TANNHÄUSER

XVI One is incisive, corrosive; Two retorts, nettled, curt, crepitant; Three makes rejoinder, expansive, explosive; Four overbears them all, strident and strepitant: Five ... O Danaides, O Sieve! XVII Now, they ply axes and crowbars; Now, they prick pins at a tissue Fine as a skein of the casuist Escobar’s Worked on the bone of a lie. To what issue? Where is our gain at the Two-bars? XVIII Est fuga, volvitur rota. On we drift: where looms the dim port? One, Two, Three, Four, Five, contribute their quota; Something is gained, if one caught but the import— Show it us, Hughes of Saxe-Gotha! R. Browning, Master Hughes of Saxe-Gotha