Merlin (Robinson)/Canto 3
III
King Arthur, as he paced a lonely floorThat rolled a muffled echo, as he fancied,All through the palace and out through the world,Might now have wondered hard, could he have heardSir Lamorak's apathetic disregard Of what Fate's knocking made so manifestAnd ominous to others near the King—If any, indeed, were near him at this hourSave Merlin, once the wisest of all men,And weary Dagonet, whom he had made A knight for love of him and his abusedIntegrity. He might have wondered hardAnd wondered much; and after wondering,He might have summoned, with as little heartAs he had now for crowns, the fond, lost Merlin,Whose Nemesis had made of him a slave,A man of dalliance, and a sybarite.
“Men change in Brittany, Merlin,” said the King;And even his grief had strife to freeze againA dreary smile for the transmuted seerNow robed in heavy wealth of purple silk,With frogs and foreign tassels. On his face,Too smooth now for a wizard or a sage,Lay written, for the King's remembering eyes,A pathos of a lost authorityLong faded, and unconscionably gone; And on the King's heart lay a sudden cold:"I might as well have left him in his grave,As he would say it, saying what was true,—As death is true. This Merlin is not mine,But Vivian's. My crown is less than hers,And I am less than woman to this man."
Then Merlin, as one reading Arthur's wordsOn viewless tablets in the air before him:"Now, Arthur, since you are a child of mine—A foster-child, and that's a kind of child—Be not from hearsay or despair too eagerTo dash your meat with bitter seasoning,So none that are more famished than yourselfShall have what you refuse. For you are King,And if you starve yourself, you starve the state;And then by sundry looks and silences Of those you loved, and by the lax regardOf those you knew for fawning enemies,You may learn soon that you are King no more,But a slack, blasted, and sad-fronted man,Made sadder with a crown. No other friendThan I could say this to you, and say more;And if you bid me say no more, so be it."
The King, who sat with folded arms, now bowedHis head and felt, unfought and all aflameLike immanent hell-fire, the wretchednessThat only those who are to lead may feel—And only they when they are maimed and wornToo sore to covet without shudderingThe fixed impending eminence where deathItself were victory, could they but leadUnbitten by the serpents they had fed. Turning, he spoke: "Merlin, you say the truth:There is no man who could say more to meToday, or say so much to me, and live.But you are Merlin still, or part of him;I did you wrong when I thought otherwise,And I am sorry now. Say what you will.We are alone, and I shall be aloneAs long as Time shall hide a reason hereFor me to stay in this infested worldWhere I have sinned and erred and heeded notYour counsel; and where you yourself—God save us!—Have gone down smiling to the smaller lifeThat you and your incongruous laughter calledYour living grave. God save us all, Merlin,When you, the seer, the founder, and the prophet,May throw the gold of your immortal treasure Back to the God that gave it, and then laughBecause a woman has you in her arms . . .Why do you sting me now with a small hiveOf words that are all poison? I do not askMuch honey; but why poison me for nothing,And with a venom that I know alreadyAs I know crowns and wars? Why tell a king—A poor, foiled, flouted, miserable king—That if he lets rats eat his fingers offHe'll have no fingers to fight battles with?I know as much as that, for I am stillA king—who thought himself a little lessThan God; a king who built him palacesOn sand and mud, and hears them crumbling now,And sees them tottering, as he knew they must.You are the man who made me to be King—Therefore, say anything."
Merlin, stricken deepWith pity that was old, being born of oldForeshadowings, made answer to the King:"This coil of Lancelot and GuinevereIs not for any mortal to undo,Or to deny, or to make otherwise;But your most violent years are on their wayTo days, and to a sounding of loud hoursThat are to strike for war. Let not the timeBetween this hour and then be lost in fears,Or told in obscurations and vain faithIn what has been your long security;For should your force be slower then than hate,And your regret be sharper than your sight,And your remorse fall heavier than your sword,—Then say farewell to Camelot, and the crown.But say not you have lost, or failed in aught Your golden horoscope of imperfectionHas held in starry words that I have read.I see no farther now than I saw then,For no man shall be given of everythingTogether in one life; yet I may sayThe time is imminent when he shall comeFor whom I founded the Siege Perilous;And he shall be too much a living partOf what he brings, and what he burns away in,To be for long a vexed inhabitantOf this mad realm of stains and lower trials.And here the ways of God again are mixed:For this new knight who is to find the GrailFor you, and for the least who pray for youIn such lost coombs and hollows of the worldAs you have never entered, is to beThe son of him you trusted—Lancelot, Of all who ever jeopardized a throneSure the most evil-fated, saving one,Your son, begotten, though you knew not thenYour leman was your sister, of Morgause;For it is Modred now, not Lancelot,Whose native hate plans your annihilation—Though he may smile till he be sick, and swearAllegiance to an unforgiven fatherUntil at last he shake an empty tongueTalked out with too much lying—though his liesWill have a truth to steer them. Trust him not,For unto you the father, he the sonIs like enough to be the last of terrors—If in a field of time that looms to youFar larger than it is you fail to plantAnd harvest the old seeds of what I say,And so be nourished and adept again For what may come to be. But LancelotWill have you first; and you need starve no moreFor the Queen's love, the love that never was.Your Queen is now your Kingdom, and hereafterLet no man take it from you, or you die.Let no man take it from you for a day;For days are long when we are far from whatWe love, and mischief's other name is distance.Let that be all, for I can say no more;Not even to Blaise the Hermit, were he living,Could I say more than I have given you nowTo hear; and he alone was my confessor."
