" she moans, "How do I still endure it?" Nay,
he comforts her, "We are now become the initiate of the Night.
The malevolent Day, the cruel, can divide, but no longer deceive
us. They whose eyes the Night has consecrated laugh to scorn Day's
idle splendour, his braggart brilliancy. The fugitive flashes of
his lightning cannot dazzle them more. He who has gazed longingly
into the night of death, he to whom that Night has confided her
deep secret, the lies of the Day, honour and glory, power and gain,
lovely and shining though they be, like idle star-dust he sees them
float past. Amid the vain delusions of the Day he is possessed by
a single longing, the longing for the holy Night, in which the one
thing from all eternity true, Love with its rapture, awaits him!"
He draws her gently to a flowery bank, sinks kneeling before her
and lays his head within her arm. And they breathe forth together,
with an equal dreamy devoutness, their invocation to the Night.
"Oh, close around us, night of love! Give forgetfuless of life!
Gather us up in your arms, release us from the world!..." Quenched
is the last torch, quenched all thought, all memory. In a sacred
twilight full of wondrous divinations, the dread illusions of the
world melt away, leaving free the spirit. And the sun in the breast
having set, softly shine forth the stars of joy. And when, heart
upon heart, lip against lip, breathing one breath, the lovers'
eyes are blinded with joy, the world with its dazzling deceits
fades from sight, the world which the Day had flashed before their
eyes for their delusion, and they themselves are the world, and
the world is life, is love, is joy, is a beautiful wish come true,
from which there shall be no awakening....

Reaching completely the state they describe, of forgetfulness of
the world and the Day, each the whole world to the other, they
sink back side by side, cheek to cheek, among the flowers.

From the turret comes the lonely voice of Brangaene, warning the
lovers to have a care, have a care, the night is nearly over! There
is a leisurely moment. Isolde stirs: "Hark, beloved!" But Tristan,
too deeply steeped in the languor of night and dreams, replies with
a sigh: "Let me die!" Isolde raises herself a little: "Oh, envious
sentinel!" Tristan remains reclining: "Never to waken!"--"But the
Day must rouse Tristan?" she softly exhorts. "Let the Day yield
unto death!" She considers this quietly: "Day and death then with
a simultane