Merlin Part 1

Merlin.

by Edwin Arlington Robinson.

MERLIN

I

"Gawaine, Gawaine, what look ye for to see, So far beyond the faint edge of the world?

D'ye look to see the lady Vivian, Pursued by divers ominous vile demons That have another king more fierce than ours?

Or think ye that if ye look far enough And hard enough into the feathery west Ye'll have a glimmer of the Grail itself?

And if ye look for neither Grail nor lady, What look ye for to see, Gawaine, Gawaine?"

So Dagonet, whom Arthur made a knight Because he loved him as he laughed at him, Intoned his idle presence on a day To Gawaine, who had thought himself alone, Had there been in him thought of anything Save what was murmured now in Camelot Of Merlin's hushed and all but unconfirmed Appearance out of Brittany. It was heard At first there was a ghost in Arthur's palace, But soon among the scullions and anon Among the knights a firmer credit held All tongues from uttering what all glances told-- Though not for long. Gawaine, this afternoon, Fearing he might say more to Lancelot Of Merlin's rumor-laden resurrection Than Lancelot would have an ear to cherish, Had sauntered off with his imagination To Merlin's Rock, where now there was no Merlin To meditate upon a whispering town Below him in the silence.--Once he said To Gawaine: "You are young; and that being so, Behold the s.h.i.+ning city of our dreams And of our King."--"Long live the King," said Gawaine.-- "Long live the King," said Merlin after him; "Better for me that I shall not be King; Wherefore I say again, Long live the King, And add, G.o.d save him, also, and all kings-- All kings and queens. I speak in general.

Kings have I known that were but weary men With no stout appet.i.te for more than peace That was not made for them."--"Nor were they made For kings," Gawaine said, laughing.--"You are young Gawaine, and you may one day hold the world Between your fingers, knowing not what it is That you are holding. Better for you and me, I think, that we shall not be kings."

Gawaine, Remembering Merlin's words of long ago, Frowned as he thought, and having frowned again, He smiled and threw an acorn at a lizard: "There's more afoot and in the air to-day Than what is good for Camelot. Merlin May or may not know all, but he said well To say to me that he would not be King.

No more would I be King." Far down he gazed On Camelot, until he made of it A phantom town of many stillnesses, Not reared for men to dwell in, or for kings To reign in, without omens and obscure Familiars to bring terror to their days; For though a knight, and one as hard at arms As any, save the fate-begotten few That all acknowledged or in envy loathed, He felt a foreign sort of creeping up And down him, as of moist things in the dark,-- When Dagonet, coming on him unawares, Presuming on his t.i.tle of Sir Fool, Addressed him and crooned on till he was done: "What look ye for to see, Gawaine, Gawaine?"

"Sir Dagonet, you best and wariest Of all dishonest men, I look through Time, For sight of what it is that is to be.

I look to see it, though I see it not.

I see a town down there that holds a king, And over it I see a few small clouds-- Like feathers in the west, as you observe; And I shall see no more this afternoon Than what there is around us every day, Unless you have a skill that I have not To ferret the invisible for rats."

"If you see what's around us every day, You need no other showing to go mad.

Remember that and take it home with you; And say tonight, 'I had it of a fool-- With no immediate obliquity For this one or for that one, or for me.'"

Gawaine, having risen, eyed the fool curiously: "I'll not forget I had it of a knight, Whose only folly is to fool himself; And as for making other men to laugh, And so forget their sins and selves a little, There's no great folly there. So keep it up, As long as you've a legend or a song, And have whatever sport of us you like Till havoc is the word and we fall howling.

For I've a guess there may not be so loud A sound of laughing here in Camelot When Merlin goes again to his gay grave In Brittany. To mention lesser terrors, Men say his beard is gone."

"Do men say that?"

A twitch of an impatient weariness Played for a moment over the lean face Of Dagonet, who reasoned inwardly: "The friendly zeal of this inquiring knight Will overtake his tact and leave it squealing, One of these days."--Gawaine looked hard at him: "If I be too familiar with a fool, I'm on the way to be another fool,"

He mused, and owned a rueful qualm within him: "Yes, Dagonet," he ventured, with a laugh, "Men tell me that his beard has vanished wholly, And that he s.h.i.+nes now as the Lord's anointed, And wears the valiance of an ageless youth Crowned with a glory of eternal peace."

Dagonet, smiling strangely, shook his head: "I grant your valiance of a kind of youth To Merlin, but your crown of peace I question; For, though I know no more than any churl Who pinches any chambermaid soever In the King's palace, I look not to Merlin For peace, when out of his peculiar tomb He comes again to Camelot. Time swings A mighty scythe, and some day all your peace Goes down before its edge like so much clover.

