With all my senses
I only see
Its buoyant, gladdening billows.
Though in the deep
I find not my face,
Burning, I long
For the water's balm;
And now as I am,
Spring in the stream.[137]
O might its billows
Engulf me in bliss."
The motive of plunging into the maternal water of rebirth (baptism) is here fully developed. An allusion to the "terrible mother" imago, the mother of heroes, who teaches them fear, is to be found in Brunhilde's words (the horse-woman, who guides the dead to the other side):
"Fearest thou, Siegfried?
Fearest thou not
The wild, furious woman?"
The orgiastic "Occide moriturus" resounds in Brunhilde's words:
"Laughing let us be lost—
Laughing go down to death!"
And in the words
"Light-giving love,
Laughing death!"
is to be found the same significant contrast.
The further destinies of Siegfried are those of the In-
