Merlin (Robinson)/Canto 5

by Edwin Arlington Robinson

V

The sun went down, and the dark after itStarred Merlin's new abode with many a sconcedAnd many a moving candle, in whose lightThe prisoned wizard, mirrored in amazement,Saw fronting him a stranger, falcon-eyed,Firm-featured, of a negligible age,And fair enough to look upon, he fancied,Though not a warrior born, nor more a courtier.A native humor resting in his longAnd solemn jaws now stirred, and Merlin smiled To see himself in purple, touched with gold,And fledged with snowy lace.—The careful Blaise,Having drawn some time before from Merlin's walletThe sable raiment of a royal scholar,Had eyed it with a long mistrust and said:"The lady Vivian would be vexed, I fear,To meet you vested in these learned weedsOf gravity and death; for she abhorsMortality in all its hues and emblems—Black wear, long argument, and all the coldAnd solemn things that appertain to graves."—And Merlin, listening, to himself had said,"This fellow has a freedom, yet I like him;"And then aloud: "I trust you. Deck me out,However, with a temperate regardFor what your candid eye may find in meOf inward coloring. Let them reap my beard, Moreover, with a sort of reverence,For I shall never look on it again.And though your lady frown her face awayTo think of me in black, for God's indulgence,Array me not in scarlet or in yellow."—And so it came to pass that Merlin satAt ease in purple, even though his chinReproached him as he pinched it, and seemed yetA little fearful of its nakedness.He might have sat and scanned himself for everHad not the careful Blaise, regarding him,Remarked again that in his proper judgment,And on the valid word of his attendants,No more was to be done. "Then do no more,"Said Merlin, with a last look at his chin;"Never do more when there's no more to do,And you may shun thereby the bitter taste Of many disillusions and regrets.God's pity on us that our words have wingsAnd leave our deeds to crawl so far below them;For we have all two heights, we men who dream,Whether we lead or follow, rule or serve."—"God's pity on us anyhow," Blaise answered,"Or most of us. Meanwhile, I have to say,As long as you are here, and I'm alive,Your summons will assure the loyaltyOf all my diligence and expedition.The gong that you hear singing in the distanceWas rung for your attention and your presence."—"I wonder at this fellow, yet I like him,"Said Merlin; and he rose to follow him.

The lady Vivian in a fragile sheathOf crimson, dimmed and veiled ineffably By the flame-shaken gloom wherein she sat,And twinkled if she moved, heard Merlin coming,And smiled as if to make herself believeHer joy was all a triumph; yet her bloodConfessed a tingling of more wondermentThan all her five and twenty worldly yearsOf waiting for this triumph could remember;And when she knew and felt the slower treadOf his unseen advance among the shadowsTo the small haven of uncertain lightThat held her in it as a torch-lit shoalMight hold a smooth red fish, her listening skinResponded with a creeping underneath it,And a crinkling that was incident alikeTo darkness, love, and mice. When he was there,She looked up at him in a whirl of mirthAnd wonder, as in childhood she had gazed Wide-eyed on royal mountebanks who madeSo brief a shift of the impossibleThat kings and queens would laugh and shake themselves;Then rising slowly on her little feet,Like a slim creature lifted, she thrust outHer two small hands as if to push him back—Whereon he seized them. "Go away," she said;"I never saw you in my life before."—"You say the truth," he answered; "when I metMyself an hour ago, my words were yours.God made the man you see for you to like,If possible. If otherwise, turn downThese two prodigious and remorseless thumbsAnd leave your lions to annihilate him."—

"I have no other lion than yourself," She said; "and since you cannot eat yourself,Pray do a lonely woman, who is, you say,More like a tree than any other thingIn your discrimination, the large honorOf sharing with her a small kind of supper."—"Yes, you are like a tree,—or like a flower;More like a flower to-night." He bowed his headAnd kissed the ten small fingers he was holding,As calmly as if each had been a son;Although his heart was leaping and his eyesHad sight for nothing save a swimming crimsonBetween two glimmering arms. "More like a flowerTo-night," he said, as now he scanned againThe immemorial meaning of her faceAnd drew it nearer to his eyes. It seemedA flower of wonder with a crimson stemCame leaning slowly and regretfully To meet his will—a flower of change and perilThat had a clinging blossom of warm oliveHalf stifled with a tyranny of black,And held the wayward fragrance of a roseMade woman by delirious alchemy.She raised her face and yoked his willing neckWith half her weight; and with hot lips that leftThe world with only philosophyFor Merlin or for Anaxagoras,Called his to meet them and in one long hushOf capture to surrender and make hersThe last of anything that might remainOf what were now their beardless wizardry.Then slowly she began to push herselfAway, and slowly Merlin let her goAs far from him as his outreaching handsCould hold her fingers while his eyes had all The beauty of the woodland and the worldBefore him in the firelight, like a nymphOf cities, or a queen a little wearyOf inland stillness and immortal trees."Are you to let me go again sometime,"She said,—"before I starve to death, I wonder?If not, I'll have to bite the lion's paws,And make him roar. He cannot shake his mane,For now the lion has no mane to shake;The lion hardly knows himself without it,And thinks he has no face, but there's a ladyWho says he had no face until he lost it.So there we are. And there's a flute somewhere,Playing a strange old tune. You know the words:'The Lion and the Lady are both hungry.'"

