"Now bridle your steed, warrior maid!" "Soon a ferocious conflict will blaze forth." "Brünnhilde must charge into the battle and ensure victory for the Wälsung!" "Hunding may choose where he belongs:" "he is of no value to me in Valhalla." "So with all speed ride forth to the field." "Father, I warn you, look to yourself." "You will need to weather a violent storm." "Fricka, your wife, is approaching in her chariot drawn by rams." "Hi!" "How she wields her golden whip!" "The poor beasts are bleating with fear, the wheels rattle wildly, she is wrathful and ready for a quarrel." "I have no wish to be part of such squabbles though I love courageous men's battles." "So brave the storm as you may:" "I gladly leave you to it!" "The old storm, the old trouble!" "But here I must make a stand!" "In the mountains where you hide yourself to escape your wife's eye," "here in this lonely spot I have sought you out for you to promise me your help." "Let Fricka freely say what troubles her." "I have been hearing Hunding's plaint:" "he called on me to avenge him." "As wedlock's guardian I listened to him and swore sternly to punish the misdeed by the audacious, sacrilegious pair" "who have wantonly wronged a husband." "What so wrong have this pair done whom Spring has united in love?" "Love's magic bewitched them." "Who must atone to me for love's power?" "How stupid and deaf you feign to be, as if you really did not know that it is about marriage," "a sacred vow grievously wronged, that I am complaining." "Unholy do I deem the vow that binds the unloving;" "and in truth do not demand that I restrain by force what is outside your control." "For where bold spirits are active" "I openly urge them to battle." "If you respect adultery as honourable then bluster still further and praise as holy the incest blossoming from a liaison between twins!" "I shudder at heart, my brain reels:" "a brother embracing his sister as bride!" "When was it ever known for brother and sister to be lovers?" "It is known to you today!" "And learn from this that something may happen of its own accord although it may never have happened before." "That these two love each other must be clear to you, so hear my honest advice:" "since sweet pleasure will reward you for your blessing then smile on love" "and bless the union of Siegmund and Sieglinde." "Is this then the end of the eternal gods, since you begot the wild Wälsungs?" "I have spoken frankly." "Have I divined your meaning?" "Your noble holy kin mean nothing to you, you throw aside everything you once honoured, you tear apart bonds the bonds you tied, you laughingly loosen your hold on heaven" "only to give rein to the lustful whim of these sinful pair of twins, the lewd fruit of your infidelity." "Oh, why do I mourn for wedlock and its vows, which you yourself were the first to break?" "Your faithful wife you have constantly betrayed." "Where there were depths, where there were heights, there your lecherous eye lingered to see how you could gratify your fickle fancy and mockingly mortify my heart." "Saddened in spirit, I had to bear it when you flew to the fray with those fearsome maids whom a liaison of lawless love had fathered." "But you still feared your wife enough to make the brood of Valkyries, even Brünnhilde, bride of your will," "obedient to my authority." "But now, when new names have taken your fancy, as "Walse" you wandered wolfishly in the woods." "Now that you have descended to the depths of dishonour to procreate a couple with a common mortal, now you would throw your wife to the feet of a she-wolf's whelps!" "Then go on and do so." "Fill my cup full." "Trample on the one you have betrayed!" "You have never learned, though I tried to teach you;" "you never can foresee an event before it takes place in reality." "You always can understand only the familiar, but my thoughts dwell on what has never yet been." "Hear this one thing!" "There is need for a hero who, free from divine protection, can free himself from divine law." "Thus alone will he be fit to do the deed which, though the gods need it, nevertheless a god is debarred from doing." "With devious arguments you are trying to deceive me." "What mighty deed could heroes ever accomplish that would be forbidden to their gods, whose grace alone gives them power?" "Do you disparage their own courage?" "Who breathed that into men?" "Who lit up their dull eyes?" "Under your protection they seem strong, through your goading they aspire." "You alone stimulate these whom you so praise to me, a goddess." "With new wiles you would hoodwink me, by new