Who knows not the tragedy of Tristan and Isolt

The fair-haired Cornish harper

Whose hands held steel and string

And Ireland's greatest treasure

Borne like Helen cross the water

While the waves approaching

Bowed before her beauty

All who've heard the telling know

The blind and bitter fates

Placed the cup of love's sweet poison

To unconsenting lips

And as plank fell home to timber

And the king beheld his lady

Carols rang within the church and seagulls screamed

All the harpers laboured

On their agonies of passion

Unfulfilled and ever straining

Like lodestones to the north

But few will ever mention

How the cold breath of the Northlands

Let them lie at last as one without deceit

When Tristan could no longer bear

The shame of guilty conscience

He took ship to far Bretagne

Half-hearted and bereft

He cast aside his music

Cut the strings which brought him joy

And took solace in the fury of the field

Praise grew up around him like

The corn around a boulder

As the Cornishman did battle

With demons in and out

In singing sword and thunder

Tristan vainly sought distraction

Yet she whispered in the silence of the slain

In the way of warriors

Rewarding noble heroes

Fairest Blanchmaine of the Bretons

Was given for his wife

But Blanchmaine knew no pleasure

From her cold and grieving husband

For the marble face of memory was his bride

In that time the country was

Beset with Eden's serpents

And the basest of all creatures

Can bring the highest low

Two poisons coursed within him

And none could be his saviour

But the healing arts of Ireland and Isolt

Wings of hope departed

Struggling North against the tempest

With tender words entreating

For mercy and for grace

If his love no longer moved her

Hoist the black into the rigging

But if white brought them together

He would wait

Daylight creeping downward

Tristan's demons massed against him

And the words of his delusions

Brought hidden love to light

While the woman he had married

But to whom he'd given nothing

Sat her long and jealous vigil by his side

Morning framed the answer

Walking lightly o'er the water

Like Christ's own victory banner

It flew toward the shore

It was white as angels' raiments

But when feebly he begged her

Fairest Blanchemaine softly told him 'Tis of night

Who can say which venom

Took the soul from Tristan's body

And the bells began their tolling

As Isolt ran up the strand

The wind grew slow and silent

As she wept upon her lover

And in gentleness it took her grief away

Side by side they laid them

With the earth their separation

Even yet they were divided

By the morals of the world

But their spirits spiralled upwards

Ireland's briar and Cornwall's rose

And together at the last they lay entwined