But with this the trickling tones of the orchestra tuning up were suddenly silent, and after a few moments the prelude broke out with a voice of powerful earnestness. A thrill passed through Leonard’s nerves and in a moment he was tense and expectant. Like a living, overwhelming stream of actuality the music burst forth through all the dusty rubbish of illusion.
Now the curtain was raised and the human voices came up, gushed up. There was the sailor’s gay song of yearning on his billowy journey to the land of King Mark, Isolde’s wildly surging hate and suffering, Tristan’s timid, rock-firm defiance of death. So it went on to the magic potion and the helpless, the irresistible love cry which is lost in endless jubilation.
The curtain fell again.
Leonard looked at Lundstrom, wondering what he could possibly fish up from such a stream. The old man seemed tranquil and unmoved, as he sat on the scaly dragon and held in his mouth his unlighted pipe.
“Now they’ve got to hurry down there,” he said, “for now the ship must become a park.”
Threads began to move on the giant loom, blocks creaked and giant fabrics gave forth dust. With that the park was there, though it looked very strange from the back, and the curtain solemnly came aloft once more.
The two sat squatting again at the brink of the great music torrent. Heavy, bottomless well of tone—dark purple, restlessly driving waves, which now and then break into foam with a cry:
“O thou spirit’s
Highest, maddest
Exquisite burning joy!”
Love rescued from the cold glance of day—night without morning—yearning for death—the world’s redemption through passionate ecstasy!
“Quiet our trembling,
Sweetest death,
With yearning awaited,
O love-blent Death!”