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All this because of the accursed gold (closing cadence a).

The daughter to whom the god confides the whole depth of his misery is of all his daughters the dearest. She has no higher ambition than to be the embodiment of Wotan's will. Unconsciously to both, the god, in his divine resignation, is merely prefiguring the sacrifice to which, in the providence of a higher power than the Lord of Valhalla, that daughter has been chosen. But the god has not yet learned the full bitterness of his cup. He loves the Volsung, and is obliged to destroy at a blow the object of his love and the agent of his plan. In doing this the irresistible might of law bears down his will. That will is known to Brünnhilde. In defiance of Wotan's commands she attempts to shield the Volsung; and to bring the combat between Hunding and Siegmund to the conclusion inexorably demanded by that law of purity which the hero unwittingly violated, the god is himself compelled to interfere, and to cause the sword, designed as the symbol of the Volsung power, to be shattered on the spear with which Wotan exercises dominion.

Love, for a second time, feels the weight of Alberich's curse. Now the beloved daughter falls under the condemnation of the law. But the god is becoming unconsciously an agent in a plan of redemption, which belongs to a loftier ethical scheme than was possible before. Wotan is about to disappear as an active agent from the scene. His plot is wrecked. The representative of his will, the object of his tenderest paternal affection, unknown to him, but inspired wholly by a love void of all selfishness, is about to take up the task surrendered by the god, and carry it out to a conclusion different from and yet like that imagined by the god. Before the punishment is visited upon her, the intensity of that love, turned through sympathy towards Sieglinde, has for a moment endowed her with prophetic powers. She hails the hero yet unborn, and persuades Sieglinde to save her own life for his sake. Then she accepts her punishment. She is bereft of her divinity, put into a magic sleep, and left by the way-side to be the prey of the first passer-by. But the love of the father, awakened to tenfold power by the bitterness of his own fate and the knowledge that his child's disobedience was but the execution of his own will, shields her from dishonor by surrounding her with a wall of fire, which none but a freer hero than the god himself, and one for whom the divine spear has no terrors, shall pass. The god's egotism is completely broken, the reconciliation between his offended majesty and the offender established. The punishment of Brünnhilde is but the chastisement of love. Can there be any doubt of this after the musical proclamation contained in the finale of "Die Walküre?"

VI.

I am presuming, to a great extent, upon the reader's familiarity with the incidents of the dramas constituting the tragedy. It is the action which takes place where we have not been in the habit of looking for it that I am seeking to discover. "Siegfried," the second drama of the trilogy, is almost wholly devoted to preparation for the fateful outcome. To this fact is due much of its cheerfulness of tone. It is a period of comparative rest. The celestial plot has entered upon a new phase, and in this drama the new combination of characters is formed for the development of that new phase. The ethical drama which the play symbolizes might be described as follows:

The hero has been born and bred under circumstances which have developed his freedom in every direction. The representative of the evil principle seeks to direct his heroic powers towards an advancement of the sinister side of the counter-plot; but in vain. By his own efforts he endows himself with the magic sword, and in the full consciousness of his free manhood he achieves for himself the adventures and the happiness which were denied to the god. He gains the ring and tastes the delight of love.

At first Siegfried appears simply as a wild forest lad, who has grown up with no sympathetic acquaintance beyond the beasts and birds with which he is wont to associate in their haunts. In this character the composer pictures him musically by means of the merry hunting-call which he is supposed to blow on his horn (see Chapter I.). Most of the music which is associated with him in the first act of the drama, in which this horn-call enters so largely, is markedly characteristic of the impetuous nature of the forest lad, with his contempt for dissimulation and his rough, straight-forward energy. But a different side of his nature is disclosed when, having learned the story of his birth and acquired possession of his father's sword, remade by himself, he becomes a part of the sylvan picture of the second act, which lends so much charm to the "Siegfried" drama. Here, again, is scenic music of the kind which each of the dramas possesses, and which has so often set us to wondering at Wagner's marvellous faculty for juggling with the senses—making our ears to see and our eyes to hear. Siegfried has been brought before the cave—where Fafner, in the form of a dragon, is guarding the ring and the hoard—by Mime, who has planned that the lad shall kill the dragon and then himself fall a victim to treachery. Siegfried throws himself on a hillock at the foot of a tree and listens to nature's music in the forest. And such music! Music redolent of that sweet mystery which peopled the old poets' minds with the whole amiable tribe of fays and dryads and wood-nymphs. The spirit which lurks under gnarled roots and in tangled boughs, in hollow trees and haunted forest caves, breathes through it. The youth is brooding over the mystery of his childhood, and he utters his thoughts in tender phrases, while the mellow wood-wind instruments in the orchestra identify his thoughts with the dead parents whom he never knew. He wonders what his mother looked like, and pathetically asks whether all human mothers die when their children are born. Suddenly the sunlight begins to flicker along the leafy canopy; a thousand indistinct voices join in that indefinable hum, of which, when heard in reality and not in the musician's creation, one is at a loss to tell how much is actual and how much the product of imagination, both sense and fancy having been miraculously quickened by the spirit which moves through the trees.

At last all is vocal, and Siegfried's ear is caught by the song of the bird to which we too have been listening. In his longing for companionship he wishes that he might understand and converse with his feathered playmate. Might he not if he were able to whistle like the bird? Now note the naïve touch of musical humor with which Wagner, the tragedian, enlivens the scene. Siegfried cuts a reed growing beside a rivulet and fashions a rude pipe out of it. He listens, and when the bird quits singing he attempts to imitate its "wood-note wild." But his pipe is too low in pitch and out of tune. He cuts it shorter and raises its pitch half a tone. Again he cuts it, with the same result; then squeezes it impatiently, and renders it still more "out of tune and harsh." He throws it away, confesses his humiliation by the bird, then reaches for his horn. With its merry call he wakes the echoes, disturbs the sleep of the dragon, and precipitates the combat which ends in his equipment with Tarnhelm and ring, and his receipt of the injunction from the bird (which now he understands through the magic of the dragon's blood touching his lips) to slay Mime and waken Brünnhilde on the burning mountain.