Collected Works (Vol. I)

TANNHAUSER WOLFRAM, For very feebleness Your limbs shake under you. Llow hither, friend ? Your horse and arms? Your squire? TANNHAUSER. My squire is dead. [Ith sudden passion. I am no weakling that I need a knave Hanging upon me—'tis an incubus. LANDGRAVE, And then your horse ? TANNHAUSER. I know not; possibly Kept as an hostage. I was prisoner once. WOLFRAM. Prisoner? By here? TANNHAUSER. A-many castles, sir, Held by old ogres—and not all of them Stand in the mid-day, front the sober sun, Answer the slug-horn.! LANDGRAVE, You are pleased to riddle. Ever the poet ! TANNHAUSER (aside). Let me try the truth For certitude of incredulity ! (Aloud, laughing) I was in Venusberg ! ALL (except HEINRICH, who laughs). Save us, Maria! [They look about them fearfully and cross theniselves. 1 I prefer to follow Browning in his '* absurd blunder” than to imitate the alleged currectness of our critics.—A, C, LANDGRAVE. “ven in jest, such words !—Most dangerous leven to think of !—Dut to speak ! HEINRICH (aszde). These fools ! [He remains, thoughtfully regarding TANNHAUSER, LANDGRAVE. God avert omens! Soft you, Tannhauser, You heard the heralds? TANNILAUSER. Never a word of them! LANDGRAVE, You must remember my Elizabeth, My daughter—I designed to marry her To a most noble youth— TANNHAUSER. Von Aschenheim ? LANDGRAVE. The same. I would have wed her, but (‘tis strange !) The lady had a purpose of her own, And swore by all the Virgins in the Book She would wed nobody but—Tannhauser. So, like the foolish, doting sire I am, I gave her thirty days to find you. This Must dumb you with astonishment. TANNHAUSER. Well, no! The details, unfamiliar! But the theme Iknew. And therefore leaps my bosom up: I rob your verderer of his nag, and he ! Low the long gallop to Elizabeth ! WOLFRAM. Lucky and brave. How we all envy you: