THE BUGLE SONG.
[At the commencement of the Wagnerian performances at Bayreuth, the chief motivo in the opera was given out by several bugles, after which the curtain rose.]
The bugle calls in Bayreuth's halls
Some notes of Wagner's mythic story;
The tenor shakes, the heroine quakes,
And the wild Teuton leaps in glory.
Blow, bugles, blow, set the wild echoes flying,
Echoes of Melody, ye answer, "Dying, dying."
O hark! O hear! how thin and clear,
With no perspiring players showing;
O sweet and far from bar to bar
The horns and trumpets faintly blowing.
Blow—let us hear composers' ghosts replying;
Blow, Wagner, blow, while Melody is dying.
"Sweet tunes," they cry, "you shall not die,
Nor fade from hill, and field, and river,
But sweetly roll from soul to soul,
And gladden music lovers ever."
Blow, bugles, blow, set the wild echoes flying,
But Melody still answers—"Never dying."
From Funny Folks.