tricks now to escape me." "But you shall not win this Wälsung for yourself." "In him I find only you, for his daring stems only from you." "He grew up by himself in sore sorrow." "My protection never sheltered him." "Then do not shelter him today either!" "Take away the sword you gave him." "The sword?" "Yes, the sword, the flashing sword of magic power that you, the god, gave to your son." "Siegmund won it for himself in his hour of need." "You created that need for him like the sturdy sword." "Would you deceive me, who day and night have been following at your heels?" "For him you thrust the sword into the tree, you promised him the noble weapon." "Would you deny your cunning lured him to where he would find it?" "No noble fights with bondsmen," "a free man punishes an offender." "I might well wage war against your power, but Siegmund, as a slave, must fall to me!" "Is your immortal wife to obey one who is serf and bondsman to you as master?" "Must I abase myself to the affronts of the lowliest, to spur on the insolent, to be mocked by the free?" "My husband cannot wish for that, he would not profane a goddess so!" "What do you ask for?" "Disclaim the Wälsung!" "Let him go his own way." "But you must not protect him when the avenger calls him to combat." "I will not protect him." "Look me in the eye:" "do not plan a deception." "Direct the Valkyrie away from him too!" "Let the Valkyrie be free to decide." "Not so!" "She carries out your will alone." "Forbid her to allow Siegmund's victory!" "I cannot strike him down:" "he found my sword." "Remove its magic from it." "Let it snap for the serf." "Let his foe find him defenceless." "Here comes your valiant maid, shouting as she gallops hither." "I called her to horse for Siegmund's sake." "Let her shield today defend your immortal wife's sacred honour!" "Derided by men, deprived of power, we gods would perish" "if my rights were not nobly and honourably avenged by the valiant maid." "The Wälsung must die for my honour!" "Do I have Wotan's oath?" "Take my oath!" "The father of hosts awaits you." "Let him tell you how the lot is to fall." "I fear the dispute ended badly:" "Fricka was laughing at the outcome." "Father, what must your child be told?" "You seem dispirited and depressed." "I am confined fast in my own fetters," "I am the least free of all beings." "Never have I seen you like this." "What is gnawing at your heart?" "Oh, sacred shame!" "Oh, shameful distress!" "Grief for the gods!" "Divine despair!" "Endless rage!" "Everlasting sorrow!" "I am the saddest of all beings." "Father, father, tell me, what is wrong?" "How your troubles dismay your daughter!" "Oh, trust in me!" "I am true to you." "See, Brünnhilde begs you." "Were I to disclose it should I not then relax the control I hold on my will?" "It is to Wotan's will you are speaking when you tell me your will." "What am I if not your will?" "Let what I put into words for no one" "then remain for ever unspoken." "When talking to you I am talking only to myself..." "When young love's delight declined in me my spirit thirsted for power." "Driven by raging, impetuous desires," "I won the world for myself." "Unwittingly dishonest, I committed a wrong, binding myself by treaties that concealed evil." "I was craftily lured on by Loge, who now, the vagabond, has vanished." "Yet I could not abstain from love:" "with all my power," "I still hungered for love." "The thwarted Nibelung, Alberich, broke from night's bonds." "He cursed love, and through that curse and gained the Rhine's glittering gold and, with it, immeasurable power." "The ring he made I took from him by treachery, but did not return it to the Rhine." "With it I paid for the battlements of Valhalla, the castle the giants built for me," "from which I ruled the world." "She who knows all that ever was," "Erda, the wisest holy Wala, cautioned me against the ring and warned of eternal doom." "Of that doom I sought to know more, but silently the woman sank from my sight." "Then my peace of mind was lost." "As a god, I had to know." "Down into the bowels of the earth I made my way, by love's enchantment." "I humbled her pride in wisdom, so that now she answered me." "From her I drew knowledge, but from me she secured a pledge:" "the world's wisest woman bore you, Brünnhilde, to me." "With eight sisters I brought you up." "Through you Valkyries I wanted to avert the doom the Wala had made me fear, a shameful ending for the immortals." "So that foes would find us strong in strife" "I bade you bring me heroes, whom once by our laws we had held in thrall, whose spirits