Ah, me, and alas! for her mourning, that goodness should bear such pain
And faith ever waken sorrow! Yea, so doth it run alway
With the life of men, and to-morrow must they mourn who rejoice to-day!
Here follow the bitter tidings of Gahmuret’s death. Then, when the child of sorrow came to be born, Herzeleide retreated from the Court, and took refuge in a wild woodland, where Parsifal grew to manhood, in ignorance of the world and its ways; in ignorance also of his high lineage, for the Queen held that she had suffered enough through knighthood and its adventures, and sought only to rescue her child from the dangers of his father’s fate. I am drawing again upon Miss Jessie Weston’s charming translation of Wolfram’s poem for this delightful picture of Parsifal’s boyhood:
No knightly weapon she gave him save such as in childish play
He wrought himself from the bushes that grew on his lonely way.
A bow and arrows he made him, and with these in thoughtless glee,
He shot at the birds as they carolled o’erhead in the leafy tree.
But when the feathered songster of the woods at his feet lay dead,
In wonder and dumb amazement he bowed down his golden head,