Chide not with the past, but feel the present;
I am here—we meet—I hold thy hand.
Yes, the Queen Iseult of Cornwall, Iseult that was of Ireland, of the ship upon the dreamy seas long since, has crossed these stormy seas to-night, is here, holds his hand. And so proceeds, through some six or seven pages of Part II., the fine colloquy of the two sad, world-worn, late-reunited lovers. When we open upon Part III.,
A year had flown, and in the chapel old
Lay Tristram and Queen Iseult dead and cold.
Beautiful, simple, old mediæval story! We have followed it, led on as much by its own intrinsic charm as by the form and colouring—beautiful too, but indistinct—which our modern poet has given it. He is obscure at times, and hesitates and falters in it; the knights and dames, we fear, of old North-France and Western Germany would have been grievously put to it to make him out. Only upon a fourth re-reading, and by the grace of a happy moment, did we satisfy our critical conscience that, when the two lovers have sunk together in death, the knight on his pillows, and Queen Iseult kneeling at his side, the poet, after passing to the Cornish court where she was yesternight, returns to address himself to a hunter with his dogs, worked in the tapestry of the chamber here, whom he conceives to be pausing in the pictured chase, and staring, with eyes of wonder, on the real scene of the pale knight on the pillows and the kneeling lady fair. But
Cheer, cheer thy dogs into the brake,
Oh hunter! and without a fear
Thy golden-tasselled bugle blow,
And through the glade thy pastime take