eath-theme this melody is
afterwards used. Isolda is too completely mastered by desire to
listen. When Brangaena curses herself for having changed the magic
drinks she is laughed at. To music filled with passion and of perfect
beauty she says the whole business was arranged by Venus, goddess of
love, and we hear yet another love-theme (_l_); then to the crash of
what we must call the torch-theme, blent with the death-theme from Act
I, she throws down the torch and frantic with impatience awaits her
lover.

He enters, and after some delirious pages not to be described in words
the pair fall to talk in Schopenhauerian terminology about the light
and the dark. But the passion never goes out of the music. On the
contrary, it grows in intensity, for the madness of the meeting is
nothing to the white-hot passion we get later; and in spite of the
terminology the meaning of both Tristan and Isolda is perfectly clear.
Light has been, and is, the enemy of their love; in the garish light
of day Tristan, filled with daylight dreams of ambition, first made
over to Mark, so to speak, his rights in Isolda; "is there a pain or a
woe that does not awaken with daylight?" he asks; and now, declared
lovers, they may only meet in the dark: during the day they must be
distant strangers. They know whither fate is driving them: Isolda has
said as much to Brangaena: "she may end it ... whatsoe'er she make me,
wheresoe'er take me, hers am I wholly, so let me obey her solely."
They are embodiments of sheer passion; love is the most selfish of
passions, and placed as they are, realising that they live only for
and in that passion, they have no thought for any one else, regarding
the outer world, the world of daylight, as their foe. Isolda does not
hesitate to remind Tristan of his perfidy in the days of light; and
he, far from defending himself, finds it quite sufficient to remark
that he had not then come under the sway of night: that is, they have
no ordinary human affection for each other. If they had, neither would
lead the other into such danger. Shakespeare did not, could not, make
his lovers live so entirely in their passion as this: he had no music
to express himself by, and had to speak through human beings. So when
Romeo says, "let me stay and die," Juliet instantly hurries him away.
Tristan and Isolda know they are wending to death, and are content.

Their feelings subside into soft languor, and then they sing the
sublime hymn to nigh