find rest? You were
up late--you did, however, finally sleep?"--"A little," Walther
answers, "but soundly and well." There is something hushed and
fixed in Walther's aspect, as if he listened to voices no one else
could hear, gazed upon some vision invisible to others. He is still
under the spell of a recent marvellous impression. "I have had--"
he tells Sachs, when the latter genially asks is he feeling, after
his good sleep, in good form and of good courage, "I have had a
wonderfully beautiful dream...."--"A good omen, that! Tell me your
dream!"--"I hardly dare to touch it with my thought, so do I fear
to see it fade away."--"My friend," the older poet with fine amenity
takes up the part of teacher, and his observations have a ripe,
sunny, elevated wisdom, for which one should store them carefully
as one does good fruit, "that exactly is the task of a poet, to
mark dreams and interpret them. Believe me, of all the illusions
of man the most nearly approaching truth are those he comes into
cognisance of through dreams. The whole art of poetry is but the
interpretation of true-dreaming. What if this dream now should
contain a hint how you may to-day be made a master?"--"No, no,"
Walther rejects the idea with distaste; "In the presence of the
guild and its masters, scant inspiration would animate my
dream-picture!"--"But yet, suppose your dream contained the magic
spell by which you might win over the guild?" Walther shakes his
head: "How do you cling to an illusion, if after such a rupture as
you witnessed you still cherish such a hope!"--"Nay, my hope stands
undiminished, nor has anything so far occurred to overthrow it; if
that were not so, believe me, instead of preventing your flight, I
would myself have taken flight with you! Pray you, therefore, let
your resentment die! You are dealing with honourable men. They make
mistakes and are fairly settled in the comfortable determination
to be taken in their own way. Those who offer prizes desire after
all that one shall please them. Your song scared them, and with
reason, for, upon reflection, the like flaming poetry and passion
are adapted for the luring of daughters into mad adventures, but
the sentiment leading to the blessed married state finds words and
notes of a different sort!" Walther grins: "I know the sort--from
hearing them last night; there was a good deal of noise out in the
street." Sachs laughs too; "Yes! yes!... You heard likewise how
I beat time. But le