was then nothing but a hunter, a wild child of the forest.  But as he gets on with what he has to say Wagner warms up to his work, and we get many inspired pages, some of them showing the tendency to indulge in counterpoint of the finest sort which manifested itself more fully in the Mastersingers, though here the movement is fuller of rude impetuosity.  The movement—­for it is a distinct movement—­in which Siegfried describes how he had often looked into the smooth-running brook, and seeing his reflection there knew he did not resemble Mime, who therefore could not be his father—­for the cub is like the bear—­is one of Wagner’s loveliest, and full of a delicate pastoral feeling (again, in contrast with everything in the Valkyrie).  The Wanderer music is sublime.  The theme was borrowed from Liszt, and Liszt ought to have been grateful, for the possibilities of his own musical subject were surely unfolded to him for the first time.  In the music here, even more than in the vision of the stage, we have the grey Wanderer of the Scandinavian imagination—­the mystery of wood, mountain, river and ravine, with human sadness superadded, is clearly communicated to us.  Passing over the repetitions from the preceding operas, concerning which I have already said sufficient, we come to the nightmare music, where Wagner once more manifests that miraculous gift of depicting, in terms of music, light and colour, a personal emotion.  We can see the flickering lights glaring amongst the trees and feel Mime’s terror.

The forge scene is one of Wagner’s most stupendous efforts—­for really inspired, not mechanical, energy it is by far the greatest thing in the opera.  As Siegfried sets to work pulling the bellows, his first call “Nothung!” (the name of the Sword) is practically the same as the cobbler’s song in the Mastersingers; but immediately after it goes off into a sheer song of spring and the joy of spring; while the bellows groan and the fire roars the feeling of growing green forest life overflows into the music, and the intoxicating exhilaration is expressed as only Wagner himself had expressed it before.  When the hammering business begins we again find a likeness to the Sachs music, but what a dissimilarity from the petty tapping of Mime!  Mime’s theme, and that of all the Nibelung smiths, is characteristic enough; they are not contemptible in themselves, though through them we find the whole tribe of these smiths to be contemptible; and the tremendous swing of this second section of Siegfried’s song makes every other smith’s song seem by comparison contemptible.  Finally, when Nothung is ready for action there is a coruscation of light from the orchestra as the Sword theme, which, of course, we have heard long before, and the Siegfried-the-hunter theme are blared out and the anvil is split.