“We are the voices of the wandering wind,
That moan for rest and rest can never find.
Lo! as the wind is, so is mortal life,—
A moan, a sigh, a sob, a storm, a strife.”
This number is a semi-chorus, set for female voices, interspersed with brief phrases for tenor, and after a bass solo, relating the King’s dream and the hermit’s interpretation, which induces him to doubly guard Siddârtha’s pleasure-house, leads up to a beautiful chorus, divided between two sopranos, alto, two tenors, and two basses:—
“Softly the Indian night sunk o’er the plain,
Fragrant with blooms and jewelled thick with stars,
And cool with mountain airs sighing adown
From snow-flats on Himâla high outspread.
The moon above the eastern peaks