about the gods' end.

At the rising of the curtain the three Norns are dimly discerned
upon the well-known scene of Bruennhilde's sleep, before the entrance
to the rocky hall where Siegfried and she have their dwelling. The
fiery palisade around their fastness casts a faint glow upon the
night. The Norns, as it were to while away the heavy hour before
dawn, spin and sing. Their "spinning" consists in casting a golden
coil from one to the other, after some peculiar ritual, involving
fastening it to this pine-tree, winding it about that point of
rock, casting it over the shoulder, northward. Their song is of no
frivolous matter, but as if we should entertain ourselves recounting
the Creation, the Fall of Man, the Deluge. Of the World-Ash they
tell, in whose shade a well flowed, murmuring runes of wisdom; of
a daring god who came to drink at the well, paying in toll one
of his eyes. From the World-Ash, he, Wotan, broke a branch and
fashioned it into the shaft of a spear. This he carved with runes
of truth to compacts, and held it as the "haft of the world." An
intrepid hero clove it asunder. Wotan thereupon commanded the heroes
of Walhalla to hew down the World-Ash and cut it to pieces. "High
looms the castle built by giants," sings the youngest of the Norns;
"there in the hall sits Wotan amid the holy clan of the gods and
heroes. Wooden billets heaped to a lofty pile surround the room.
That was once the World-Ash! When the wood shall burn hot and clear,
when the flame shall devour the shining hall, the day of the end
of the gods shall have dawned!" Wotan himself, when the danger
is no longer to be averted of a dishonoured end,--if Alberich,
that is, shall regain possession of the Ring,--will plunge the
splinters of his defeated spear deep into Loge's breast and himself
set the World-Ash ablaze.

As night begins to yield to dawn, confusion falls on the minds of
the Norns; their visions, they complain, are dim. The strands of
the coil become tangled between their fingers. One of them descries
an angry face--Alberich's--floating before her; another becomes
aware of an avenging curse gnawing at the threads of the coil.
This suddenly snaps--terrific omen! Appalled, with the cry that
"eternal wisdom is at an end," they vanish in search of their mother,
Erda, in the earth's depths.

Day breaks. The reflection of Loge's defence pales. There greets
our ear suddenly a sturdy strain, resembling something we have heard
before.