Lilies, swimming on the mere, In the castle shadow, Under draw their heads, and Fear Walks the misty meadow; Tremble not, it is not Death Pledging dark espousal: 'Tis the Head of endless breath, Challenging carousal! Brim the horn! a health is drunk, Now, that shall keep going: Life is but the pebble sunk, Deeds, the circle growing! Fill, and pledge the Head of Bran! While his lead they follow, Long shall heads in Britain plan Speech Death cannot swallow. _George Meredith._ CXIII THE SLAYING OF THE NIBLUNGS HOGNI Ye shall know that in Atli's feast-hall on the side that joined the house Were many carven doorways whose work was glorious With marble stones and gold-work, and their doors of beaten brass: Lo now, in the merry morning how the story cometh to pass! --While the echoes of the trumpet yet fill the people's ears, And Hogni casts by the war-horn, and his Dwarf-wrought sword uprears, All those doors aforesaid open, and in pour the streams of steel, The best of the Eastland champions, the bold men of Atli's weal: They raise no cry of battle nor cast forth threat of woe, And their helmed and hidden faces from each other none may know: Then a light in the hall ariseth, and the fire of battle runs All adown the front of the Niblungs in the face of the mighty ones; All eyes are set upon them, hard drawn is every breath, Ere the foremost points be mingled and death be blent with death. --All eyes save the eyes of Hogni; but e'en as the edges meet, He turneth about for a moment to the gold of the kingly seat, Then aback to the front of battle; there then, as the lightning-flash Through the dark night showeth the city when the clouds of heaven clash, And the gazer shrinketh backward, yet he seeth from end to end The street and the merry market, and the windows of his friend, And the pavement where his footsteps yester'en returning trod, Now white and changed and dreadful 'neath the threatening voice of God; So Hogni seeth Gudrun, and the face he used to know, Unspeakable, unchanging, with white unknitted brow With half-closed lips untrembling, with deedless hands and cold Laid still on knees that stir not, and the linen's moveless fold.