THE SINGER AND HIS LAY
187
III
We have heard from many of Hild’s disgrace,
15how heroes of Geat were homeless made
till sorrow stole their sleep away.
That they surmounted: so this may I![1]
IV
Theodric waited[2] for thirty winters
in Merings’ burg: to many ’twas known.
20That he surmounted: so this may I!
V
We have often heard of Eormanric,
his wolfish mind; wide was his rule
o’er realm of Goths: a grim king he!
Sat many a subject sorrow-bound,
25waiting but woe, and wished full sore
that the time of the king might come to end.
That they surmounted: so this may I!
VI
Sitteth one[3] sorrowful, severed from joys;
all’s dark in his soul; he deems for him
30endless ever the anguish-time!
- ↑ Some editors and translators omit this refrain, and make one “case” of the two treated in III and IV; also, as noted above, reading “Mæthhilde” and “the love-longing of Geat had no bounds.”
- ↑ Lived there, that is, at some castle of the Huns, as Attlla’s vassal. See notes to the Hildebrand lay.
- ↑ That is, any person who has lost his situation and has fallen on evil times. If the strict dramatic-lyric scheme be assumed, this could pass as interpolation. The writer of these lines could hardly have taken Deor’s own tonic.
