he continuous clink-clink-clink of a metalworker's hammer is heard;
the curtain rises, and we first see through an opening at the back of
the stage the bright green shining forest; as our eyes grow accustomed
to the darkness in the front we gradually perceive a rude smithy in a
cave, with an anvil, a forge with a smouldering fire, and a deformed
dwarf, Mime, at work trying to piece together the shards of the broken
sword. That sword was Siegmund's, shattered by a blow of Wotan's
spear; and long ago it was to this cave Sieglinda fled, bearing with
her the fragments. Siegmund and Sieglinda are long dead, Sieglinda
after giving birth to Siegfried; not far off is Hate-cave, where the
dragon Fafner lies guarding his precious gold amongst it the Ring;
far away Bruennhilda sleeps on the mountain, surrounded by her wall of
fire. There she lay on the evening of Siegmund's death; there she has
lain since. The world has gone on its way; Siegmund and Sieglinda have
departed; Siegfried has grown to manhood; year by year the young
shoots in the forest have sprouted and the leaves spread to the
sunlight: as we see the forest now, so was it on that fateful day, and
so it has been as the successive summers came. Siegmund lived, died,
and his memory has almost perished; save to the dwarf, the very name
of Sieglinda is unknown; other men have lived and died: nature only
goes on her course, the trees each year bringing forth fresh leaves to
repair last year's losses, as though the lives and deaths of brave men
and women were nothing to her. The earth is sweet and pleasant, but
nature must attend to her own affairs, and her indifference to the
affairs of men, her unchangeableness amidst all the vicissitudes of
men's lives, compel us to realise in such a scene as this at once her
own eternal youthfulness and man's brief, ephemeral existence. At one
stroke Wagner creates the atmosphere for his drama, and gives us as no
other artist has ever given it a sense of the unfathomable mystery of
the world and of life.

The dwarf taps away with his hammer; he longs to patch up the sword
that Siegfried may kill the dragon and he, Mime, get the hoard; he
bewails his weakness, but he does his best. All his labour proves
useless--the sword refuses to be mended; and in comes Siegfried with
his bear. The bear is driven off into the woods; there is a long
altercation and an explanation; Siegfried cannot believe that, as he
has been told, Mime is his father,