Merlin Part 4

"Then let us have no more of it," she said; "For we are not so common, I believe, That we need kings and pits and flags and dragons To make us know that we have let the world Go by us. Have you missed the world so much That you must have it in with all its clots And wounds and bristles on to make us happy-- Like Blaise, with shouts and horns and seven men Triumphant with a most unlovely boar?

Is there no other story in the world Than this one of a man that you made king To be a moral for the speckled ages?

You said once long ago, if you remember, 'You are too strange a lady to fear specks'; And it was you, you said, who feared them not.

Why do you look at me as at a snake All coiled to spring at you and strike you dead?

I am not going to spring at you, or bite you; I'm going home. And you, if you are kind, Will have no fear to wander for an hour.

I'm sure the time has come for you to wander; And there may come a time for you to say What most you think it is that we need here To make of this Broceliande a refuge Where two disheartened sinners may forget A world that has today no place for them."

A melancholy wave of revelation Broke over Merlin like a rising sea, Long viewed unwillingly and long denied.

He saw what he had seen, but would not feel, Till now the bitterness of what he felt Was in his throat, and all the coldness of it Was on him and around him like a flood Of lonelier memories than he had said Were memories, although he knew them now For what they were--for what his eyes had seen, For what his ears had heard and what his heart Had felt, with him not knowing what it felt.

But now he knew that his cold angel's name Was Change, and that a mightier will than his Or Vivian's had ordained that he be there.

To Vivian he could not say anything But words that had no more of hope in them Than anguish had of peace: "I meant the world ...

I meant the world," he groaned; "not you--not me."

Again the frozen line of irony Was on her mouth. He looked up once at it.

And then away--too fearful of her eyes To see what he could hear now in her laugh That melted slowly into what she said, Like snow in icy water: "This world of yours Will surely be the end of us. And why not?

I'm overmuch afraid we're part of it,-- Or why do we build walls up all around us, With gates of iron that make us think the day Of judgment's coming when they clang behind us?

And yet you tell me that you fear no specks!

With you I never cared for them enough To think of them. I was too strange a lady.

And your return is now a speckled king And something that you call a living sin-- That's like an uninvited poor relation Who comes without a welcome, rather late, And on a foundered horse."

"Specks? What are specks?"

He gazed at her in a forlorn wonderment That made her say: "You said, 'I fear them not.'

'If I were king in Camelot,' you said, 'I might fear more than specks.' Have you forgotten?

Don't tell me, Merlin, you are growing old.

Why don't you make somehow a queen of me, And give me half the world? I'd wager thrushes That I should reign, with you to turn the wheel, As well as any king that ever was.

The curse on me is that I cannot serve A ruler who forgets that he is king."

In his bewildered misery Merlin then Stared hard at Vivian's face, more like a slave Who sought for common mercy than like Merlin: "You speak a language that was never mine, Or I have lost my wits. Why do you seize The flimsiest of opportunities To make of what I said another thing Than love or reason could have let me say, Or let me fancy? Why do you keep the truth So far away from me, when all your gates Will open at your word and let me go To some place where no fear or weariness Of yours need ever dwell? Why does a woman, Made otherwise a miracle of love And loveliness, and of immortal beauty, Tear one word by the roots out of a thousand, And worry it, and torture it, and shake it, Like a small dog that has a rag to play with?

What coil of an ingenious destiny Is this that makes of what I never meant A meaning as remote as h.e.l.l from heaven?"

"I don't know," Vivian said reluctantly, And half as if in pain; "I'm going home.

I'm going home and leave you here to wander.

Pray take your kings and sins away somewhere And bury them, and bury the Queen in also.

I know this king; he lives in Camelot, And I shall never like him. There are specks Almost all over him. Long live the king, But not the king who lives in Camelot, With Modred, Lancelot, and Guinevere-- And all four speckled like a merry nest Of addled eggs together. You made him King Because you loved the world and saw in him From infancy a mirror for the millions.

The world will see itself in him, and then The world will say its prayers and wash its face, And build for some new king a new foundation.

Long live the King!... But now I apprehend A time for me to shudder and grow old And garrulous--and so become a fright For Blaise to take out walking in warm weather-- Should I give way to long considering Of worlds you may have lost while prisoned here With me and my light mind. I contemplate Another name for this forbidden place, And one more fitting. Tell me, if you find it, Some fitter name than Eden. We have had A man and woman in it for some time, And now, it seems, we have a Tree of Knowledge."

She looked up at the branches overhead And shrugged her shoulders. Then she went away; And what was left of Merlin's happiness, Like a disloyal phantom, followed her.

