ep.... I am awake.... Who is the hero that
has awakened me?" Siegfried stands spell-bound, in solemn awe at
the sound of her voice and the superhuman splendour of her beauty.
He answers, in the only way he knows, childlike, direct: "I pressed
through the fire which surrounded the rock; I released you from
the close helmet; Siegfried I am called who have awakened you!"
At the sound of the name, the altogether right one, Bruennhilde
takes up again her song of praise: "Hail to you, gods! Hail to
thee, world! Hail, sumptuously blooming earth!" And Siegfried breaks
forth, in an exalted rapture which inspires his ignorance with
expression befitting the hour: "Oh, hail to the mother who bore
me, hail to the earth which nourished me, that I might behold the
eyes which now shine upon me, blessed!" Bruennhilde, joining in
his hymn of gratitude, blesses, too, the mother who bore him, and
the earth which nourished him, whose eyes alone should behold her,
for whom alone she was destined to awake. The love-scene following
leaves a singular impression of greatness. The wise daughter of
the Wala and the "most splendid hero of the world" are simple as
children, sincere as animals or angels, ardent with honest natural
fire, like stars. When their love finally reaches a perfect
understanding their song is a succession of magnificent shouts,
primitive as they are thrilling.

"Oh, if you knew, joy of the world," Bruennhilde exposes her artless
heart to the hero, "how I have loved you from all time! You were
my care, the object of my solicitude! Before you were shaped, I
nurtured you, before you were born, my shield concealed you,--so
long have I loved you, Siegfried!" He believes for a moment that
his mother has not died but has been sleeping and now speaks to
him. In correcting him, Bruennhilde shows herself tenderly feminine.
No sooner has she spoken the words which must fall with inevitable
dreariness on his ear, "Your mother will not come back to you!"
than she hastens to heal his hurt with the sweetest thing her love
has to say: "Yourself am I, if you love me, fortunate...." She
explains the meaning of her earlier words: "I have loved you from
all time, for to me alone Wotan's thought was known. That thought
which I must never speak, which I did not think, but only felt;
for which I strove, struggled, and fought; for which I braved the
one who had framed it; for which I was made to suffer and bound
in punishment; that thought--might