nly tries to
initiate him into their old-fashioned rhyming. Walter leaves him,
determined to win the prize after his own fashion.

Pogner appears with Beckmesser the clerk, whom he wishes to have as
son-in-law. Beckmesser is so infatuated that he does not doubt of his
success. Meanwhile Walter comes up to them, {208} entreating them to
admit him into their corporation as a master-singer.

Pogner consents, but Beckmesser grumbles, not at all liking to have a
nobleman among them.--When all are assembled, Pogner declares his
intention of giving his daughter to the winner of the master-song on
the day of St John's festival, and all applaud his resolution. Eva
herself may refuse him, but never is she to wed another than a crowned
master-singer. Sachs, who loves Eva as his own child, seeks to change
her father's resolution, at the same time proposing to let the people
choose in the matter of the prize, but he is silenced by his
colleagues. They now want to know where Walter has learnt the art of
poetry and song, and as he designates Walter von der Vogelweide and the
birds of the forest, they shrug their shoulders.

He begins at once to give a proof of his art, praising Spring in a song
thrilling with melody. Beckmesser interrupts him; he has marked the
rhymes on the black tablet, but they are new and unintelligible to this
dry verse-maker, and he will not let them pass. The others share his
opinion; only Hans Sachs differs from them, remarking that Walter's
song, though new and not after the old use and wont rules of Nueremberg,
is justified all the same, and so Walter is allowed to finish it, which
he does with a bold mockery of the vain poets, comparing them to crows,
oversounding a singing-bird. Sachs alone feels that Walter is a true
poet.

{209}

In the second act David the apprentice tells Magdalene, Eva's nurse,
that the new singer did not succeed, at which she is honestly grieved,
preferring the gallant younker for her mistress, to the old and
ridiculous clerk. The old maid loves David; she provides him with food
and sweets and many are the railleries which he has to suffer from his
companions in consequence.

The evening coming on we see Sachs in his open work-shop; Eva, his
darling, is in confidential talk with him. She is anxious about
to-morrow, and rather than wed Beckmesser she would marry Sachs, whom
she loves and honors as a father. Sachs is a widower, but he rightly
sees through her scheme