ride to battle
or from dance in gay assembly,--all this, in the present hour,
when the highest prize of life may be purchased by a song, is what
must necessarily flow into my song, original in word and note,--is
what must be outpoured before you, masters, if I succeed, as a
master-song!"

"Did you gather anything from that torrent of words?" Beckmesser
asks, with his eyebrows up among his hair, of his fellow-masters.
"Now, masters, if you please," Kothner directs, "let the Marker
take his seat. Does his lordship," to Walther, "choose a sacred
subject?" "One that is sacred to me!" the young man answers
magnificently; "The banner of Love I swing and I sing--and cherish
good hope!" "That," considers Kothner, without a gleam, "comes
under the head of secular subject. And now, Master Beckmesser,
pray shut yourself in!" With a thin pose of reluctance, Beckmesser
takes his way toward the curtained cabinet. "A sour office--and
to-day especially. The chalk, I surmise, will be troublesomely in
requisition. Know, Sir Knight, Sixtus Beckmesser is the Marker.
Here in the cabinet he attends to his stern duty. He allows you
seven errors. He marks them down in there with chalk. If you make
over seven errors, Sir Knight, you have failed in the song-trial.
Keen is the Marker's ear; that the sight of him therefore may not
disconcert you, he relieves you of his presence and considerately
shuts himself up in there--God have you in his keeping!" He has
climbed upon the platform; he sharply draws the curtains.

Two apprentices take down from the wall and bring forward the _Leges
Tabulaturoe_. With pomp and flourish Kothner reads them off to Walther.
The "tabulature" gives the straight and narrow laws upon which
a song must be constructed, to earn its singer the dignity of
mastership. "Now take your seat in the singing-chair!" Kothner
orders Walther at the close of his reading. "Here, in this chair?"
It is the tall carved chair in which he had cast himself earlier.
"As is the custom of the school!" Even so much of restraint as
the obligation to sing on a given spot is repugnant to the spirit
of the highborn youth, who yet is undertaking to satisfy the most
law-ridden assemblage he could have met with. He murmurs, taking
the seat: "For your sake, beloved, it shall be done!"--"The singer
sits!" announces Kothner. "Begin!" shouts Beckmesser out of sight.

From Beckmesser's cry "Begin!" Walther takes his cue, and simply
vaulting into the seat