we had crushed, and through treacherous treaties and deceptive deals bound them to us in blind obedience." "You were then to spur them to storm and strife, provoke their strength to pitiless war, so that I could gather hosts of fearless fighters in Valhalla's hall." "We filled your hall full:" "I have already brought you many." "What now troubles you, since we were never tardy?" "There is something else." "Mark well what the Wala warned me of!" "Through Alberich's army our downfall threatens." "The Nibelung bears me rancour in envious rage." "But now I do not fear his forces of darkness:" "my heroes would bring me victory." "Only if he ever were to win back the ring, then would Valhalla be lost." "He who cursed love, he alone could malignly use the ring's magic to the endless humiliation of all nobility." "He would turn my heroes' bravery against me." "He himself would compel the conquerors into combat and with their strength wage war on me." "Anxiously I then pondered how to wrest the ring from my enemy." "One of the giants whom" "I once paid for his labour with the accursed gold," "Fafner guards the hoard for which he killed his brother." "From him I have to wrest the ring that I myself paid him as fee." "Yet I may not attack one with whom I concluded a contract." "My might would fall powerless before him." "These are the bonds that bind me." "I who through contracts became ruler by those contracts am now enslaved." "Only one could accomplish what I may not:" "a hero whom I had never deigned to help, a stranger to the god, free from his favour, unprompted, acting from his own need, with his own weapon." "He could do the deed that I must shun, that I never suggested to him, though it be my one wish." "One opposed to the gods who would fight for me, this friendly foe, how could I find him?" "How could I create a free man whom I never shielded, who by his own defiance would be dearest to me?" "One who, of his own volition, will do what I alone desire?" "Oh, plight for a god!" "Horrible humiliation!" "To my disgust I ever find only myself in all I bring about." "This other whom I long for" "I shall never discover, for the free man must create himself." "I can only make one subservient to myself." "Does the Wälsung, Siegmund, not act for himself." "I roamed the woods wildly with him." "Against the counsel of the gods I incited him to defiance." "All that protects him now is the sword" "that a god's grace granted him." "Why did I wish by guile to gull myself?" "It was so easy for Fricka to fathom the fraud." "To my deepest shame, she saw through me." "I must yield to her will." "Then will you withhold victory from Siegmund?" "I touched Alberich's ring and greedily retained his gold." "The curse from which I fled" "I cannot shake off:" "I must abandon what I love, murder the son I treasure," "basely betray one who trusts me!" "Farewell then to lordly splendour, godlike pomp's shameful sham!" "Let what I built fall in ruins!" "I give up my work," "I want only one thing now:" "the end," "the end!" "And for this end Alberich is working." "Now I understand the cryptic meaning of the Wala's wild words:" ""When the dark foe of love"" ""in anger begets a son,"" ""the doom of the blessed ones will not long be delayed."" "Recently a rumour reached me about the Nibelung, that the dwarf had overcome a woman and extorted her favours with money." "The seed of his spite stirs in her womb." "This wonder befell the loveless one." "Yet I who wooed in love did not produce a free man." "Then take my blessing," "Nibelung son!" "What deeply disgusts me" "I leave you as legacy, the empty glory of godhead:" "greedily glut your grudge on it!" "Oh, speak!" "Tell me, what must your child now do?" "Fight for Fricka and purity, guard wedlock and its vows for her." "What she chose is my choice too." "Of what avail was my own will?" "I cannot fashion a free man:" "now you must fight for Fricka's vassal!" "Alas!" "Repent and recant!" "You love Siegmund: for your sake" "I know, I must protect the Wälsung." "You must strike Siegmund down and gain the victory for Hunding." "Guard yourself well and keep yourself strong." "Bring all your boldness to the battle." "Siegmund wields a victorious sword." "He will scarcely die a coward!" "You have always taught me to love him, and his noble virtues are dear to your heart." "Your contradictory command shall never turn me against him!" "What, insolent girl, do you defy me?" "What are you but the blindly obedient agent of my will?" "When I opened my heart to you, did I sink so low that I am now reviled by my own creation?" "Child, do you know my wrath?" "Your courage would collapse if ever its lightning crushingly crashed on you." "In my breast I hide the fury that could lay waste the world which once smilingly gave me pleasure." "Woe to him whom it strikes!" "His defiance would turn to despair." "I warn you, therefore, do not provoke me." "Obey my orders:" "Siegmund must die." "Let this be the Valkyrie's task." "Never have I seen the father of victories like this, even when a quarrel has incensed him." "My weapons' weight hangs heavily on me." "How light it was when I fought as I fancied!" "Today I creep fearfully into this sinister fray." "Woe, my Wälsung!" "In deepest sorrow I, your friend, must falsely forsake you!" "Rest here now." "Gain some respite!" "Further!" "Further!" "No further for now." "Wait, sweetest wife!" "From blissful raptures you broke away, with frantic haste fled from me." "I could hardly follow your wild flight." "Through wood and field, over rock and stone, speechless, silent, you sped ahead." "My calls could not curb your course!" "Now take a rest!" "Speak to me!" "End the dread caused by your silence." "See, your brother is holding his bride." "Siegmund is at your side." "Away, away!" "Fly from one who is sullied!" "Unholy are the arms that embrace you." "Dishonoured, disgraced, my body is dead." "Flee from my corpse, cast it from you!" "Let the wind blow away the one who unworthily gave herself to a man of honour." "When he embraced her lovingly" "she found there purest delight" "when the man gave her all his love and awakened all her own love." "From the sweetest bliss of holiest sanctification which pervaded her mind and soul," "horror and loathing for vile dishonour seized the unclean woman with dismay:" "she belonged to a husband, although he had gained her without love." "Leave one who is accursed!" "Let her flee from you!" "I am degraded, defiled." "I must leave the purest of men," "I may never belong to you, heroic one." "I bring shame upon my brother, disgrace on the friend who freed me!" "For whatever shame has been brought upon you the miscreant's blood shall pay!" "So flee no further:" "wait for our foe." "Here he shall fall to me when Notung gnaws at his heart." "Then you will be avenged!" "Hark, the horns!" "Do you hear their call?" "All around sounds a fearful din, baying forth from wood and countryside." "Hunding has awakened from heavy sleep and has called together kinsmen and hounds." "Inflamed with frenzy, the pack is howling." "Savagely they cry to heaven for the broken marriage vow." "Where are you, Siegmund?" "Can I still see you, dearly beloved radiant brother?" "Let the stars of your eyes shine on me once more!" "Do not reject your sullied wife's kiss!" "Hark!" "Oh, hark!" "That is Hunding's horn!" "His pack approaches with fearsome force:" "no sword will serve against the hounds' onslaught." "Cast it away, Siegmund!" "Siegmund, where are you?" "Ah, there I see you, a fearful sight!" "Bloodhounds are baring their fangs at your flesh, they take no heed of your noble glance." "They fasten their fangs in your feet." "You fall, the sword shatters to splinters." "The ash tree tumbles, the trunk breaks!" "Brother!" "My brother!" "Siegmund!" "Sister!" "Beloved!" "Siegmund!" "Look at me!" "I am she whom you soon will follow." "Who are you, say, who appear before me so fair and stern?" "Only those doomed to death are entitled to see me." "Whoever beholds me must leave the light of life." "On the field of battle alone do I appear to heroes." "He who has seen me is one I have chosen in the fight." "Whither do you lead the hero" "who then follows you?" "I will lead you to the father of battles, who has chosen you." "You will come with me to Valhalla." "In Valhalla's hall shall I find the father of battles alone?" "The noble band of fallen heroes will embrace you cordially with most solemn greeting." "Would I find Wälse, my own father, in Valhalla?" "You will find your father there." "In Valhalla will a woman give me a fond greeting?" "Pleasing maidens preside there in splendour," "Wotan's daughter will bring you your cup in comfort." "You are splendid and holy:" "I realise you are Wotan's child." "But tell me one thing, immortal:" "will his sister and bride accompany her brother?" "Will I embrace Sieglinde there?" "She must still breathe the air of earth." "Siegmund will not see her there." "Then greet Valhalla for me, greet Wotan," "greet Wälse and all the heroes for me." "Greet the lovely pleasing maidens too." "I will not follow you to them." "You have seen the Valkyrie's searing gaze:" "now