ABSTRACT
Beautiful, simple, old mediaeval story! We have followed it, led on as much by its own intrinsic charm as by the form and coloring-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, O hunter! and without a fear Thy golden-tasselled bugle blow, And through the glade thy pastime take! For thou wilt rouse no sleepers here, For these thou seest are unmoved;
Cold, cold as those who lived and loved A thousand years ago.
