t at the water's edge, but
take yourself off as far as ever you can, and never come back!" Mime
is too near, as he thinks, the hour of triumph, to take offence.
May he not be permitted, after the fight, to refresh the victor
with a drink? He will be near. Let Siegfried call him if he needs
advice,... or if he finds the sensation of fear delectable!

When Siegfried has freed himself of Mime, whose company seems to
become more and more unendurable as he is nearer parting from him
for ever, he stretches out again under the great tree, folding his
arms beneath his head. "That that fellow is not my father," he
muses, "how glad am I of that! The fresh woodland only begins to
please me, the glad daylight to smile to me, now that the offensive
wretch is out of my sight!" He drives away the thought of him and
lets sweeter reflections gradually absorb him. The leaves rustle
and waver; delicate shafts of sunshine drop through them and play
over the forest floor. The exquisiteness of the hour, by its natural
power over the mood, turns the lonely boy's thoughts toward the only
human beings life has so far given him to love,--and in images so
vague and distant! "How did my father look?" he wonders dreamily,
and answers himself: "Like me, of course!" After a longer spell
of gazing up among the trees, while the soft influences of the
fragrant woodland world and lovely summer day still further overmaster
him: "But--how did my mother look?... That I cannot in the least
picture! Like the doe's, I am sure, shone her limpid lustrous
eyes--only, more beautiful by far!" The thought of her death fills
him with boundless sadness, but not sharp or bitter,--dreamy and
sweet from its tenderness. "When she had born me, wherefore did
she die? Do human mothers always die of their sons? How sad were
that! Oh, might I, son, behold my mother!... My mother--a woman
of humankind!" The motif of mother-love is but a slight, beautiful
variation from the motif of love in nature accompanying Siegfried's
reference to the deer paired in the woods, that strain like the
heaving of a great heart oppressed by its burden of love. The thought
of his never-known mother draws forth sighs from Siegfried's lips.
A long time he lies silent. The Freia-motif, the motif of beauty,
clambers upward like a dewy branch of wild clematis. All is still
around, but the little wind-stirred leaves, which weave and weave
as if a delicate green gold-shot fabric of sound. Against this ai