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WAGNERIANA.
1. SIEGLINDE.
ALACK, Sieglinde, whither wilt thou flee?All things conspire against thee, old and new;
Fire, earth, air, water, all will thee undo.
Why wast thou born, fair maid? Ah, woe is me!
For in thy footsteps, over land and sea,
Wherever earth is green and heaven blue,
Fate and the hour, relentless, still pursue:
There is no room in this wide world for thee.
Nor yet, in all, thy death, sad loveling, may
The vengeance of the Gods supernal sate
And the red maw of unrelenting Fate.
Quick art thou with a seed, which, day by day,
Unto a flower of hate and grief shall grow
And whelm the heavens and the earth with woe.
2. WOTAN.
“REMOTE, unfriended, melancholy, slow!”Such are the names, o eldest of the Gods,
That on thy head they heap, the crackbrain clods,
For whom Francesca and her Paolo
Are but an idle tale of long ago,
For whom Orestes with the Furies' rods
And pale Prometheus on his rock at odds
With the fierce Fates are but a passing show.
Heed thou them not; they fool their hour and go,
Some little fulsome honey filched from life,
Back to their hell. But we, who love and know
That which it is to suffer evenso,
Look with wet eyes upon thy luckless strife
And our hearts throb in answer to thy woe.
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3. BRÜNNHILDE.
LADY of Sorrows, sore of Love's wild willUndone, of love, indeed, transformed to hate,
Yet love enough abiding with thy mate
Thee, that didst slay him, in his death to kill,
How wilt thou do? Walhalla's burnings fill
The heavens inane with smoke: in Asgard's gate
Wotan thy sire lies fall'n, the wise, the great;
And the Gods' Twilight holds Gladheimr hill.
Where wilt thou flee? Yet, though thy heavenly place
No longer wait thee, thou, from Siegfried's pyre
With him ascending on the wings of fire
To heaven, Walhalla with a tripled grace
Shalt find rebuilt and with thy hero stand
By Balder in the new immortal band.
4. HAGEN.
“GROWN old before my time, the glad I hate”,Quoth haughty Hagen. I, that, hating none,
Still in my heart Love harbour, as a sun,
The winterward of life that doth abate,
And do but scorn the glad, the fools of Fate,
I cannot yet but hail thee, dreadful son
Of Night and Hell, unconquerable one,
In sin and shame that yet art grimly great.
Stern fallen Angel of the old Norse day,
Thou, as the Satan of our latter lay,
The protest 'gainst triumphant dulness art
And brute o'erweening force of the world's heart,
That, when our Siegfrieds wax intolerable,
Some Hagen sends to hurl them down to hell.
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5. ISOLDE.
ALONE, Isolde, is thy hero fledUnto the wild and darkling wastes of death,
Whose road no traveller retravelleth,
To tell the tale of how he there hath sped;
Nor spared his henchman to the place of dread
With him to carry where he journeyeth;
Yet thee, his bride, awaited not a breath,
That thou mightst follow him among the dead.
How in Death's incommensurable halls
Wilt thou discover where he doth abide?
How wilt thou win to come unto his side?
“Love to love, spirit unto spirit calls;
“And I, forbidden though to see his face,
“Shall spend Eternity in his embrace”.
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