s still familiar surrounding scene, when they
ought, by true working of the drug, to be dead? If any thought had
accompanied the overmastering impulse which she had blindly followed,
it had been that before death all disguises drop, that in dying one
is sincere. But since death had not followed the drinking of the
draught--"Ha! What draught was that?" she asks in consternation.
Brangaene gives the desperate truth. "The love-draught!" Isolde's
eyes widen with horror, and turning from Brangaene fix themselves
upon Tristan. The situation flashes before her for one shocked
moment in its true colours; and as before her calling his name
had revealed all love, it reveals now her sense of an unspeakable
awfulness in what has happened to them. As he calls her name, too,
it expresses, with his boundless tenderness, pity and a tragic
recognition of the black ingredient in the cup which had lifted
them to such heights of intoxication. "Must I live?" speaks the
last glimmer of the old Isolde, provided normally with a moral
nature; and overwhelmed by the greatness of the catastrophe she
sinks fainting upon his breast. A last glimmer of the old Tristan
groans aloud: "O rapture beset with snares! Bliss on betrayal built!"

Trumpets are heard. The eager expectancy of all indicates that the
King's barge is close at hand. The curtain falls.

II

The introduction to the second act opens with the motif of the Day.
It is no tender dawn described, with tremulous lights among the
clouds; it has little of the touching _Morgenpracht_ in Parsifal.
It is a startling announcement of a fateful fact, an obtruder feared
and unloved; it is like a clash of cymbals or call of trumpets
summoning to unwelcome tasks, away from delights and dreams. It
is indeed the day as it appears to lovers when, dispelling the
gentle night which united them, with cruel golden shafts it drives
them apart. The musical rendering follows upon it of love's impatient
heart-beats, love's ungovernable eagerness for the beloved's presence,
love listening for the footsteps of the beloved. The curtain rises
upon a garden under a cloudless summer night. Beside the door of
Isolde's apartment a torch is burning. The sound is heard of
hunting-horns gradually retreating. Brangaene stands on the
castle-steps, listening to these. Isolde, all in a happy agitation,
hurries forth to ask if they still be audible. She herself cannot hear
them any more. But to Brangaene's ear the sound is st