rosy atmosphere there he knew not how long, existence one feast,
at which everything in man was satisfied, heart, imagination,
senses--everything but his soul.

We first have sight of him lying at the feet of Venus, his head
pillowed on her lap. There are dances and revels for their delight,
but he has fallen asleep,--and in his dream he hears, through the
song of stupefying sweetness in which the Sirens hold forth enkindling
promises, a fragment of anthem, the long-forgotten music of
church-bells. He starts awake. The tender queen draws down-his
head again with a caress. "Beloved, where are your thoughts?" But
his neglected soul has in dream made its claim. The sweetness of
all this other is found by sudden revulsion cloying to the point of
despair. "Too much!" he cries wildly, "Too much! Oh, that I might
awaken!" At just that touch, that sound in sleep of bells, his
whole poor humanity has flooded back upon him, and at the goddess's
indulgent "Tell me what troubles you?" his weak infinite homesickness
breaks bounds. "It seemed to me, in my dream, that I heard--what so
long has been foreign to my ear!--the pleasant pealing of bells.
Oh, tell me, how long is it that I hear them no more? I cannot
measure the length of my sojourn here. There are no longer for me
days or months, since I no longer see the sun or the sky's friendly
constellations. The grass-blade I see no more, which, clothing
itself with fresh green, brings in the new summer. The nightingale
I hear no more announcing the return of Spring. Am I never to hear
them, never to see them more?"

Venus, mildly amazed at folly so prodigious, reproaches him for
this complaining, these regrets. What, is he so soon weary of the
marvels with which her love surrounds him? Discontented so soon
with being a god? Has he so soon forgotten the old unhappiness? "My
minstrel, up! Take your harp! Sing the praise of love, which you
celebrate so gloriously that you won the Goddess of Love herself."
Tannhaeuser, thus bidden, seizes the harp and warmly entones a hymn
of praise to her, which from its climax of ardour, suddenly--as
if his lips were tripped by the word "mortal" occurring in the
song,--turns into a prayer to her to release him. "But mortal,
alas, I have remained, and your love is over-great for me. A god
has the capacity to enjoy perpetually, but I am the creature of
change. Not joy alone can satisfy my heart, after pleasure I yearn
for sorrow. Forth from your kingd