Silvered the roof-tops of the pleasure-house,
And all the sleeping land.”
The next scene opens with a soprano solo (“Within the Bower of inmost Splendor”), in which Yasôdhara relates her dream of the voice crying “The Time is nigh,” to Siddârtha, and closes with a tender duet for soprano and tenor. The next number is a brief chorus (“Then in her Tears she slept”), followed by the tenor solo, “I will depart,” in which Siddârtha proclaims his resolve “to seek deliverance and the unknown light,” and leading to a richly-colored and majestic chorus:
“There came a wind which lulled each sense aswoon
Of captains and of soldiers:
The gates of triple brass rolled back all silently
On their grim hinges;
Then, lightly treading, where those sleepers lay,
Into the night Siddârtha passed,
While o’er the land a tremor spread,