h her dark hair newly smoothed and bound." Then
comes the recognition, briefly told in soprano recitative. Yasodhara
passes, and "at sudden sight of her he changed." A beautiful love-duet
for soprano and tenor ("And their Eyes mixed, and from the Look sprang
Love") closes the scene. The next number is a bass solo narrating the
triumph of Siddartha over all other suitors, leading to a jubilant and
graceful wedding chorus ("Enter, thrice-happy! enter, thrice-desired!"),
the words of which are taken from the "Indian Song of Songs."

The second part opens with a soprano solo describing his pleasure with
Yasodhara, in the midst of which comes the warning of the Devas:--

"We are the voices of the wandering wind,
That moan for rest and rest can never find.
Lo! as the wind is, so is mortal life,--
A moan, a sigh, a sob, a storm, a strife."

This number is a semi-chorus, set for female voices, interspersed with
brief phrases for tenor, and after a bass solo, relating the King's dream
and the hermit's interpretation, which induces him to doubly guard
Siddartha's pleasure-house, leads up to a beautiful chorus, divided
between two sopranos, alto, two tenors, and two basses:--

"Softly the Indian night sunk o'er the plain,
Fragrant with blooms and jewelled thick with stars,
And cool with mountain airs sighing adown
From snow-flats on Himala high outspread.
The moon above the eastern peaks
Silvered the roof-tops of the pleasure-house,
And all the sleeping land."

The next scene opens with a soprano solo ("Within the Bower of inmost
Splendor"), in which Yasodhara relates her dream of the voice crying "The
Time is nigh," to Siddartha, and closes with a tender duet for soprano
and tenor. The next number is a brief chorus ("Then in her Tears she
slept"), followed by the tenor solo, "I will depart," in which Siddartha
proclaims his resolve "to seek deliverance and the unknown light," and
leading to a richly-colored and majestic chorus:

"There came a wind which lulled each sense aswoon
Of captains and of soldiers:
The gates of triple brass rolled back all silently
On their grim hinges;
Then, lightly treading, where those sleepers lay,
Into the night Siddartha passed,
While o'er the land a tremor spread,
As if earth's soul beneath stirred with an unknown hope,
And rich celestial music thrilled the air
From hosts on hosts of shining ones."

A tenor solo describes the six long years of