Sachs alone has listened through all the manifold disturbance--has
intently, delightedly listened; has loved the boy's courage, and
marvelled at the force of his inspiration; has besought the masters
to keep still and listen, or at least to let others listen.... "No
use! It is labour lost! One can hardly hear his own words. The
Knight can not from one of them gain attention!... That is what
I call courage, to go on singing like that! His heart is in the
right place,--a very giant of a poet. I, Hans Sachs, make verses and
shoes, but he is a Knight and a poet on top of it!" The apprentices,
emboldened by the general disorder, add their voices to the others,
attempting to drown out the singer so fierily, unremittingly singing
from his post of vantage. They join hands again and dance in circle
around the Marker's platform.

Through all this, over all this, the stubborn song, not for a moment
weakening or wavering, has climbed its way, with the figurative
Bird, to its climax-point. His throat shall burst, but he will
be heard! His last note Walther holds for four bars: "_Das stolze
Lie----bes Lied!_"... Sung to an end it is, the lofty canticle of
love. The singer jumps down from the chair. "A lasting farewell to
you, my masters!" With a proud gesture, which rids him of them forever
and consigns them to the dust-heap of their sordid narrowness and
mediocrity, he stalks to the door. "_Versungen und verthan! Versungen
und verthan!_" cry the masters, raising their hands according to
custom in giving a vote; "_Versungen und verthan!_" He has failed
in song, he is done with!

The song-trial is over. The apprentices in merry tumult take apart
the Marker's closet, hurry off benches and seats, rapidly clearing
the church of all signs of the meeting. The masters leave, except
Sachs. He stands gazing abstractedly at the singing-chair, while
a snatch of Walther's song sings itself over in his memory. His
meditation is interrupted by the apprentices snatching up and carrying
off the chair. With a half-melancholy smile and a gesture of delicate
mockery at himself for the spell he has so completely fallen under,
reluctantly the last master-singer turns to the door, and the curtain
falls.

II

The second act shows the exterior of Pogner's house and of Sachs's,
his neighbour across the street. It is the close of day; David,
putting up the shutters, is thinking of the morrow and its pleasures
so intently that he does not, for a mome