fidelity of the wife for her husband, as shown by Kriemhild,
carried out with unhesitating consistency to the bitter end.
This is not the gallantry of medieval chivalry, which colors so
largely the opening scenes of the poem, but the heroic valor, the
death-despising stoicism of the ancient Germans, before which the
masters of the world, the all-conquering Romans, were compelled
to bow.

In so far as the "Nibelungenlied" has forgotten most of the
history of the youthful Siegfried, and knows nothing of his love
for Brunhild, it is a torso, but so grand withal, that one hardly
regrets the loss of these integral elements of the old saga. As
it is a working over of originally separate lays, it is not
entirely homogeneous, and contains not a few contradictions. In
spite of these faults, however, which a close study reveals, it
is nevertheless the grandest product of Middle High German epic
poetry, and deservedly the most popular poem of older German
literature. It lacks, to be sure, the grace of diction found in
Gottfried von Strassburg's "Tristan und Isolde", the detailed and
often magnificent descriptions of armor and dress to be met with
in the epics of Hartman von Ouwe; it is wanting in the lofty
philosophy of Wolfram von Eschenbach's "Parzival", and does not,
as this latter, lead the reader into the realms of religious
doubts and struggles. It is imposing through its very
simplicity, through the grandeur of the story, which it does not
seek to adorn and decorate. It nowhere pauses to analyze motives
nor to give us a picture of inner conflict as modern authors are
fond of doing. Its characters are impulsive and prompt in
action, and when they have once acted, waste no time in useless
regret or remorse.