while sufficiently suggestive of the original. It is not sustained for
long. Siegfried, as I have described, tries to cut a reed so as to
imitate it, and there is some innocent fooling as he only gets odd
squeaks out of his instrument; then comes the combat with the Dragon,
and he returns to his place. The one tender spot in his nature,
awakened by the thought of his mother, who died for him, is touched by
the bird-song and the sweet morning; he is filled with vague,
sorrowful yearnings--and presently the bird sings again. But after
killing the monster he had touched its blood--it burnt his finger,
which he instinctively put in his mouth; and the taste of the blood
endows him with the faculty of understanding the speech of beasts and
birds. So now when the bird sings it is a human voice uttering words.
It is with regard to this I make a reservation. The abrupt entrance of
the human voice startles one: the picture is for a moment distorted,
made artificial. After a few hearings one grows accustomed to the
incongruity; but I still think Wagner would perhaps have done better
to let Siegfried tell us what he hears. This is, however, a mere
guess; and it savours of impudence to suggest what so great a composer
as Wagner should have done. The bird first warns Siegfried against
Mime. Mime crawls in with his basin of poisoned soup, meaning to offer
his "son" some refreshment after the labours of the morning. In
whining accents, verging on the ludicrous--for I have said that Mime
is semi-comic--he professes his love; but the dragon's blood also
enables Siegfried to understand what he means, and, just as Beckmesser
in singing the stolen song utters words very different from those he
means, so Mime in what he intends to be affectionate strains tells us
his real purpose. Siegfried plays with him as a cat plays with a
mouse, and at last plunges the sword into him--and from a thicket
comes the malignant laugh of Alberich, barked to Mime's own hammering
phrase. Disgusted, Siegfried returns to his resting place, but the
bird again engages his attention: it sings of the maiden afar off on
the mountain sleeping hedged in by the fire through which he alone can
break. Siegfried's longings take definite form: he will win the
maiden; the bird promises to lead him; it flutters off; he follows;
the curtain drops.

Thus ends one of Wagner's most splendid scenes--certainly the finest
in this opera. The passion of the music, its vivid picturesqu