The King arose and paced the floor again."I get gray comfort of dark words," he said;"But tell me not that you can say no more:You can, for I can hear you saying it. Yet I'll not ask for more. I have enough—Until my new knight comes to prove and findThe promise and the glory of the Grail,Though I shall see no Grail. For I have builtOn sand and mud, and I shall see no Grail."—"Nor I," said Merlin. "Once I dreamed of it,But I was buried. I shall see no Grail,Nor would I have it otherwise. I sawToo much, and that was never good for man.The man who goes alone too far goes mad—In one way or another. God knew best,And he knows what is coming yet for me.I do not ask. Like you, I have enough."
That night King Arthur's apprehension foundIn Merlin an obscure and restive guest,Whose only thought was on the hour of dawn, When he should see the last of CamelotAnd ride again for Brittany; and what wordsWere said before the King was left aloneWere only darker for reiteration.They parted, all provision made secureFor Merlin's early convoy to the coast,And Arthur tramped the past. The lonelinessOf kings, around him like the unseen dead,Lay everywhere; and he was loath to move,As if in fear to meet with his cold handThe touch of something colder. Then a whim,Begotten of intolerable doubt,Seized him and stung him until he was askingIf any longer lived among his knightsA man to trust as once he trusted all,And Lancelot more than all. "And it is heWho is to have me first," so Merlin says,— "As if he had me not in hell already.Lancelot! Lancelot!" He cursed the tearsThat cooled his misery, and then he askedHimself again if he had one to trustAmong his knights, till even Bedivere,Tor, Bors, and Percival, rough Lamorak,Griflet, and Gareth, and gay Gawaine, allWere dubious knaves,—or they were like to be,For cause to make them so; and he had madeHimself to be the cause. "God set me right,Before this folly carry me on farther,"He murmured; and he smiled unhappily,Though fondly, as he thought: "Yes, there is oneWhom I may trust with even my soul's last shred;And Dagonet will sing for me tonightAn old song, not too merry or too sad." When Dagonet, having entered, stood beforeThe King as one affrighted, the King smiled:"You think because I call for you so lateThat I am angry, Dagonet? Why so?Have you been saying what I say to you,And telling men that you brought Merlin here?No? So I fancied; and if you reportNo syllable of anything I speak,You will have no regrets, and I no anger.What word of Merlin was abroad today?"
"Today have I heard no man save Gawaine,And to him I said only what all menAre saying to their neighbors. They believeThat you have Merlin here, and that his comingDenotes no good. Gawaine was curious,But ever mindful of your majesty. He pressed me not, and we made light of it."
"Gawaine, I fear, makes light of everything,"The King said, looking down. "Sometimes I wishI had a full Round Table of Gawaines.But that's a freak of midnight,—never mind it.Sing me a song—one of those endless thingsThat Merlin liked of old, when men were youngerAnd there were more stars twinkling in the sky.I see no stars that are alive tonight,And I am not the king of sleep. So then,Sing me an old song."
Dagonet's quick eyeCaught sorrow in the King's; and he knew more,In a fool's way, than even the King himselfOf what was hovering over Camelot. "O King," he said, "I cannot sing tonight.If you command me I shall try to sing,But I shall fail; for there are no songs nowIn my old throat, or even in these poor stringsThat I can hardly follow with my fingers.Forgive me—kill me—but I cannot sing."Dagonet fell down then on both his kneesAnd shook there while he clutched the King's cold handAnd wept for what he knew.
"There, Dagonet;I shall not kill my knight, or make him sing.No more; get up, and get you off to bed.There'll be another time for you to sing,So get you to your covers and sleep well." Alone again, the King said, bitterly:"Yes, I have one friend left, and they who knowAs much of him as of themselves believeThat he's a fool. Poor Dagonet's a fool.And if he be a fool, what else am IThan one fool more to make the world complete?'The love that never was!' . . . Fool, fool, fool, fool!"
The King was long awake. No covenantWith peace was his tonight; and he knew sleepAs he knew the cold eyes of GuinevereThat yesterday had stabbed him, having firstOn Lancelot's name struck fire, and left him thenAs now they left him—with a wounded heart,A wounded pride, and a sickening pang worse yetOf lost possession. He thought wearily Of watchers by the dead, late wayfarers,Rough-handed mariners on ships at sea,Lone-yawning sentries, wastrels, and all othersWho might be saying somewhere to themselves,"The King is now asleep in Camelot;God save the King."—"God save the King, indeed,If there be now a king to save," he said.Then he saw giants rising in the dark,Born horribly of memories and new fearsThat in the gray-lit irony of dawnWere partly to fade out and be forgotten;And then there might be sleep, and for a timeThere might again be peace. His head was hotAnd throbbing; but the rest of him was cold,As he lay staring hard where nothing stood,And hearing what was not, even while he sawAnd heard, like dust and thunder far away, The coming confirmation of the wordsOf him who saw so much and feared so littleOf all that was to be. No spoken doomThat ever chilled the last night of a felonPrepared a dragging anguish more profoundAnd absolute than Arthur, in these hours,Made out of darkness and of Merlin's words;No tide that ever crashed on LyonnesseDrove echoes inland that were lonelierFor widowed ears among the fisher-folk,Than for the King were memories tonightOf old illusions that were dead for ever.