To begin with, the orchestra leads before us the pilgrims’ chant alone:—­

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it draws near, then swells into a mighty outpour and passes, finally, away.  Evenfall; last echo of the chant.  As night breaks, magic sights and sounds appear, the whirlings of a fearsomely voluptuous dance are seen:—­

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These are the Venusberg’s seductive spells that show themselves at dead of night to those whose breasts are fired by daring of the senses.  Attracted by the tempting show, a shapely human form draws nigh; ’tis Tannhauser, love’s minstrel.  He sounds his jubilant song of love

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in joyous challenge, as though to force the wanton witchery to do his bidding.  Wild cries of riot answer him; the rosy cloud grows denser round him; entrancing perfumes hem him in and steal away his senses.  In the most seductive of half-lights his wonder-seeing eye beholds a female form indicible; he hears a voice that sweetly murmurs out the siren call, which promises contentment of the darer’s wildest wishes:—­

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Venus herself it is, this woman who appears to him.  Then the heart and senses burn within him; a fierce, devouring passion fires the blood in all his veins; with irresistible constraint it thrusts him nearer; before the goddess’s self he steps with that canticle of love triumphant, and now he sings it in ecstatic praise of her.  As though at wizard spell of his, the wonders of the Venusberg unroll their brightest fill before him; tumultuous shouts and savage cries of joy mount up on every hand; in drunken glee bacchantes drive their raging dance and drag Tanhauser to the warm caresses of love’s goddess, who throws her glowing arms around the mortal, drowned with bliss, and bears him where no step dare tread, to the realm of Being-no-more.

A scurry, like the sound of the wild hunt, and speedily the storm is laid.  Merely a wanton whir still pulses in the breeze, a wave of weird voluptuousness, like the sensuous breath of unblest love, still soughs above the spot where impious charms had shed their raptures and over which the night now broods once more.  But dawn begins to break; already from afar is heard again the pilgrims’ chant.  As this chant draws closer and closer, as the day drives farther back the night, that whir and soughing of the air—­which had erewhile sounded like the eerie cry of souls condemned—­now rises to ever gladder waves, so that when the sun ascends at last in splendor and the pilgrims’ chant proclaims in ecstasy to all the world, to all that live and move thereon, salvation won, this wave itself swells out the tidings of sublimest joy.  ’Tis the carol of the Venusberg itself redeemed from curse of impiousness, this cry we hear amid the hymn of God.  So wells and leaps each pulse of life in chorus of redemption, and both dissevered elements, both soul and senses, God and nature, unite in the atoning kiss of hallowed love.