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: