Upstarted with the cry: "God give us grace
To wrest that sacred Spear from impious hands!"

But Gurnemanz thus checked them: "Listen yet!
Long did our King Amfortas kneel before
The sanctuary, praying in his pain
And seeking for a word of hope from God.
At length a radiance glowed around the Grail,
And from its glory shone a Sacred Face
That spake this oracle of mystic words:
_"By pity 'lightened,
My guileless One,--
Wait for him,
Till My will is done!"_

And as the knights repeated these weird words,--
There came wild cries and shouting from the lake:
"Shame! shame! alas, the shame to shoot the swan!"
And as they looked, a wild swan came in sight;
It floated feebly o'er the flurried lake
And strove to fly, but wounded fluttered down
And sank upon the lake-shore, and was dead.
And Gurnemanz cried out: "Who shot the swan?
The King had hailed it as a happy sign,
Whene'er a swan came near him in its flight
For since the earliest ages has this bird
Meant hope and health and holiness to men.--
Who dared to do this dastard deed of shame?"

Then came a knight leading a guileless boy