ferred, the weariness of life
without a single joy. The motives, discolored as it were by grief, work
up to a distorted version of the Grail subject, which breaks off as with
a cry of despair.

Is the Grail, too, then turned into a mocking spirit to the unhappy
Amfortas?

Relief comes to us with the lovely scene upon which the curtain rises.
Again the wide summer-land lies stretching away over sunlit moor and
woodland. In the foreground wave the forest trees, and I hear the ripple
of the woodland streams. Invariably throughout the drama, in the midst
of all human pain and passion, great Nature is there, peaceful,
harmonious in all her loveliest moods, a paradise in which dwell souls
who make of her their own purgatory.

In yonder aged figure, clad in the Grail pilgrim robe, I discern
Gurnemanz; his hair is white; he stoops with years; a rude hut is hard
by. Presently a groan arrests his attention, moaning as of a human
thing in distress. He clears away some brushwood, and beneath it finds,
waking from her long trance, the strange figure of Kundry. For how many
years she has slept we know not. Why is she now recalled to life? She
staggers to her feet; we see that she too is in a pilgrim garb, with a
rope girding her dress of coarse brown serge. "Service! service!" she
mutters, and, seizing a pitcher, moves mechanically to fill it at the
well, then totters but half awake into the wooden hut. The forest music
breaks forth--the hum of happy insect life, the song of wild birds. All
seems to pass as in a vision, when suddenly enters a knight clad in
black armor from top to toe.

The two eye him curiously, and Gurnemanz, approaching, bids him lay
aside his armor and his weapons. He carries a long spear. In silence the
knight un-helms, and, sticking the spear into the ground, kneels before
it, and remains lost in devotional contemplation. The "Spear" and
"Grail" motives mingle together in the full tide of orchestral sounds
carrying on the emotional undercurrent of the drama. The knight is soon
recognized by both as the long-lost and discarded Parsifal.

The "guileless one" has learned wisdom, and discovered his mission--he
knows now that he bears the spear which is to heal the king's grievous
wound, and that he himself is appointed his successor. Through long
strife and trial and pain he seems to have grown into something of
Christ's own likeness. Not all at once, but at last he has found the
path. He returns to bear salv