Fatigue and hunger—tempered leisurely With food that some devout magician's ovenMight after many failures have delivered,And wine that had for decades in the darkOf Merlin's grave been slowly quickening,And with half-heard, dream-weaving interludesOf distant flutes and viols, made yet more distantBy far, nostalgic hautboys blown from nowhere,—Were tempered not so leisurely, may be,With Vivian's inextinguishable eyesBetween two shining silver candlesticksThat lifted each a trembling flame to makeThe rest of her a dusky lovelinessAgainst a bank of shadow. Merlin made,As well as he was able while he ate,A fair division of the fealty dueTo food and beauty, albeit more times than oneWas he at odds with his urbanity In honoring too long the grosser viand."The best invention in BroceliandeHas not been over-taxed in vain, I see,"She told him, with her chin propped on her fingersAnd her eyes flashing blindness into his:"I put myself out cruelly to please you,And you, for that, forget almost at onceThe name and image of me altogether.You needn't, for when all is analyzed,It's only a bird-pie that you are eating."

"I know not what you call it," Merlin said;"Nor more do I forget your name and image,Though I do eat; and if I did not eat,Your sending out of ships and caravansTo get whatever 'tis that's in this thingWould be a sorrow for you all your days; And my great love, which you have seen by now,Might look to you a lie; and like as notYou'd actuate some sinewed mercenaryTo carry me away to God knows whereAnd seal me in a fearsome hole to starve,Because I made of this insidious pickingAn idle circumstance. My dear fair lady—And there is not another under heavenSo fair as you are as I see you now—I cannot look at you too much and eat;And I must eat, or be untimely ashes,Whereon the light of your celestial gazeWould fall, I fear me, for no longer timeThan on the solemn dust of Jeremiah—Whose beard you likened once, in heathen jest,To mine that now is no man's."

To mine that now is no man's." "Are you sorry?"Said Vivian, filling Merlin's empty goblet;"If you are sorry for the loss of it,Drink more of this and you may tell me liesEnough to make me sure that you are glad;But if your love is what you say it is,Be never sorry that my love took offThat horrid hair to make your face at lastA human fact. Since I have had your nameTo dream of and say over to myself,The visitations of that awful beardHave been a terror for my nights and days—For twenty years. I've seen it like an ocean,Blown seven ways at once and wrecking ships,With men and women screaming for their lives;I've seen it woven into shining laddersThat ran up out of sight and so to heaven, All covered with white ghosts with hanging robesLike folded wings,—and there were millions of them,Climbing, climbing, climbing, all the time;And all the time that I was watching themI thought how far above me Merlin was,And wondered always what his face was like.But even then, as a child, I knew the dayWould come some time when I should see his face,And hear his voice, and have him in my houseTill he should care no more to stay in it,And go away to found another kingdom."—"Not that," he said; and, sighing, drank more wine;"One kingdom for one Merlin is enough."—"One Merlin for one Vivian is enough,"She said. "If you care much, remember that;But the Lord knows how many ViviansOne Merlin's entertaining eye might favor, Indifferently well and all at once,If they were all at hand. Praise heaven they're not."

"If they were in the world—praise heaven they're not—And if one Merlin's entertaining eyeSaw two of them, there might be left him thenThe sight of no eye to see anything—Not even the Vivian who is everything,She being Beauty, Beauty being She,She being Vivian, and so forever."—"I'm glad you don't see two of me," she said;"For there's a whole world yet for you to eatAnd drink and say to me before I knowThe kind of creature that you see in me.I'm withering for a little more attention,But, being woman, I can wait. These cups That you see coming are for the last there isOf what my father gave to kings alone,And far from always. You are more than kingsTo me; therefore I give it all to you,Imploring you to spare no more of itThan what a cockle-shell would hold for meTo pledge your love and mine in. Take the rest,That I may see tonight the end of it;I'll have no living remnant of the deadAnnoying me until it fades and soursOf too long cherishing; for Time enjoysThe look that's on our faces when we scowlOn unexpected ruins, and thrift itselfMay be a kind of slow unwholesome fireThat eats away to dust the life that feeds it.You smile, I see, but I said what I said.One hardly has to live a thousand years To contemplate a lost economy;So let us drink it while it's yet aliveAnd you and I are not untimely ashes.My last words are your own, and I don't like 'em."—A sudden laughter scattered from her eyesA threatening wisdom. He smiled and let her laugh,Then looked into the dark where there was nothing:"There's more in this than I have seen," he thought,"Though I shall see it."—"Drink," she said again;"There's only this much in the world of it,And I am near to giving all to youBecause you are so great and I so little."

