urmoil, the smooth surface is lost,
you cannot see your own reflection any longer. Wherefore, touch me
not, trouble me not; eternally bright then shall you shine back at
yourself from me. Oh, Siegfried, luminous youth! love--yourself, and
withhold from me. Destroy not what is your own!" His robust young
love to this replies--after the simple outburst: "You I love, oh,
might you love me! No longer have I myself, oh, had I you!"--that
it matters little his image should be broken in the glorious river
before him, for, burning and thirsting, he would plunge into it
himself, that its waves might blissfully engulf him and his longing
be quenched in the flood. It is he who appeals now, with ancient
arguments, simple and telling as his blows at the dragon. When
at the end of them he clasps Bruennhilde again, she does not as
before wrest herself free, but laughs in joy as she feels her love
surging, till it, as it seems to her, more than matches his own,
and he is the one, she judges, who should feel afraid. She, indeed,
asks him, does he not fear?... But the opposite takes place. With
her love, ardent as his own, frankly given him, all his courage
comes back, "And fear, alas!" he observes, a little disconcerted
at the queerness of this new experience, "fear, which I never
learned,--fear, which you had hardly taught me,--fear, I believe,
I, dullard, have already forgotten it!" Bruennhilde laughs in
delight--all of joy and laughter is their love after this up on
the sunny height--and declares to the "mad-cap treasury of glorious
deeds" that laughing she will love him, laughing lose the light of
her eyes, laughing they will accept destruction, laughing accept
death! Let the proud world of Walhalla crumble to dust, the eternal
tribe of the gods cease in glory, the Norns rend the coil of fate,
the dusk of the gods close down,--Siegfried's star has risen, and he
shall be, to Bruennhilde, for ever, everything! In equally fine and
joyous ravings Siegfried's voice has been pouring forth alongside
of hers; reaching at last an identical sentiment and the same note,
the two rush together like flashing mountain torrents, and are
lost to us behind the descending curtain.

THE TWILIGHT OF THE GODS

THE TWILIGHT OF THE GODS

(DIE GOETTERDAEMMERUNG)

I

In the Prologue of "The Twilight of the Gods" we learn from report
the portion of Wotan's history which belongs between the breaking
of his spear and the final events which bring