| Isolde | Mild and quiet, |
|---|---|
| How he smiles, | |
| How his eyes | |
| Sweetly, he opens. | |
| Do you see it, friends? | |
| See you not? | |
| Ever brighter, | |
| How he is shining, | |
| Bathed in starlight, | |
| Rising high? | |
| Don't you see? | |
| How his heart, | |
| So boldly swells, | |
| Full and pure, | |
| In bosom up it wells? | |
| From his lips | |
| With gentle bliss, | |
| Sweetest breath | |
| So soft escaping. | |
| Friends! See! | |
| Feel and see it not? | |
| Hear I alone this melody, | |
| Which so wondrously and softly, | |
| Joyously laments, | |
| Fills all absence, | |
| Gently reconciling, | |
| From him arising? | |
| In it migrates, | |
| Up it vibrates, | |
| Sweetly rounding, | |
| Through me sounding! | |
| Brilliantly ringing! | |
| All-encompassing! | |
| Are they winds of | |
| Softest breezing? | |
| Are they wafts of | |
| Fragrance most pleasing? | |
| How they surge free, | |
| Rush around me! | |
| See this vision, | |
| Breathe, or listen? | |
| Should I imbibe, | |
| Or plunge right inside? | |
| Sweet in bouquet, | |
| Dissipate away? | |
| In the unbounded swell, | |
| In the resounding knell, | |
| In the World-Breath | |
| Billowing All! | |
| To drown in... | |
| Sink down in... | |
| Unconscious... | |
| Utmost bliss! |
Tristan und Isolde
Act 3: Isolde's Liebestod
New English translation of Richard Wagner's German libretto, synchronized to the recording
Tristan has died in Isolde's arms at Kareol, his castle in Brittany. Marke has come to forgive and unite the lovers, but too late, and Isolde no longer hears him. Gazing on Tristan, she sees him smile and wake, and her song rises into the surging waves of the world-breath, where she sinks, unconscious, into utmost bliss.