nceforth we deny thee:
Thy words profane too long we've heard!
If I of love divine have spoken,
Its glorious spell shall be unbroken
Strength'ning in valour, sword and heart,
Altho' from life this hour I part.
For womanhood and noble honour
Through death and danger I would go;
But for the cheap delights that won thee
I scorn them as worth not one blow!'

This minstrel's sentiments are loudly echoed by all the knights
present, who, having been trained in the school of chivalry,
have an exalted conception of love, hold all women in high
honour, and deeply resent the attempt just made to degrade
them. Tannhaeuser, whose once pure and noble nature has been
perverted and degraded by the year spent with Venus, cannot
longer understand the exalted pleasures of true love, even
though he has just won the heart of a peerless and spotless
maiden, and when Wolfram, hoping to allay the strife, again
resumes his former strain, he impatiently interrupts him.

Recklessly now, and entirely wrapped up in the recollection of
the unholy pleasures of the past, Tannhaeuser exalts the goddess
of Love, with whom he has revelled in bliss, and boldly reveals
the fact that he has been tarrying with her in her subterranean
grove.

This confession fills the hearts of all present with nameless
terror, for the priests have taught them that the heathen
deities are demons disguised. The minstrels one and all fall
upon Tannhaeuser, who is saved from immediate death at their
hands only by the prompt intervention of Elizabeth.

Broken-hearted, for now she knows the utter unworthiness of the
man to whom she has given her heart, yet loving him still and
hoping he may in time win forgiveness for his sin, she pleads
so eloquently for him that all fall back. The Landgrave,
addressing him, then solemnly bids him repent, and join the
pilgrims on their way to Rome, where perchance the Pope may
grant him absolution for his sin:--

'One path alone can save thee from perdition,
From everlasting woe,--by earth abandon'd,
One way is left: that way thou now shalt know.
A band of pilgrims now assembled
From every part of my domain;
This morn the elders went before them,
The rest yet in the vale remain.
'Tis not for crimes like thine they tremble,
And leave their country, friends and home,--
Desire for heav'nly grace is o'er them:
They seek the sacred shrine at Rome.'

Urged t