happier bees' home
Hath passed my son,
My good wife's child
To his glorious kin.
<strong>18.</strong>
'Odin, mighty monarch,
Of minstrel mead the lord,
On me a heavy hand
Harmful doth lay.
Gloomy in unrest
Ever I grieve,
Sinks my drooping brow,
Seat of sight and thought.
<strong>19.</strong>
'Fierce fire of sickness
First from my home
Swept off a son
With savage blow:
One who was heedful,
Harmless, I wot,
In deeds unblemished,
In words unblamed.
<strong>20.</strong>
'Still do I mind me,
When the Friend of men
High uplifted
To the home of gods
That sapling stout
Of his father's stem,
Of my true wife born
A branch so fair.
<strong>21.</strong>
'Once bare I goodwill
To the great spear-lord,
Him trusty and true
I trowed for friend:
Ere the giver of conquest,
The car-borne god,
Broke faith and friendship
False in my need.
<strong>22.</strong>
'Now victim and worship
To Vilir's brother,
The god once honoured,
I give no more.
Yet the friend of Mimir
On me hath bestowed
Some boot for bale,
If all boons I tell.
