following extract: "Temporal power is not the highest destiny of a
civilizing people. That our ancestors were conscious of this is shown
in the fact that the treasure, or gold and its power, was transformed
into the Holy Grail. Worldly aims give place to spiritual desires.
With this interpretation of the Nibelungen myth, Wagner acknowledged
the grand and eternal truth that this life is tragic throughout, and
that the will which would mould a world to accord with one's desires
can finally lead to no greater satisfaction than to break itself in a
noble death.... It is this conquering of the world through the victory
of self which Wagner conveys as the highest interpretation of our
national myths. As Brünnhilde approaches the funeral pyre to sacrifice
her life, the only tie still uniting her with the earth, to Siegfried,
the beloved dead, she says:--

"'To the world I will give now my holiest wisdom;
Not goods, nor gold, nor godlike pomp,
Not house, nor lands, nor lordly state,
Not wicked plottings of crafty men,
Not base deceits of cunning law,--
But, blest in joy and sorrow, let only love remain.'"

We now proceed to the analysis of the four divisions of the work, in
which task, for obvious reasons, it will be hardly possible to do more
than sketch the progress of the action, with allusions to its most
striking musical features. There are no set numbers, as in the Italian
opera; and merely to designate the leading motives and trace their
relation to each other, to the action of the _dramatis personæ_, and
to the progress of the four movements, not alone towards their own
climaxes but towards the ultimate dénouement, would necessitate far
more space than can be had in a work of this kind.