disappears in the gathering dusk. Gunther, seized with remorseful
anguish, bends over the wounded brother. Two of the company, aiding
his effort to rise, support him. It is clear at once that immediate
surroundings and recent events are blotted from his ken by the
brighter light of a remembered scene, filling the wide-open,
over-brilliant Waelsung-eyes. The music lets us into the secret
first of what it is--so absorbingly present to him in this last
hour: the moment marvellous among all in his existence, when he
had seen the sleeping Bruennhilde return to life. It is as if it
were all happening a second time, she having mysteriously since
that first awakening been again sunk into sleep, from which he
must now again recall her: "Bruennhilde, sacred bride... awake!...
Open your eyes.... Who sealed you again in sleep?... Who bound you
in joyless slumber? The Awakener is come. He kisses you awake....
He rends the confining bands... whereupon breaks forth upon him
the light of Bruennhilde's smile!... Oh, that eye, henceforth to
close no more!... Oh, the happy heaving of that breath!... Sweetest
languor, blissful darkness.... Bruennhilde welcomes me to her!..."

So he dies as he had lived, joyous and unafraid, the curse, while
having its way with him to the extent of securing his destruction,
crippled as ever before, when the death by which it would punish
is embraced like a bride.

For a long moment all stand motionless and heavily silent. It really
seems impossible that a spear-thrust could extinguish that
glowing,--that superabundant,--that splendid life. Night deepens.
At a sign from Gunther, the men lift the dead, laid upon his shield,
to their shoulders, and in solemn procession start upon the rocky
path homeward.

What is called Siegfried's funeral-march is, as it were, a funeral
oration spoken over him by a great voice, of one penetrated with
the sense of what he was and of earth's loss in him. "Listen! Listen
and shudder, all created things, and feel the shock, and measure
the magnitude, of your loss! Behold, he was brave among all heroes,
this Waelsung,--yet tender, too. He was the child of the love of two
beautiful, unhappy beings, and, a glory to them, he became--Siegfried,
the most exalted hero of the world! Mourn for him heroically, not
with tears, but battle-shouts, in keeping with his greatness!"

The moon breaks through the clouds and showers spectral light upon
the funeral train slowly moving up the h