During their sojourn there,
the sorrowful King Marke,
sorrowing excessively,
suffered great discontent,
anxious for his wife and honor.
Both his mind and his health
showed the strain from day to day,
as he neglected wealth and honor.
It came to pass at that time
that he hunted in the same forest
more as solace for his sorrow
than for any joy of sport.
When the party reached the thickets,
the huntsmen with their leashed hounds
discovered a grazing herd.
The dogs were loosed and the chase began.
Very soon the coursing hounds
had singled out from the herd
a most remarkable stag,
with a mane like a horse,
very big, strong, and white,
but with only a small rack
just beginning to regrow,
the old one having been cast
but a short time ago.
They put it to the chase			17300
and followed in hot pursuit
almost until darkness fell.
At that point they lost the spoor
as the stag evaded them,
taking flight in retreat
back toward where it had come from,
namely where the fossiure was.
Having fled there, it escaped.

Marke was much disappointed,
and his huntsmen even more so,
to have lost this animal,
most unusual as it was
with its strange mane and color.
They all regretted their bad luck.
They called in all the hounds
and bedded down for the night,
being in need of a good rest.
Of course, Tristan and Isolt
had plainly heard all that day
the racket sounding through the woods
of hounds and hunting horns,
and immediately suspected
that it was none other than Marke.
This troubled them greatly,
each sharing the other's fear
that someone had betrayed them.
Very early the next morning
the master huntsman rose
before the light of day appeared.
He ordered his assistants
to wait there until full light,
and then to come after him.
He selected one hound
from the pack and leashed it,
setting it back on the scent.
It led him on and on
over many obstacles,
across cliffs and stones,
wasteland and meadow,
through which the stag had fled
during the preceding night.
He stayed right on the track
to where the defile first broadened
and the sun was well up.
He found himself standing
beside Tristan's fountain.

On that morning, Tristan,
hand in hand with his partner,
had gone out as usual,
so that they had arrived			17350
very early, while the dew
still sparkled on the blossoms
covering the delightful vale.
The skylark and nightingale
were tuning up their chorus
to welcome their compatriots.
They always sang their greetings
to Tristan and Isolt—
these wild songsters of the wood
promulgated their welcome
sweetly in their native Latin.
Many a charming little songbird
was very glad to see them.
All of them had untertaken
the very pleasant obligation
of greeting the familiar lovers.
They caroled from their twigs
in most delightful style
with countless variations.
There was many a tuneful tongue
that schantoit and discantoit
a schanzune and a refloit
to entertain the lovers.
They relished the cool spring
which leaped up to meet their gaze
and tinkled brightly in their ears,
murmuring toward them as it came
to receive them with its murmur.
It murmured delightful
welcomes to the lovers.
They saluted the linden also
with its gentle breezes
that soothed both without and within
the hearing and the senses.
The flourishing trees,
the shining meadow,
the blossoms, the evergreen grass,
and all that stood there in flower
laughed in welcome to them.
The dew in its sweetness
also gave them its greeting,
not only cooling their feet
but satisfying their hearts.
And when they had their fill of this
they slipped back into their cavern
there to take counsel together
what they should do at this point,
troubled as they both were
by fears of what in fact would happen,
that at some time, someone			17400
out of that hunting party
might discover their hiding place.

Tristan conceived a plan
to which both of them agreed.
They went back to their bed
and lay down again upon it
separate from one another
as well might man and man,
not at all as man and wife.
So they lay, one here, one there,
in estranged composure.
Furthermore, Tristan laid
his bared sword between them—
he on one side, she on the other.
They lay divided, one from one,
and thus they slept, apart and together.

The huntsman, as I have read,
who found his way to the spring,
could see in the dew
where Tristan and his lady
had stolen away ahead of him.
But at first he only supposed
it was the track the stag had left.
Dismounting, he went up the path,
following the visible spoor
that the lovers had left in the dew
as far as the door to the fossiure.
It was barred by its two bolts,
preventing him from going further.
Finding he could not advance,
he explored other directions,
and while prowling all around
he came entirely by chance
upon a hidden window
high up on the fossiure.
Cautiously, he peered inside
and saw, there below him,
one woman and one man,
the consort of love.
He gazed at them in surprise,
for it seemed to him that no creature
could have been of woman borne
anywhere on this earth 
so splendid as that woman.
He remained there but a moment,
since, catching sight of the sword
lying unsheathed between them,
he recoiled in consternation.
It seemed to him a fearful thing—
surely, he thought, this must be		17450
something quite unnatural,
which filled him with apprehension.
He climbed down from the cliff
and quickly rode back toward his hounds.

