sad, they climbed to the Cliff-of-Eagles,
went, welling with tears, the wonder to view.
Found on the sand there, stretched at rest,
their lifeless lord, who had lavished rings
3035of old upon them. Ending-day
had dawned on the doughty-one; death had seized
in woful slaughter the Weders’ king.
There saw they, besides, the strangest being,
loathsome, lying their leader near,
3040prone on the field. The fiery dragon,
fearful fiend, with flame was scorched.
Reckoned by feet, it was fifty measures
in length as it lay. Aloft erewhile
it had revelled by night, and anon come back,
3045seeking its den; now in death’s sure clutch
it had come to the end of its earth-hall joys.
By it there stood the stoups and jars;
dishes lay there, and dear-decked swords
eaten with rust, as, on earth’s lap resting,
3050a thousand winters they waited there.
For all that heritage huge, that gold
of bygone men, was bound by a spell,[1]
so the treasure-hall could be touched by none
of human kind,—save[2] that Heaven’s King,
3055God himself, might give whom he would.
Helper of Heroes, the hoard to open,—
even such a man as seemed to him meet.
- ↑ Laid on it when it was put in the barrow. This spell, or in our days the “curse,” either prevented discovery or brought dire ills on the finder and taker. The Nibelungs’ gold is cited by Holthausen as a case in point.—See below, v. 3069.
- ↑ One of our poet’s mild “riders” to correct obvious remains of gentilism.
