Page:The Elder Edda and the Younger Edda - tr. Thorpe - 1907.djvu/246

Rh 36. Atli waked me, but I seemed to be full of evil thoughts, for my kinsmen's death.

37. "So me just now have the Norns waked,—a grateful interpretation I fain would have. Methought that thou, Gudrun! Giuki's daughter! with a treacherous sword didst pierce me through."

38. "Fire it forebodes, when one of iron dreams, arrogance and pleasure, a woman's anger. Against evil I will go burn thee, cure and medicate thee, although, to me thou art hateful."

39. "Seemed to me here in the garden that young shoots had fallen, which I wished to let grow: torn up with their roots, reddened with blood, to table they were brought, and offered me to eat.

40. "Seemed to me that hawks flew from my hand, lacking their quarry, to the house of woes; seemed to me I ate their hearts with honey swollen with blood, with sorrowing mind.

41. "Seemed to me from my hand whelps I let slip; lacking cause of joy, both of them howled: seemed to me their bodies became dead carcases: of the carrion I was compelled to eat."

42. "There will warriors round thy couch converse, and of the white-locked ones take off the head; death-doomed they are within a few nights, a little ere day: thy court will eat of them."

43. "Lie down I would not, nor sleep after, obstinate in my fate—That I will execute!"

218