you must go with her." "Where Sieglinde lives in pleasure or pain, there Siegmund too will dwell." "Your gaze has not yet made me blench:" "it will never force me from here." "So long as you live nothing can force you." "But death will force you, fool." "I came here to tell you that." "Where might the hero be to whom I must fall today?" "Hunding will slay you in battle." "Threaten me with something stronger than Hunding's blows!" "If you lurk here, lusting for battle, choose him as your prey:" "I intend to kill him in the flight." "On you, Wälsung, mark what I say." "On you the lot has fallen." "Do you know this sword?" "He who made it for me guaranteed me victory." "With it I defy your threats." "He who made it for you has now decreed your death:" "he withdraws his spell from the sword." "Quiet!" "Do not alarm the sleeping woman!" "Oh, woe!" "Sweetest wife, saddest of all loyal women, against you the world rages in arms, and I, whom alone you trust, for whom you defied it, shall I not shield you with my protection, must I in battle not match your courage?" "Ah, shame upon him who made the sword for me if he decreed disgrace instead of victory!" "If, then, I must die" "I will not go to Valhalla:" "let hell hold me fast!" "Do you so little value everlasting bliss?" "Is she everything to you, this poor woman who, weary and woeful," "lies limp in your lap?" "Do you regard nothing else as precious?" "So young and fair and dazzling you seem, but my heart knows how cold and hard you are!" "If you can only mock, then away with you, you heartless, unfeeling maid!" "Yet if you must gloat on my woe, let my tribulations rejoice you, my grief gladden your envious heart." "But of Valhalla's cheerless joys say nothing to me!" "I see the distress that gnaws at your heart," "I feel the hero's holy suffering." "Siegmund, entrust your wife to me:" "my protection shall firmly enfold her!" "While she lives, none other than I shall touch her pure person!" "If I must fall victim to death, I would first kill her while she sleeps!" "Wälsung!" "Madman!" "Hear my advice:" "entrust to me your wife, for the sake of the pledge that she conceived for you in love!" "This sword, which a traitor gave to the true, which cravenly betrays me to the foe, if it will not serve against that foe then let it avail against my friend!" "Two lives smile upon you here:" "take them, Notung, grudging steel, take them with a single stroke!" "Stop, Wälsung!" "Hear what I say!" "Sieglinde shall live, and Siegmund" "shall live with her!" "It is settled." "I will change the outcome of the fight." "For you, Siegmund, I will ensure luck and victory." "Do you hear the call?" "Now make ready, hero!" "Trust in the sword and wield it confidently." "The weapon will be true to you, as the Valkyrie will truly defend you." "Farewell, Siegmund, most blessed hero:" "I will see you again on the battlefield!" "Sleep, like a magic spell, soothes my fair one's grief and pain." "Did the Valkyrie bring her this blessed solace when she came to me" "so that the grim battle should not affright the grief-stricken woman?" "She seems lifeless, though she is alive." "A smiling dream caresses her careworn frame." "Then slumber on now until the battle is over and peace gladdens you." "He who calls me must now prepare himself." "I will deal him his deserts." "Notung shall pay him his due!" "Would that father came home!" "With the boy he is still in the forest." "Mother, mother!" "I feel afraid:" "the strangers seem neither friendly nor peaceful." "Black smoke, choking fumes, fiery flames are licking round us." "The house is burning." "Brother, help!" "Siegmund!" "Siegmund!" "Siegmund!" "Woeful!" "Woeful!" "Face me and fight, or else my hounds will have you!" "Where are you hiding that I shot past you?" "Stand and let me see you!" "Hunding!" "Siegmund!" "Could I but see them!" "Come here, you foul fornicator!" "Fricka here shall cut you down." "You think me still weaponless, craven cur?" "Though you threaten me with women, now fight for yourself or Fricka will fail you!" "For look: from the tree trunk within your house" "I dared to draw the sword." "Now savour its sharpness!" "Stop, you men!" "Murder me first!" "Strike him, Siegmund!" "Trust in the sword!" "Stand back from the spear!" "Let the sword be shattered!" "To horse, so that I may save you!" "Away with you, slave!" "Kneel before Fricka." "Tell her that Wotan's spear avenged the cause of her shame." "Go!" "Go!" "But Brünnhilde!" "Woe to the offender!" "Her disobedience shall be dreadfully punished when my charger catches up with her flight."