Part 19 (1/2)
Such figures as play their part in this story, the Silver Knight, with his swan and faery skiff, the fair falsely-accused darant life-colours
The s to ins of old books of legend, where against a golden background shi+ne forth vivid yet delicate shapes, in tints brilliant yet soft as distance, the green of April, the rose of day-break, the blue of remote horizons
There is an older story on these saory, we are told, of Love and the Soul And an allegory is meant to teach soreat? Not enough to be innocent, kind, loving, pure as snow, like Elsa, a being golden and lovely through and through, such as could lure down a sort of angel froreat one must be Life, the Sphinx, requires upon occasion that one be great Just a little greatness, so to speak, and Elsa would first of all have recognised the obligation to keep her word; would further have trusted what must have been her own profound instinct about theher shallow reat, we reat; she would have trusted truth and greatness though they came to her unlabelled
But Life, the Sphinx, proposed to her a riddle, and because she was no more than a poor, sweet, liround her in its teeth and sed her up
TANNHaUSER
TANNHaUSER
I
We are shown in the Ouverture of Tannhauser the pohich contended for the young knight and ood is syri of the Sirens, the Bacchic dance
We are not informed how he carave's court, which we are told he forsook of yore in offended pride, we think we divine He is ifted than any of his associates By his sense of superiority he is hty, quick, i way We can iine how upon an occasion he left them, after a round quarrel, in a fury of vexation, sick with disgust at the whole world of such slow, limited creatures, the whole world of petty passions and narrow circu in life which should seem to him worth while, of satisfactory size, peer to himself And so his feet had come in the familiar valley suddenly upon a new path, and been led to the interior of the mountain where Venus, driven fro Cross, had taken refuge with all her pagan train There the Queen of Love herself had contented hiht this no doubt a sufficient crown of life; this had met all his vast desires, appeased all his boundless pride He had lived in the rosy at, existence one feast, at which everything inbut his soul
We first have sight of hi at the feet of Venus, his head pillowed on her lap There are dances and revels for their delight, but he has fallen asleep,--and in his drea sweetness in which the Sirens hold forth enkindling prootten music of church-bells He starts awake The tender queen dran-his head again with a caress ”Beloved, where are your thoughts?” But his neglected soul has in dream made its claim The sweetness of all this other is found by sudden revulsion cloying to the point of despair ”Too ht awaken!” At just that touch, that sound in sleep of bells, his whole poor humanity has flooded back upon hient ”Tell me what troubles you?” his weak infinite homesickness breaks bounds ”It see has been foreign toof bells
Oh, tellis it that I hear theth of er for er see the sun or the sky's friendly constellations The grass-blade I see no s in the new su the return of Spring Am I never to hear them, never to see theious, reproaches hirets What, is he so soon weary of the marvels hich her love surrounds hi a God? Has he so soon forgotten the old unhappiness? ”Mythe praise of love, which you celebrate so gloriously that you won the Goddess of Love herself”
Tannhauser, thus bidden, seizes the harp and warmly entones a hymn of praise to her, which from its climax of ardour, suddenly--as if his lips were tripped by the word ”,--turns into a prayer to her to release hireat for me A God has the capacity to enjoy perpetually, but I ae Not joy alone can satisfy my heart, after pleasure I yearn for sorrow Forth frodom I must fare Oh, Queen, Goddess, let me depart!”
Reproachful questions succeed on her part: Of what neglect has her love been guilty, of what can he accuse her? In reply, grasping his harp again, he adds fiery praise to praise of her greatness, the wonders of her kingdoain into his prayer for release: ”But I, amid these rosy perfumes, I yearn for the odour of the forest, yearn for the pure blue of our skies, the fresh green of our sward, the sweet song of our birds, the dear sound of our bells! Forth frodom I must fare O Queen, Goddess, letto anger, without ceasing to be surprise ”You sing the praise of my love, and wish at the saht surfeit?” He tells her, disaran ears, that it is that over-great beauty of hers he reater, never sincerer, than in this moment when hethen, truly alarhts awaiting them; to these she bids him with the persuasive voice of love When the Goddess of beauty thus invites aall else But this Tannhauser, with the dreamy echo in his earth-born ears of the church-bells of home, he catches, instead of her beautiful forrants that her beauty is the source of all beauty, that every lovely ainst the whole world, he promises, he will thereafter be her chao he must, for here he can but become a slave Freedole he h thedom he must fare! Queen, Goddess, let hio!” she bids him in lovely wrath ”Traitor, see, I do not hold you back! I leave you free, go your way, go your way! Let your doom be to have that which you yearn for! Go back to cold ross dismal delusion we Gods of Joy fled deep into the warm bosom of the earth Go back to them, infatuated! Seek your soul's welfare and find it never! Not long before your proud heart will surrender I shall see you hu me, will invoke the wonders of my power!” Unheedful of the remainder, he seizes avidly upon his dismissal ”Ah, lovely Goddess, farewell! Never will I return!” What--never return? She threatens with her curse, if he shall not return, hi for her miracles, let the world become a wilderness and have for its hero a slave! But yet--he cannot have meant what he said, he will come back, let him say that he will come back!
