And the sensation left from a reading of _Tristram of Lyonesse_ is of a vast phantasmagoria, in which the beating of waves and the noise of winds, the light of dawns breaking on the water, and the floating web of stars, are jumbled together in splendid but inextricable confusion. So the coming of love upon Iseult, as she sails over the sea with Tristram, takes this magnificent comparison: And as the august great blossom of the dawn Burst, and the full sun scarce from sea withdrawn Seemed on the fiery water a flower afloat, So as a fire the mighty morning smote Throughout her, and incensed with the influent hour Her whole soul's one great mystical red flower Burst.... Further on the long confession of her passion at Tintagel, while Tristram has gone over-sea to that other Iseult, will be broken by those thundering couplets: And swordlike was the sound of the iron wind, And as a breaking battle was the sea. But even to allude to all the passages of this kind in the poem--the swimming of Tristram, his rowing, and the other scenes--would fill an essay. In the end it must be confessed that this monotony of tone grows fatiguing. The rhythmic grace of the metre is like a bubble blown into the air, floating before our eyes with gorgeous iridescence--but when it touches earth, it bursts. There lies the fatal weakness of all this frenzy over liberty and this hymeneal chanting of sky and ocean; it has no basis in the homely facts of the heart. Read the account of Tristram and Iseult in the wilderness bower; it is all very beautiful, but you wonder why it leaves you so cold. There is not a single detail to fix an image of the place in the mind, not a word to denote that we are dealing with the passion of individual human beings. Then turn to the same episode in the old poem of Gottfried von Strassburg; read the scene where the forsaken King Mark, through a window of their forest grotto, beholds the lovers lying asleep with the sword of Tristram stretched between them: He gazed on his heart's delight, Iseult, and deemed that never before had he seen her so fair. She lay sleeping, with a flush as of mingled roses on her cheek, and her red and glowing lips apart; a little heated by her morning wandering in the dewy meadow and by the spring. On her head was a chaplet woven of clover. A ray of sunlight from the little window fell upon her face, and as Mark looked upon her he longed to kiss her, for never had she seemed so fair and so lovable as now. And when he saw how the sunlight fell upon her he feared lest it harm her, or awaken her, so he took grass and leaves and flowers, and covered the window therewith, and spake a blessing on his love and commended her to God, and went his way, weeping.