to their love, has dawned.  Tristan is silent, though Marke bewails the treachery of his nephew and his friend.  From the words of the heart-torn king we learn that he had been forced into the marriage with Isolde by the disturbed state of his kingdom, and had not consented to it until Tristan, whose purpose it was thus to quiet the jealous anger of the barons, had threatened to depart from Cornwall unless the king revoked his purpose to make him his successor, and took unto himself a wife.  Tristan’s answer to the sorrowful upbraidings of his royal uncle is to obtain a promise from Isolde to follow him into the “wondrous realm of night.”  Then, seeing that Marke does not wield the sword of retribution, he makes a feint of attacking Melot, but permits the treacherous knight to reach him with his sword.  He falls wounded unto death.

The last act has been reached.  The dignified, reserved knight of the first act, the impassioned lover of the second, is now a dream-haunted, longing, despairing, dying man, lying under a lime tree in the yard of his ancestral castle in Brittany, wasting his last bit of strength in feverish fancies and ardent yearnings touching Isolde.  Kurwenal has sent for her.  Will she come?  A shepherd tells of vain watches for the sight of a sail by playing a mournful melody on his pipe:—­

[Musical excerpt]

Oh, the heart-hunger of the hero!  The longing!  Will she never come?  The fever is consuming him, and his heated brain breeds fancies which one moment lift him above all memories of pain and the next bring him to the verge of madness.  Cooling breezes waft him again toward Ireland, whose princess healed the wound struck by Morold, then ripped it up again with the avenging sword with its telltale nick.  From her hands he took the drink whose poison sears his heart.  Accursed the cup and accursed the hand that brewed it!  Will the shepherd never change his doleful strain?  Ah, Isolde, how beautiful you are!  The ship, the ship!  It must be in sight.  Kurwenal, have you no eyes?  Isolde’s ship!  A merry tune bursts from the shepherd’s pipe:—­

[Musical excerpt]

It is the ship!  What flag flies at the peak?  The flag of “All’s well!” Now the ship disappears behind a cliff.  There the breakers are treacherous.  Who is at the helm?  Friend or foe?  Melot’s accomplice?  Are you, too, a traitor, Kurwenal?  Tristan’s strength is unequal to the excitement of the moment.  His mind becomes dazed.  He hears Isolde’s voice, and his wandering fancy transforms it into the torch whose extinction once summoned him to her side:  “Do I hear the light?” He staggers to his feet and tears the bandages from his wound.  “Ha! my blood! flow merrily now!  She who opened the wound is here to heal it!” Life endures but for one embrace, one glance, one word:  “Isolde!” While Isolde lies mortally stricken upon Tristan’s corpse, Marke and his train arrive upon a second ship.  Brangane has told the secret of the love-draught, and the king has come to unite the lovers.  But his purpose is not known, and faithful Kurwenal receives his death-blow while trying to hold the castle against Marke’s men.  He dies at Tristan’s side.  Isolde, unconscious of all these happenings, sings out her broken heart, and expires.