No, it is not for peace that Merlin comes, Without a trumpet--and without a beard, If what you say men say of him be true-- Nor yet for sudden war."

Gawaine, for a moment, Met then the ambiguous gaze of Dagonet, And, making nothing of it, looked abroad As if at something cheerful on all sides, And back again to the fool's unasking eyes: "Well, Dagonet, if Merlin would have peace, Let Merlin stay away from Brittany,"

Said he, with admiration for the man Whom Folly called a fool: "And we have known him; We knew him once when he knew everything."

"He knew as much as G.o.d would let him know Until he met the lady Vivian.

I tell you that, for the world knows all that; Also it knows he told the King one day That he was to be buried, and alive, In Brittany; and that the King should see The face of him no more. Then Merlin sailed Away to Vivian in Broceliande, Where now she crowns him and herself with flowers, And feeds him fruits and wines and many foods Of many savors, and sweet ortolans.

Wise books of every lore of every land Are there to fill his days, if he require them, And there are players of all instruments-- Flutes, hautboys, drums, and viols; and she sings To Merlin, till he trembles in her arms And there forgets that any town alive Had ever such a name as Camelot.

So Vivian holds him with her love, they say, And he, who has no age, has not grown old.

I swear to nothing, but that's what they say.

That's being buried in Broceliande For too much wisdom and clairvoyancy.

But you and all who live, Gawaine, have heard This tale, or many like it, more than once; And you must know that Love, when Love invites Philosophy to play, plays high and wins, Or low and loses. And you say to me, 'If Merlin would have peace, let Merlin stay Away from Brittany.' Gawaine, you are young, And Merlin's in his grave."

"Merlin said once That I was young, and it's a joy for me That I am here to listen while you say it.

Young or not young, if that be burial, May I be buried long before I die.

I might be worse than young; I might be old."-- Dagonet answered, and without a smile: "Somehow I fancy Merlin saying that; A fancy--a mere fancy." Then he smiled: "And such a doom as his may be for you, Gawaine, should your untiring divination Delve in the veiled eternal mysteries Too far to be a pleasure for the Lord.

And when you stake your wisdom for a woman, Compute the woman to be worth a grave, As Merlin did, and say no more about it.

But Vivian, she played high. Oh, very high!

Flutes, hautboys, drums, and viols,--and her love.

Gawaine, farewell."

"Farewell, Sir Dagonet, And may the devil take you presently."

He followed with a vexed and envious eye, And with an arid laugh, Sir Dagonet's Departure, till his gaunt obscurity Was cloaked and lost amid the glimmering trees.

"Poor fool!" he murmured. "Or am I the fool?

With all my fast ascendency in arms, That ominous clown is nearer to the King Than I am--yet; and G.o.d knows what he knows, And what his wits infer from what he sees And feels and hears. I wonder what he knows Of Lancelot, or what I might know now, Could I have sunk myself to sound a fool To springe a friend.... No, I like not this day.

There's a cloud coming over Camelot Larger than any that is in the sky,-- Or Merlin would be still in Brittany, With Vivian and the viols. It's all too strange."

And later, when descending to the city, Through unavailing cas.e.m.e.nts he could hear The roaring of a mighty voice within, Confirming fervidly his own conviction: "It's all too strange, and half the world's half crazy!"-- He scowled: "Well, I agree with Lamorak."

He frowned, and pa.s.sed: "And I like not this day."

II

Sir Lamorak, the man of oak and iron, Had with him now, as a care-laden guest, Sir Bedivere, a man whom Arthur loved As he had loved no man save Lancelot.

Like one whose late-flown shaft of argument Had glanced and fallen afield innocuously, He turned upon his host a sudden eye That met from Lamorak's an even shaft Of native and unused authority; And each man held the other till at length Each turned away, shutting his heavy jaws Again together, prisoning thus two tongues That might forget and might not be forgiven.

Then Bedivere, to find a plain way out, Said, "Lamorak, let us drink to some one here, And end this dryness. Who shall it be--the King, The Queen, or Lancelot?"--"Merlin," Lamorak growled; And then there were more wrinkles round his eyes Than Bedivere had said were possible.

"There's no refusal in me now for that,"

The guest replied; "so, 'Merlin' let it be.

We've not yet seen him, but if he be here, And even if he should not be here, say 'Merlin.'"

