Poems Author:John Walter Cross Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: ARMGART. SCENE L A Salon lit with lamps and ornamented with green plants. An open piano, with many scattered sheets of music. Bronze lusts of Beethoven ... more »and Gluck on pillars opposite each other. A small table spread with supper. To Fraulein Wax- PURGA, who advances with a slight lameness of gait from an adjoining room, enters Graf Dorn- BERG at the opposite door in a travelling dress. Graf. Good-morning, Fraulein! Walpdrga. What, so soon returned ? I feared your mission kept you still at Prague. Graf. But now arrived ! You see my travelling dress. I hurried from the panting, roaring steam Like any courier of embassy Who hides the fiends of war within his bag. Walpurga. You know that Armgart sings to-night ? Graf. Has sung! ' T is close on half-past nine. The Orpheus Lasts not so long. Her spirits — were they high ? Was Leo confident ? Walpuega. He only feared Some tameness at beginning. Let the house Once ring, he said, with plaudits, she is safe. Graf. And Anngart ? Walpdrga. She was stiller than her wont. But once, at some such trivial word of mine, As that the highest prize might yet be won By her who took the second — she was roused. " For me," she said, " I triumph or I fail . I never strove for any second prize." Graf. Poor human-hearted singing-bird! She bears Caesar's ambition in her delicate breast, And naught to still it with but quivering song! Walpurga. I had not for the world been there to-night: Unreasonable dread oft chills me more Than any reasonable hope can warm. Graf. You have a rare affection for your cousin; As tender as a sister's. Walpurga. Nay, I fear My love is little more than what I felt For happy stories when I was a child. She fills my life that would be empty ...« less