heroes--Gunther, and Gernot, and Gieselher, the valiant gleeman Volker, who flourishes his broadsword with a humorous ferocity, as if it were his fiddlestick, and, above all, the dark Hagan himself: "Well grown and well compacted was that redoubted guest; Long were his legs and sinewy, and deep and broad his chest. His hair, that once was sable, with grey was dashed of late, And terrible his visage, and lordly was his gait." Finding her first attempt at midnight assassination fail, the Queen first commits her cause to Bloedel, the brother of Etzel; but in an instant his head was severed from his body by the might of Sir Dankwart. A terrible massacre ensues, during which the banqueting hall of King Etzel is turned into a charnel-house. Then Iring, the Danish Margrave, falls in single combat with Hagan. An infuriate rush is now made by the Huns against the Burgundians, who had fortified themselves in the hall; but against such men as Dankwart, Hagan, and Volker, they avail no more than hail against the granite rock. "Thereafter reigned deep silence, the din of war was hushed; Through every crack and cranny the blood on all sides gushed From that large hall of slaughter; red did the gutters run. So much was through their prowess by those of Rhineland done." Kriemhild then, finding all her efforts with the sword baffled, sets fire to the hall; but, the roof being vaulted, even this application of the terror that scared Napoleon from Moscow, did not subdue the Promethean endurance of the Burgundians. The noble Margrave Rudeger is at last appealed to, as bound by his promise made to Kriemhild at Worms to prosecute the bloody work of her revenge to the last; but he also, with five hundred of his men, falls in the bloody wrestling, and with him his adversary Gernot, the brother of Gunther. Last of all, the haughty defiant spirit of the unsubdued Hagan draws, though unwilling, the redoubted Dietrich of Bern into the fight; and before his might Hagan himself is not slain, but taken captive, that he may be reserved to glut the private appetite of the sanguinary queen. "_Bring me here John the Baptist's head in a charger!_" Nothing less than this will satisfy the terrible revenge of Kriemhild. With her own hand she lifts up the terrible sword Balmung, and, meeting Hagan face to face in the dark prison, and charging him hot to the heart with his deadly wrongs, severs the head from his body. Kriemhild's revenge is now complete. But the revenge of Him who rules above required one other blow. This was immediately executed by the aged master Hildebrand, one of Dietrich's company. And the poem concludes, like a battle-field, many to weep for, and only a few to weep. "There now the dreary corpses stretched all around were seen; There lay, hewn in pieces, the fair and noble queen. Sir Dietrich and King Etzel, their tears began to start; For kinsmen, and for vassals, each sorrowed in his heart.