Marke, in the meantime,
had ridden out after him 
well ahead of the other hunters
and met him hastening back.
"Sire," gasped the huntsman,
"My Lord King, I bring news—
just now I have had
a marvellous adventure"—
—"Indeed, what did you find?"
—"I found a love fossiure!"
—"What?  How?  Where is it?"
—"Sire, right here, in these woods."
—"Out here in this wilderness?
Is there anybody in it?"
—"Sire, yes, down inside
are a man and a goddess—
lying there on a bed,
sleeping very soundly.
The man looks like any man,
but I don't know about the other—
I'm not sure his bedpartner
is even a human being—
it's magically beautiful.
I don't see how anything
made of flesh and bone
could be so lovely on this earth.
And something I can't figure out—
a sword is lying there between them,
a splendid one, shiny and bare."
"Show me where!" ordered the king.
His huntsman led the way
back up the rugged path
to where he had dismounted.
The king also dismounted there
and proceeded further up the path
until the huntsman stopped.

Marke saw the barred door,
then turned aside and climbed along
the stony side of the cliff,
and as it began to narrow
he followed many a twist and turn
as his hunter had instructed
until he found a little window,
to which he put his eye
to his delight and dismay.
There he saw the two of them		17500
at rest high upon the crystal,
still in slumber, as before.
He found them, as had his man,
turned away from one another,
one this way, the other that,
with the naked sword between them.
He knew them, nephew and wife—
his heart within him and all his limbs
went cold with anguish
as well as with affection.
Their pose of separation
might bode well or ill.
Well, I say, as a sign
that they were innocent,
but ill, I mean, as his suspicions.

He said, deep within his heart,
"most Merciful Savior,
what can all this mean?
If something has been going on
between them, as I long suspected,
then why do they lie like this?
With her lover, a woman lies 
closely wrapped in his embrace,
as though glued to his side.
Why are they so far apart?"
But a moment later he was thinking,
"is there something more to this?
Do I see guilt or not?"
And instantly, doubt returned.
"Guilty? Yes, certainly."
Then again: "Guilty? No."
He tossed this verdict to and fro
until in utter confusion
Marke could not decide
anything at all.

Then reconciling Passion
insinuated herself
in her most seductive guise
to remarkable effect.
The paleness of her face
she had tinted over
with the gold of denial,
her most becoming color: No.
The word sparkled and shone
straight into the king's heart.
That painful opposite,
the distasteful word Yes,
the king could nowhere see—
it had vanished altogether,
leaving no uncertainty or doubt.		17550
Golden innocence,
by Passion overgilded,
drew his eyes and his senses
by the power of her enchantment
straight to where the Eastertide
of all his pleasure lay.
He stood and gazed intently
upon Isolt, his heart's delight,
who never before had seemed to him
quite so beautiful as now.
I know not by what exercise—
told somewhere in this story—
she had become so heated
that her color and radiance,
as lovely and enticing
as a variegated rose,
beamed up to the watching man.
Her mouth seemed to burn with fire
just as does a glowing coal.
I do know, come to think of it, 
how she had exerted herself—
Isolt, as I have already told you,
had made her way to the meadow
through the early morning dew.
It was the walk that warmed her.
One slender ray of sunlight
also streamed in through the window,
playing softly over her cheek,
on her chin, and around her mouth.
Two beauties had combined
in producing this spectacle,
two brilliancies shone together—
heaven's sun and her sun
had joined there to create
a delight and celebration
of Isolt's blessedness.
Her chin, her mouth, her glowing body
were so wonderfully pleasing,
so lovely, so alluring,
that she charmed Marke entirely.
Filled with lust and desire,
he longed to kiss her.
Passion turned up her flames,
Passion inflamed the man
with the beauty of her body—
her feminine attractiveness
riveted all his senses
upon her form and her love.

His eye took in everything.
He examined avidly				17600
the features her gown revealed,
her lovely throat and breast,
her arms and her hands.
She wore a wreath of clover
tied into her hair.
To her lord she now seemed
more desirable than ever.
As he realized the sunlight
streaming down through the window
was shining full in her face,
he feared it might damage
her delicate complexion.
He gathered leaves, grass, and blossoms
which he used to block the window
and pronounced a blessing on her beauty.
Commending her to God's care,
he turned away, weeping.
Thus sunk deep in sorrow,
he returned to his hounds,
and there cancelled the hunt.
He commanded the hunting party
to return home immediately,
taking the pack with them.
His intention in doing so
was to assure that no one else
might chance to discover her.