PART II°
Reading edition
PART II°
With the opening of Part II the lovers are restored to each other. The dying Tristram, worn with fever and impatient with long waiting, unjustly charges Iseult with cruelty for not having come to him with greater haste. Her gentle, loving words, however, quickly dispel his doubts as to her loyalty to her former vows. A complete reconciliation takes place, and they die in each other's embrace. The picture of the Huntsman on the arras is one of the most notable in English poetry.
47. honied nothings. Explain. Compare with
[p.172]
"his tongue Dropt manna." —Paradise Lost, ll. 112-113, Book II.
81-88. Tristram was born in the forest, where his mother Isabella, sister to King Marc, had gone in search of her recreant husband.
97-100. Tennyson, in The Last Tournament, follows Malory in the story of Tristram's and Iseult's death. "That traitor, King Mark, slew the noble knight, Sir Tristram, as he sat harping before his lady, La Beale Isoud, with a trenchant glaive, for whose death was much bewailing of every knight that ever was in Arthur's days ... and La Beale Isoud died swooning upon the cross of Sir Tristram, whereof was great pity."—Malory's Morte d' Arthur.
113. sconce. Consult dictionary.
116-122. Why this restlessness on the part of Iseult? Why her frequent glances toward the door?
132. dogg'd. Worried, pursued. Coleridge uses the epithet "star-dogged moon," l. 212, Part III, The Ancient Mariner.
147-193. For the poet's purpose in introducing the remarkable word-picture of these lines, see notes on the Tyrian trader, ll. 231-250, 232, The Scholar-Gipsy.