A lion is the game I chase today,
But I have failed to find one.
SIEGFRIED.
That I know,
For I myself have killed him!—Food is spread.
Sound trumpets in his praise who ordered that,
For now we feel the need. Accursed ravens,
Here too? Now blow your bugles till they burst!
I've thrown near every kind of game I killed
At this black flock; at last I threw a fox,
But still they would not fly, and yet I hate
Nothing so much in all the woodland green
As that deep black—'tis like the devil's hue.
The doves have never flocked around me so!
Shall we stay here to pass the night?
GUNTHER.
We thought—
SIEGFRIED.
'Tis well, the choice is fitting, and there gapes
A hollow tree. I'll take it for myself.
For all my life have I been used to that,
And I know nothing better than at night
On soft dry wood to lay my weary head,
And so to dream, half waking, half asleep,
To count the passing hours by the birds
That waken slowly, softly, one by one,
Each singing in his turn. Then tick, tick, tick!
Now it is two. Tock, tock, and one must stretch!
Kiwitt, kiwitt! The sun is blinking now,
And now its eyes are open. Chanticleer
Bids all arise, lest they should sneeze.
VOLKER.
I know!
It is as if Time wakened them himself,
As in the dark he feels his way along,
To beat the rhythm of his pace for him.
In measured intervals, as from the glass
Trickles the sand, and as the shadow long
Creeps on the dial, so there follow now
The mountain cock, the blackbird and the thrush,
And none disturbs the other as by day,
Nor coaxes him to warble ere his time.
I've watched it oft myself.