He felt the sword of his cold angel thrust And twisted in his heart, as if the end Were coming next, but the cold angel pa.s.sed Invisibly and left him desolate, With misty brow and eyes. "The man who sees May see too far, and he may see too late The path he takes unseen," he told himself When he found thought again. "The man who sees May go on seeing till the immortal flame That lights and lures him folds him in its heart, And leaves of what there was of him to die An item of inhospitable dust That love and hate alike must hide away; Or there may still be charted for his feet A dimmer faring, where the touch of time Were like the pa.s.sing of a twilight moth From flower to flower into oblivion, If there were not somewhere a barren end Of moths and flowers, and glimmering far away Beyond a desert where the flowerless days Are told in slow defeats and agonies, The guiding of a nameless light that once Had made him see too much--and has by now Revealed in death, to the undying child Of Lancelot, the Grail. For this pure light Has many rays to throw, for many men To follow; and the wise are not all pure, Nor are the pure all wise who follow it.

There are more rays than men. But let the man Who saw too much, and was to drive himself From paradise, play too lightly or too long Among the moths and flowers, he finds at last There is a dim way out; and he shall grope Where pleasant shadows lead him to the plain That has no shadow save his own behind him.

And there, with no complaint, nor much regret, Shall he plod on, with death between him now And the far light that guides him, till he falls And has an empty thought of empty rest; Then Fate will put a mattock in his hands And lash him while he digs himself the grave That is to be the pallet and the shroud Of his poor blundering bones. The man who saw Too much must have an eye to see at last Where Fate has marked the clay; and he shall delve, Although his hand may slacken, and his knees May rock without a method as he toils; For there's a delving that is to be done-- If not for G.o.d, for man. I see the light, But I shall fall before I come to it; For I am old. I was young yesterday.

Time's hand that I have held away so long Grips hard now on my shoulder. Time has won.

Tomorrow I shall say to Vivian That I am old and gaunt and garrulous, And tell her one more story: I am old."

There were long hours for Merlin after that, And much long wandering in his prison-yard, Where now the progress of each heavy step Confirmed a stillness of impending change And imminent farewell. To Vivian's ear There came for many days no other story Than Merlin's iteration of his love And his departure from Broceliande, Where Merlin still remained. In Vivian's eye, There was a quiet kindness, and at times A smoky flash of incredulity That faded into pain. Was this the Merlin-- This incarnation of idolatry And all but supplicating deference-- This bowed and reverential contradiction Of all her dreams and her realities-- Was this the Merlin who for years and years Before she found him had so made her love him That kings and princes, thrones and diadems, And honorable men who drowned themselves For love, were less to her than melon-sh.e.l.ls?

Was this the Merlin whom her fate had sent One spring day to come ringing at her gate, Bewildering her love with happy terror That later was to be all happiness?

Was this the Merlin who had made the world Half over, and then left it with a laugh To be the youngest, oldest, weirdest, gayest, And wisest, and sometimes the foolishest Of all the men of her consideration?

Was this the man who had made other men As ordinary as arithmetic?

Was this man Merlin who came now so slowly Towards the fountain where she stood again In s.h.i.+mmering green? Trembling, he took her hands And pressed them fondly, one upon the other, Between his:

"I was wrong that other day, For I have one more story. I am old."

He waited like one hungry for the word Not said; and she found in his eyes a light As patient as a candle in a window That looks upon the sea and is a mark For s.h.i.+ps that have gone down. "Tomorrow," he said; "Tomorrow I shall go away again To Camelot; and I shall see the King Once more; and I may come to you again Once more; and I shall go away again For ever. There is now no more than that For me to do; and I shall do no more.

I saw too much when I saw Camelot; And I saw farther backward into Time, And forward, than a man may see and live, When I made Arthur king. I saw too far, But not so far as this. Fate played with me As I have played with Time; and Time, like me, Being less than Fate, will have on me his vengeance.

On Fate there is no vengeance, even for G.o.d."

He drew her slowly into his embrace And held her there, but when he kissed her lips They were as cold as leaves and had no answer; For Time had given him then, to prove his words, A frozen moment of a woman's life.

When Merlin the next morning came again In the same pilgrim robe that he had worn While he sat waiting where the cherry-blossoms Outside the gate fell on him and around him, Grief came to Vivian at the sight of him; And like a flash of a swift ugly knife, A blinding fear came with it. "Are you going?"

She said, more with her lips than with her voice; And he said, "I am going. Blaise and I Are going down together to the sh.o.r.e, And Blaise is coming back. For this one day Be good enough to spare him, for I like him.

I tell you now, as once I told the King, That I can be no more than what I was, And I can say no more than I have said.

Sometimes you told me that I spoke too long, And sent me off to wander. That was good.

I go now for another wandering, And I pray G.o.d that all be well with you."

For long there was a whining in her ears Of distant wheels departing. When it ceased, She closed the gate again so quietly That Merlin could have heard no sound of it.

VII

By Merlin's Rock, where Dagonet the fool Was given through many a dying afternoon To sit and meditate on human ways And ways divine, Gawaine and Bedivere Stood silent, gazing down on Camelot.

