A great deal is said in these lines by the use of suggestive words and words of symbolism. Paraphrased these verses mean much more. "No matter how much all other people showed their love and admiration for Sigurd by making festival and public rejoicing, feeling happier and better for having seen him, all their affection was as nothing to the love that Gudrun secretly felt for him, out of her lonesome heart; and great was her secret grief at the thought that he might not love her. Then she acted with him after the manner of the woman resolved to win. Whenever she saw him rejoice she became sad. Whenever he spoke to her, she remained silent. Many things Sigurd knew--so wise he was that he could see even the events of the future; but she saw nothing and knew nothing thereafter except Sigurd, nor did she wish to see or to know anything else. And when he showed himself wise, she acted as a foolish child. And when he tried to be kind to her she answered him with a strange and harsh voice, and suddenly became without pity. And at last when he began to long for love, and she perceived it, then her heart became cold as a sword. So was the soul of this woman in the time of her passion--now like ravening fire, now again desolate with all the sorrows that corrode and destroy." Because she sees still that love is not for her, the whole scene of the courting--this is one of the cases where the maiden woos the man without ever losing her dignity as a maiden--is of consummate skill, showing Gudrun at one moment simple and sweet as a child, revealing suddenly, at another time, the strange height and depth of her, many things terrible in her, capable of the making or the ruin of a kingdom. I am not going to quote, but I hope that you will notice particularly the fine scene of the death of Brynhild. There is a grand thought in it. I did not tell you, in the brief epitome of the plot which I gave you, about the second wooing of Brynhild. When Sigurd wooed her for King Gunnar, he lay down beside her at night; but he placed his naked sword between them. This episode is famous in Western literature. So he brought her chaste to her bridegroom. And when afterwards Brynhild kills herself, in order that she may be able to join him in the spirit world, she shows her admiration of Sigurd's action by saying, "When you put my dead body on the funeral pyre beside the dead body of Sigurd, put his naked sword again between us, as it was put between us when he wooed me long ago, for the sake of King Gunnar." The suicide chapter is very grand. And the ending of the long tragedy has also a peculiar grandeur, when Gudrun leaps into the sea. The sea-waves o'er her swept; And their will is her will henceforward; and who knoweth the deeps of the sea And the wealth of the bed of Gudrun, and the days that yet shall be?