I have already alluded to the old-world atmosphere got at once by the horn calls and the lovely passage in which Isolda sings of the brook "laughing on" in the still night; but in this first scene, which is by comparison a mere introduction to the duet, we find a thousand beautiful things. At this period of his life Wagner was by no means so economical as he afterwards became; he squandered his pearls with prodigal hands. In a few pages are enough melodies and themes to set up a Puccini--or for that matter a Strauss or an Elgar--for life. The blending of the death-theme with one of the love-themes, when Isolda speaks of love's goddess, "the queen who grants unquailing hearts ... life and death she holds in her hands," is one of the miracles of music--stern beauty made up of defiance of fate and careless voluptuousness. In the very next melody to make its appearance, the second bar after the change to the key of A, we may note what I think is the first sign of one of the many mannerisms of Wagner's "third period," as we call it--the period extending from _Tristan_ to the finishing of the _Ring_ (_Parsifal_ being as the tail to the dog, or perhaps the tin-kettle tied to the tail). It is the phrase quoted (_l_). Those five notes of the second bar were to be made to serve many purposes hereafter; and the Wagnerites will insist that this was done for a high artistic reason. Perhaps it was; but to me it seems that it is found so frequently sometimes because Wagner wanted to utter precisely the same emotion as he had employed it for earlier, and sometimes because, like all other composers, at times he found his invention flagging. In the second scene of this act of _Tristan_ it plays a conspicuous part, and is indeed one of the most pregnant love motives of the drama--perhaps the most prolific of subsidiary themes and passages.