They drank to the unseen from two new tankards, And fell straightway to sighing for the past, And what was yet before them. Silence laid A cogent finger on the lips of each Impatient veteran, whose hard hands lay clenched And restless on his midriff, until words Were stronger than strong Lamorak:

"Bedivere,"

Began the solid host, "you may as well Say now as at another time hereafter That all your certainties have bruises on 'em, And all your pestilent a.s.severations Will never make a man a salamander-- Who's born, as we are told, so fire won't bite him,-- Or a slippery queen a nun who counts and burns Herself to nothing with her beads and candles.

There's nature, and what's in us, to be sifted Before we know ourselves, or any man Or woman that G.o.d suffers to be born.

That's how I speak; and while you strain your mazzard, Like Father Jove, big with a new Minerva, We'll say, to pa.s.s the time, that I speak well.

G.o.d's fis.h.!.+ The King had eyes; and Lancelot Won't ride home to his mother, for she's dead.

The story is that Merlin warned the King Of what's come now to pa.s.s; and I believe it.

And Arthur, he being Arthur and a king, Has made a more pernicious mess than one, We're told, for being so great and amorous: It's that unwholesome and inclement cub Young Modred I'd see first in h.e.l.l before I'd hang too high the Queen or Lancelot; The King, if one may say it, set the pace, And we've two strapping b.a.s.t.a.r.ds here to prove it.

Young Borre, he's well enough; but as for Modred, I squirm as often as I look at him.

And there again did Merlin warn the King, The story goes abroad; and I believe it."

Sir Bedivere, as one who caught no more Than what he would of Lamorak's outpouring, Inclined his grizzled head and closed his eyes Before he sighed and rubbed his beard and spoke: "For all I know to make it otherwise, The Queen may be a nun some day or other; I'd pray to G.o.d for such a thing to be, If prayer for that were not a mockery.

We're late now for much praying, Lamorak, When you and I can feel upon our faces A wind that has been blowing over ruins That we had said were castles and high towers-- Till Merlin, or the spirit of him, came As the dead come in dreams. I saw the King This morning, and I saw his face. Therefore, I tell you, if a state shall have a king, The king must have the state, and be the state; Or then shall we have neither king nor state, But bones and ashes, and high towers all fallen: And we shall have, where late there was a kingdom, A dusty wreck of what was once a glory-- A wilderness whereon to crouch and mourn And moralize, or else to build once more For something better or for something worse.

Therefore again, I say that Lancelot Has wrought a potent wrong upon the King, And all who serve and recognize the King, And all who follow him and all who love him.

Whatever the stormy faults he may have had, To look on him today is to forget them; And if it be too late for sorrow now To save him--for it was a broken man I saw this morning, and a broken king-- The G.o.d who sets a day for desolation Will not forsake him in Avilion, Or whatsoever shadowy land there be Where peace awaits him on its healing sh.o.r.es."

Sir Lamorak, s.h.i.+fting in his oaken chair, Growled like a dog and shook himself like one: "For the stone-chested, helmet-cracking knight That you are known to be from Lyonnesse To northward, Bedivere, you fol-de-rol When days are rancid, and you fiddle-faddle More like a woman than a man with hands Fit for the smiting of a crazy giant With armor an inch thick, as we all know You are, when you're not sermonizing at us.

As for the King, I say the King, no doubt, Is angry, sorry, and all sorts of things, For Lancelot, and for his easy Queen, Whom he took knowing she'd thrown sparks already On that same piece of tinder, Lancelot, Who fetched her with him from Leodogran Because the King--G.o.d save poor human reason!-- Would prove to Merlin, who knew everything Worth knowing in those days, that he was wrong.

I'll drink now and be quiet,--but, by G.o.d, I'll have to tell you, Brother Bedivere, Once more, to make you listen properly, That crowns and orders, and high palaces, And all the manifold ingredients Of this good solid kingdom, where we sit And spit now at each other with our eyes, Will not go rolling down to h.e.l.l just yet Because a pretty woman is a fool.

And here's Kay coming with his fiddle face As long now as two fiddles. Sit ye down, Sir Man, and tell us everything you know Of Merlin--or his ghost without a beard.

What mostly is it?"

Sir Kay, the seneschal, Sat wearily while he gazed upon the two: "To you it mostly is, if I err not, That what you hear of Merlin's coming back Is nothing more or less than heavy truth.

But ask me nothing of the Queen, I say, For I know nothing. All I know of her Is what her eyes have told the silences That now attend her; and that her estate Is one for less complacent execration Than quips and innuendoes of the city Would augur for her sin--if there be sin-- Or for her name--if now she have a name.

And where, I say, is this to lead the King, And after him, the kingdom and ourselves?