The two had risen and were going home: "It hits me sore, Gawaine," said Bedivere, "To think on all the tumult and affliction Down there, and all the noise and preparation That hums of coming death, and, if my fears Be born of reason, of what's more than death.

Wherefore, I say to you again, Gawaine,-- To you--that this late hour is not too late For you to change yourself and change the King; For though the King may love me with a love More tried, and older, and more sure, may be, Than for another, for such a time as this The friend who turns him to the world again Shall have a tongue more gracious and an eye More shrewd than mine. For such a time as this The King must have a glamour to persuade him."

"The King shall have a glamour, and anon,"

Gawaine said, and he shot death from his eyes; "If you were King, as Arthur is--or was-- And Lancelot had carried off your Queen, And killed a score or so of your best knights-- Not mentioning my two brothers, whom he slew Unarmored and unarmed--G.o.d save your wits!

Two stewards with skewers could have done as much, And you and I might now be rotting for it."

"But Lancelot's men were crowded,--they were crushed; And there was nothing for them but to strike Or die, not seeing where they struck. Think you They would have slain Gareth and Gaheris, And Tor, and all those other friends of theirs?

G.o.d's mercy for the world he made, I say, And for the blood that writes the story of it.

Gareth and Gaheris, Tor and Lamorak,-- All dead, with all the others that are dead!

These years have made me turn to Lamorak For counsel--and now Lamorak is dead."

"Why do you fling those two names in my face?

'Twas Modred made an end of Lamorak, Not I; and Lancelot now has done for Tor.

I'll urge no king on after Lancelot For such a two as Tor and Lamorak: Their father killed my father, and their friend Was Lancelot, not I. I'll own my fault-- I'm living; and while I've a tongue can talk, I'll say this to the King: 'Burn Lancelot By inches till he give you back the Queen; Then hang him--drown him--or do anything To rid the world of him.' He killed my brothers, And he was once my friend. Now d.a.m.n the soul Of him who killed my brothers! There you have me."

"You are a strong man, Gawaine, and your strength Goes ill where foes are. You may cleave their limbs And heads off, but you cannot d.a.m.n their souls; What you may do now is to save their souls, And bodies too, and like enough your own.

Remember that King Arthur is a king, And where there is a king there is a kingdom Is not the kingdom any more to you Than one brief enemy? Would you see it fall, And the King with it, for one mortal hate That burns out reason? Gawaine, you are king Today. Another day may see no king But Havoc, if you have no other word For Arthur now than hate for Lancelot.

Is not the world as large as Lancelot?

Is Lancelot, because one woman's eyes Are brighter when they look on him, to sluice The world with angry blood? Poor fles.h.!.+ Poor fles.h.!.+

And you, Gawaine,--are you so gaffed with hate You cannot leave it and so plunge away To stiller places and there see, for once, What hangs on this pernicious expedition The King in his insane forgetfulness Would undertake--with you to drum him on?

Are you as mad as he and Lancelot Made ravening into one man twice as mad As either? Is the kingdom of the world, Now rocking, to go down in sound and blood And ashes and sick ruin, and for the sake Of three men and a woman? If it be so, G.o.d's mercy for the world he made, I say,-- And say again to Dagonet. Sir Fool, Your throne is empty, and you may as well Sit on it and be ruler of the world From now till supper-time."

Sir Dagonet, Appearing, made reply to Bedivere's Dry welcome with a famished look of pain, On which he built a smile: "If I were King, You, Bedivere, should be my counsellor; And we should have no more wars over women.

I'll sit me down and meditate on that."

Gawaine, for all his anger, laughed a little, And clapped the fool's lean shoulder; for he loved him And was with Arthur when he made him knight.

Then Dagonet said on to Bedivere, As if his tongue would make a jest of sorrow: "Sometime I'll tell you what I might have done Had I been Lancelot and you King Arthur-- Each having in himself the vicious essence That now lives in the other and makes war.

When all men are like you and me, my lord, When all are rational or rickety, There may be no more war. But what's here now?

Lancelot loves the Queen, and he makes war Of love; the King, being bitten to the soul By love and hate that work in him together, Makes war of madness; Gawaine hates Lancelot, And he, to be in tune, makes war of hate; Modred hates everything, yet he can see With one d.a.m.ned illegitimate small eye His father's crown, and with another like it He sees the beauty of the Queen herself; He needs the two for his ambitious pleasure, And therefore he makes war of his ambition; And somewhere in the middle of all this There's a squeezed world that elbows for attention.

Poor Merlin, buried in Broceliande!

He must have had an academic eye For woman when he founded Arthur's kingdom, And in Broceliande he may be sorry.

Flutes, hautboys, drums, and viols. G.o.d be with him!

I'm glad they tell me there's another world, For this one's a disease without a doctor."