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While Trsitan lies dying in Brittany, he feverishly muses of...
.... his endless reveries In the woods, where the gleams play On the grass under the trees, Passing the long summer's day Idle as a mossy stone In the forest depths alone, The chase neglected, and his hound Couch'd beside him on the ground. --Ah! what trouble's on his brow?
Tristram and Iseult have died in each other's arms, and from a tapestry whipped by the December wind, the Huntsman looks out...
On that clear forest-knoll he stays, With his pack round him, and delays. He stares and stares, with troubled face . . . . . . . . . . . . He gazes down into the room With heated cheeks and flurried air, And to himself he seems to say: 'What place is this and who are they? Who is that kneeling Lady fair? And on his pillows that pale Knight Who seems of marble on a tomb? . . . . . . . . . . . . --What, has some glamour made me sleep, And sent me with my dogs to sweep, By night, with boisterous bugle-peal, Through some old, sea-side, knightly hall, Not in the free green wood at all? That Knight's asleep, and at her prayer That Lady by the bed doth kneel-- Then hush , thou boisterous bugle-peal!' --The wild boar rustles in his lair; The fierce hounds snuff the tainted air; But lord and hounds keep rooted there. Cheer, cheer thy dogs into the brake, O Hunter! and without a fear! Thy golden-tassell'd bugle blow, And through the glades thy pastime take-- For thou wilt rouse no sleepers here! For these thou seest are unmoved; Cold, cold as those who live and loved A thousand years ago."
--Arnold, Matthew. Tristram and Isuelt. "Modern Arthurian Literature." Garland reference library of the humanities; vol. 1420. Ed. Alan Lupack. (New York : Garland Publishing, 1992): pp 202, 211-12