Page:The lay of the Nibelungs; (IA nibelungslay00hortrich).pdf/59

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Then one of his oars he lifted, Right broad it was and long,

He strack it down on Hagen, Did the hero mickle wrong,

That in the boat he staggered, And alighted on his knee;

Other such wrathful boatman Did never the Troneger see.

His proud unbidden guest He would now provoke still more,

He struck his head so stoutly That it broke in twain the oar,

With strokes on head of Hagen; He was a sturdy wight:

Nathless had Gelfrat’s boatman Small profit of that fight.

With fiercely-raging spirit The Troneger turn’d him round,

Clatch’d quick enough his scabbard, And a weapon there he founds

He smote his head from off him, And cast it on the sand,

Thus had that wrathful boatman His death from Hagen’s hand.

Even as Von Troneg Hagen The wrathful boatman slew,

The boat whirl’d round to the river, He had work enough to do;

Or ever he turn’d it shorewards, To weary he began,

But kept full stoutly rowing, The bold King Gunther's man.

He wheel’d it back, brave Hagen, With many a lusty stroke,

The strong oar, with such rowing, In his hand asunder broke;

He fain would reach the Recken, Ail waiting on the shore,

No tackle now he had; Hei, how deftly he spliced the oar,

With thong from off his buckler! It was a slender band;

Right over against a forest He drove the boat to land;

Where Gunther’s Recken waited, In crowds along the beach;

Full many a goodly hero Moved down his boat to reach.

Hagen ferries them over himself “into the unknown land,” like a right rare steersman; yet ever brooding fiercely on that prediction of the wild Mer-woman, which had outdone even his own dark forebodings. Seeing the Chaplain, who alone of them