Many will say, 'What good thing can come out of poverty?' She who for love endures it, she 'scapeth Hell thereby, And, in the kingdom of Heaven, receiveth a hundredfold For all she has borne for love's sake, new joys for her sorrows old! 50 Not one have I known in my lifetime, I count it a bitter truth, Neither a man nor a maiden, who the joy and the pride of youth, And all earth's riches and honour, will leave as a worthless thing If weighed with the glory of Heaven, and the service of Heaven's King! But Queen Herzeleide only, she left her fair estate, 55 In her youth of all joy bereavèd, with sorrow afar to mate. So holy was she and gentle, so faithful and pure of mind, That no tongue spake a word against her, and no eye a fault could find. Sunlight or shadow, what recked she? the day was to her as night, For her heart was the home of sorrow, and dead was the world's delight. 60 And in sorrow and grief she wandered, till she came to Soltanè's strand, A woodland wild and lonely afar from her native land: Fair flowers might bloom and blossom without, on the sunlit plain, And be woven in rosy chaplets, but for her they would bloom in vain! And there, mid the woodland shadows, she hid with Gamuret's son, 65 For she willed that her life's last treasure be revealed unto none: So she called her folk around her, (who toiled in the upland field With oxen and plough, that the furrows their daily bread might yield,) And she charged them all, by the service which she as their queen might claim, That they hide from the boy his birthright and the fame of his father's name. 70 'For the knightly deeds ye vaunt of, and the glory and pride of war, Have wrought me but heart's affliction, and trouble and anguish sore, So, lest I yet more should suffer, I pray you, my servants dear, That ye speak no word of knighthood, lest my son perchance should hear!'