You frighten me.

FALK.
Your name
Is Svanhild?

SVANHILD.
Yes, you know it very well.

FALK.
But do you know the name is laughable?
I beg you to discard it from to-night!

SVANHILD.
That would be far beyond a daughter's right--

FALK [laughing].
Hm. "Svanhild! Svanhild!"
[With sudden gravity.
With your earliest breath
How came you by this prophecy of death?

SVANHILD.
Is it so grim?

FALK.
No, lovely as a song,
But for our age too great and stern and strong,
How can a modern demoiselle fill out
The ideal that heroic name expresses?
No, no, discard it with your outworn dresses.

SVANHILD.
You mean the mythical princess, no doubt--

FALK.
Who, guiltless, died beneath the horse's feet.

SVANHILD.
But now such acts are clearly obsolete.
No, no, I'll mount his saddle! There's my place!
How often have I dreamt, in pensive ease,
He bore me, buoyant, through the world apace,
His mane a flag of freedom in the breeze!

FALK.
Yes, the old tale. In "pensive ease" no mortal
Is stopped by thwarting bar or cullis'd portal;
Fearless we cleave the ether without bound;
In practice, tho', we shrewdly hug the ground;
For all love life and, having choice, will choose it;
And no man dares to leap where he may lose it.

SVANHILD.
Yes! show me but the end, I'll spurn the shore;
But let the end be worth the leaping for!
A Ballarat beyond the desert sands--
Else each will stay exactly where he stands.

FALK [sarcastically].
I grasp the case;--the due conditions fail.

SVANHILD [eagerly].
Exactly: what's the use of spreading sail
When there is not a breath of wind astir?

FALK [ironically].
Yes, what's the use of plying whip and spur
When there is not a penny of reward
For him who tears him from the festal board,
And mounts, and dashes headlong to perdition?
Such doing for the deed's sake asks a knight,
And knighthood's now an idle superstition.
That was your meaning, possibly?

SVANHILD.
Quite right.
Look at that fruit tree in the orchard close,--
No blossom on its barren branches blows.
You should have seen last year with what brave airs
It staggered underneath its world of pears.

FALK [uncertain].
No doubt, but what's the moral you impute?

SVANHILD [with finesse].
O, among other things, the bold unreason
Of modern Zacharies who seek for fruit.
If the tree