Forsooth they can ne’er have harmed thee, ah! leave them in peace once more!”
And his mother kissed him gently, “Perchance I have wrought a wrong,
Of a truth the dear God who made them, He gave unto them their song,
And I would not that one of His creatures should sorrow because of me.”
The turning-point in Parsifal’s career came a little later on, when on his wondering eyes fell the vision of certain of King Arthur’s knights who passed through the forest:
It chanced through a woodland thicket one morn as he took his way,
And brake from o’erhanging bushes full many a leafy spray,
That a pathway steep and winding rose sharply his track anear,
And the distant beat of horse-hoofs fell strange on his wondering ear.
Then the boy grasped his javelin firmly, and thought what the sound might be;