”Never prison-house of love, as he pants upon the threshold of freedoht me!”--”Come back” she desperately entreats, ”when your heart impels you!”--”Forever your beloved flees!”--”Coh penance I shall be absolved froates of salvation close to you!”--”Salvation! My hope of salvation lies in the Blessed Mary!”
At that na a cry vanishes, and with her the dido in a sunny well-known valley, near to a road-side shrine of the Blessed Mary at whose heht, where he was used in for-tourna which a sinister ruan Goddess Venus still lived and held her court All the landscape sether at her loveliest Oh, so sweeter to the ears of the resuscitated knight than the song of sirens, comes the homely tinkle of sheepbells
A little shepherd pipes and sings in joy over the return of May
Tannhauser stands statue-still, as if he feared by the slightest movement to wake himself, to dispel the vision
A band of penitents, starting on a pilgriin's shrine, saluting her and asking her grace upon their pilgri-untouched chords At the same moment that the aroused sense of pollution would overwhelrieneration through repentance and penitential practices A very race it seems to him, by which he sees the door of hope open to hiht of his emotion forces hiriht: ”Ah, heavily oppresses er can I carry it No more will I therefore of ease and rest, but choose for rily, the breeze wafts sounds of church-bells With tears Tannhauser bows his head and sinks into prayer
Cheerful hunting-horns breaking upon the air do not rouse hirave and a group of his favorite ure, they stop to observe it The nises their old coone, to disappear utterly The circuested by the first words uttered when Tannhauser starts to his feet and faces therave; ”Have you coance?”--”Tell us what is implied by your return?” says the minstrel Biterolf; ”Reconciliation? Or renewed battle?”--”Do you come as friend or foe?” asks thedoes it see note in the address of all--save Wolfra them, has taken account of the old companion's countenance; his syes the mood toward him of all the others
”As a foe? How can you ask? Is that the bearing of arrogance? Oh, welco have been absent from our midst!”--”Welcome if you come peaceably-minded!”
say the others; ”Welco us!”
The Landgrave, after adding his gracious greeting to the greetings of the others asks where he has been this long time ”Far, far froueness nant, ”where I found neither peace nor rest Inquire not! I have not coo entleness in the forle o He turns from them resolutely: ”Detain me not! It would ill profit me to tarry! Never more for me repose! Onward and ever onward liesaway, despite their entreaties, when Wolfras him to an instantaneous standstill ”Remain beside Elizabeth!”--”Elizabeth!” Tannhauser repeats after him, reverently as if the name were consecrated bread upon his lips; ”Oh, power of Heaven, is it you calling that sweet name to me?” At the spectacle of his erave: ”Have I your leave, ood fortune?” The Landgrave consents ”Inforht, and may God lend him virtue to loose it worthily!” Wolfram imparts to Henry then that when in the days before his disappearance the , whatever the event of the contest, one prize there had been won by hi alone had had power to enthrall the interest of that most virtuous maid, Elizabeth And when he had proudly withdrawn fro of the re minstrels; her cheek had lost bloo-tourneys ”Return to us, O daring minstrel,”
Wolfraside of ours, that she er be absent frohtness upon us!” The fellow-minstrels join their voices to Wolfra thes forard us henceforward!”
Great gladness has fallen upon the knight, crushed to earth a moment past by a sense of sin; a swift rebound lifts up the heart that had asked of this fair and over-fair world just restored to him only opportunity to expiate and be made clean Can this be true, this which seems like the most madly irave's niece, the fair and faultless, the saint! No doubt in the old days he had worshi+pped her, not daring to lift his eyes above her footprints, had loved as a moth may a star