for hours before he died, shouted till the ceiling rang for joy to think that he was soon to be with God:  does that prove that mysticism and death are one?  Mr. Chamberlain, in his exegesis of Tristan, will have it that Wagner composed the opera to demonstrate the truth of a very trite and ridiculous lie.  The fact is, Wagner’s was far more a feeling, emotional, imaginative brain than a thinking one, and in the hazy, steamy, overheated thinking part he often let idle phrases play about without himself firmly grasping their meaning or want of it.  Anyhow, if he had done what Mr. Chamberlain and many others say he did, we should have found it in the last act.  Instead, there is not a word on the subject.  Wagner’s thinking might be misty:  his dramatic instinct was supremely right and sure.

In the first act Isolda and Tristan enjoy their love only for a few minutes; the world, daylight, breaks in and separates them.  In the second they revel in it for hours; the world, daylight, again separates them.  In the last the world again breaks in; but Tristan has already found his refuge in death, and Isolda, obedient to her promise, follows him, and they are joined, safe from the annoyances of the “phantoms of the day,” in “the impregnable fortress,” the grave.  The action, as in the preceding portions of the drama, is of the simplest.  On his bed of pain and sorrow Tristan lies wounded and unconscious.  Kurvenal has got him away from Mark’s court in Cornwall to his own castle in Brittany; and now he has been brought out into the castle yard for coolness and air.  It is hot, sultry, close; the sea in the distance seems to burn; the castle is dilapidated and overgrown with weeds.  Kurvenal watches by his master; from outside the saddest melody ever conceived is heard on a shepherd’s pipe.  Presently the shepherd looks over the wall and asks how the master fares, does he still sleep?  If he awakes it will only be to die, replies Kurvenal; unless the lady leech (Isolda) comes there is no hope.  A moment after Tristan comes out of his coma, wanders in his mind a little, but at last understands where he is and that Isolda will come.  At that news he works himself into a condition of unbounded excitement, fancies he sees the ship bringing Isolda, but at the sound of that sad, droning pipe melody, and when Kurvenal tells him it is a signal that no ship is yet in sight, he lapses into unconsciousness again.  Then he wakes up, goes over the whole history of his love for Isolda, and faints once more; once more he half awakes and as in a dream sees the ship decked with flowers speeding over the summer sea.  Suddenly the shepherd strikes in with a lively tune:  “Isolda is at hand,” cries Kurvenal.  “Hasten to bring her,” shouts Tristan, and Kurvenal does so.  Tristan, left to himself, goes mad for sheer joy, staggers off his couch, tears his bandages off so that his wound bleeds afresh, and Isolda rushes in just in time to catch him in her arms, where he