With a long-kindling gaze that caught from hersA laughing flame, and with a hand that shookLike Arthur's kingdom, Merlin slowly raisedA golden cup that for a golden moment Was twinned in air with hers; and Vivian,Who smiled at him across their gleaming rims,From eyes that made a fuel of the nightSurrounding her, shot glory over goldAt Merlin, while their cups touched and his trembled.He drank, not knowing what, nor caring muchFor kings who might have cared less for themselves,He thought, had all the darkness and wild lightThat fell together to make VivianBeen there before them then to flower anewThrough sheathing crimson into candle-lightWith each new leer of their loose, liquorish eyes.Again he drank, and he cursed every kingWho might have touched her even in her cradle;For what were kings to such as he, who made themAnd saw them totter—for the world to see,And heed, if the world would? He drank again, And yet again—to make himself assuredNo manner of king should have the last of it—The cup that Vivian filled unfailinglyUntil she poured for nothing. "At the endOf this incomparable flowing gold,"She prattled on to Merlin, who observedHer solemnly, "I fear there may be specks."—He sighed aloud, whereat she laughed at himAnd pushed the golden cup a little nearer.He scanned it with a sad anxiety,And then her face likewise, and shook his headAs if at her concern for such a matter:"Specks? What are specks? Are you afraid of them?"He murmured slowly, with a drowsy tongue;"There are specks everywhere. I fear them not.If I were king in Camelot, I might Fear more than specks. But now I fear them not.You are too strange a lady to fear specks."

He stared a long time at the cup of goldBefore him but he drank no more. There cameBetween him and the world a crumbling skyOf black and crimson, with a crimson cloudThat held a far off town of many towers,All swayed and shaken, till at last they fell,And there was nothing but a crimson cloudThat crumbled into nothing, like the skyThat vanished with it, carrying awayThe world, the woman, and all memory of them,Until a slow light of another skyMade gray an open casement, showing himFaint shapes of an exotic furnitureThat glimmered with a dim magnificence, And letting in the sound of many birdsThat were, as he lay there remembering,The only occupation of his earsUntil it seemed they shared a fainter sound,As if a sleeping child with a black headBeside him drew the breath of innocence.

One shining afternoon around the fountain,As on the shining day of his arrival,The sunlight was alive with flying silverThat had for Merlin a more dazzling flashThan jewels rained in dreams, and a richer soundThan harps, and all the morning stars together,—When jewels and harps and stars and everythingThat flashed and sang and was not Vivian,Seemed less than echoes of her least of words—For she was coming. Suddenly, somewhere Behind him, she was coming; that was allHe knew until she came and took his handAnd held it while she talked about the fishes.When she looked up he thought a softer lightWas in her eyes than once he had found there;And had there been left yet for dusky womenA beauty that was heretofore not hers,He told himself he must have seen it thenBefore him in the face at which he smiledAnd trembled. "Many men have called me wise,"He said, "but you are wiser than all wisdomIf you know what you are."—"I don't," she said;"I know that you and I are here together;I know that I have known for twenty yearsThat life would be almost a constant yawningUntil you came; and now that you are here,I know that you are not to go away Until you tell me that I'm hideous;I know that I like fishes, ferns, and snakes,—Maybe because I liked them when the worldWas young and you and I were salamanders;I know, too, a cool place not far from here,Where there are ferns that are like marching menWho never march away. Come now and see them,And do as they do—never march away.When they are gone, some others, crisp and green,Will have their place, but never march away."—He smoothed her silky fingers, one by one:"Some other Merlin, also, do you think,Will have his place—and never march away?"—Then Vivian laid a finger on his lipsAnd shook her head at him before she laughed:"There is no other Merlin than yourself,And you are never going to be old." Oblivious of a world that made of himA jest, a legend, and a long regret,And with a more commanding wizardryThan his to rule a kingdom where the kingWas Love and the queen Vivian, Merlin foundHis queen without the blemish of a wordThat was more rough than honey from her lips,Or the first adumbration of a frownTo cloud the night-wild fire that in her eyesHad yet a smoky friendliness of home,And a foreknowing care for mighty trifles."There are miles and miles for you to wander in,"She told him once: "Your prison yard is large,And I would rather take my two ears offAnd feed them to the fishes in the fountainThan buzz like an incorrigible beeFor always around yours, and have you hate The sound of me; for some day then, for certain,Your philosophic rage would see in meA bee in earnest, and your hand would smiteMy life away. And what would you do then?I know: for years and years you'd sit aloneUpon my grave, and be the grieving imageOf lean remorse, and suffer miserably;And often, all day long, you'd only shakeYour celebrated head and all it holds,Or beat it with your fist the while you groanedAloud and went on saying to yourself:'Never should I have killed her, or believedShe was a bee that buzzed herself to death,First having made me crazy, had there beenJudicious distance and wise absencesTo keep the two of us inquisitive.'"—"I fear you bow your unoffending head Before a load that should be mine," said he;"If so, you led me on by listening.You should have shrieked and jumped, and then fled yelling;That's the best way when a man talks too long.God's pity on me if I love your feetMore now than I could ever love the faceOf any one of all those ViviansYou summoned out of nothing on the nightWhen I saw towers. I'll wander and amend."—At that she flung the noose of her soft armsAround his neck and kissed him instantly:"You are the wisest man that ever was,And I've a prayer to make: May all you sayTo Vivian be a part of what you knewBefore the curse of her unquiet headWas on your shoulder, as you have it now, To punish you for knowing beyond knowledge.You are the only one who sees enoughTo make me see how far away I amFrom all that I have seen and have not been;You are the only thing there is aliveBetween me as I am and as I wasWhen Merlin was a dream. You are to listenWhen I say now to you that I'm alone.Like you, I saw too much; and unlike youI made no kingdom out of what I saw—Or none save this one here that you must rule,Believing you are ruled. I see too farTo rule myself. Time's way with you and me Is our way, in that we are out of TimeAnd out of tune with Time. We have this place,And you must hold us in it or we die.Look at me now and say if what I say Be folly or not; for my unquiet headIs no conceit of mine. I had it firstWhen I was born; and I shall have it with meTill my unquiet soul is on its wayTo be, I hope, where souls are quieter.So let the first and last activityOf what you say so often is your loveBe always to remember that our lyresAre not strung for Today. On you it fallsTo keep them in accord here with each other,For you have wisdom, I have only sightFor distant things—and you. And you are Merlin.Poor wizard! Vivian is your punishmentFor making kings of men who are not kings;And you are mine, by the same reasoning,For living out of Time and out of tuneWith anything but you. No other man Could make me say so much of what I knowAs I say now to you. And you are Merlin!"

She looked up at him till his way was lostAgain in the familiar wildernessOf night that love made for him in her eyes,And there he wandered as he said he would;He wandered also in his prison-yard,And, when he found her coming after him,Beguiled her with her own admonishingAnd frowned upon her with a fierce reproofThat many a time in the old world outsideHad set the mark of silence on strong men—Whereat she laughed, not always wholly sure,Nor always wholly glad, that he who playedSo lightly was the wizard of her dreams:"No matter—if only Merlin keep the world Away," she thought. "Our lyres have many strings,But he must know them all, for he is Merlin."—And so for years, till ten of them were gone,—Ten years, ten seasons, or ten flying ages—Fate made Broceliande a paradise,By none invaded, until Dagonet,Like a discordant, awkward bird of doom,Flew in with Arthur's message. For the King,In sorrow cleaving to simplicity,And having in his love a quick remembranceOf Merlin's old affection for the fellow,Had for this vain, reluctant enterpriseAppointed him—the knight who made men laugh,And was a fool because he played the fool.

"The King believes today, as in his boyhood,That I am Fate; and I can do no more Than show again what in his heart he knows,"Said Merlin to himself and Vivian:"This time I go because I made him King,Thereby to be a mirror for the world;This time I go, but never after this,For I can be no more than what I was,And I can do no more than I have done."He took her slowly in his arms and feltHer body throbbing like a bird against him:"This time I go; I go because I must."

And in the morning, when he rode awayWith Dagonet and Blaise through the same gateThat once had clanged as if to shut for ever,She had not even asked him not to go;For it was then that in his lonely gazeOf helpless love and sad authority She found the gleam of his imprisoned powerThat Fate withheld; and, pitying herself,She pitied the fond Merlin she had changed,And saw the Merlin who had changed the world.