Tristram (Robinson)/Canto 1

by Edwin Arlington Robinson

TRISTRAM

I

Isolt of the white hands, in Brittany,Could see no longer northward anywhereA picture more alive or less familiarThan a blank ocean and the same white birdsFlying, and always flying, and still flying,Yet never bringing any news of himThat she remembered, who had sailed awayThe spring before—saying he would come back,Although not saying when. Not one of them,For all their flying, she thought, had heard the nameOf Tristram, or of him beside her thereThat was the King, her father. The last shipWas out of sight, and there was nothing nowFor her to see before the night came downExcept her father’s face. She looked at himAnd found him smiling in the way she feared, And loved the while she feared it. The King tookOne of her small still hands in one of hisThat were so large and hard to be so kind,And weighed a question, not for the first time:

“Why should it be that I must have a childWhose eyes are wandering always to the north?The north is a bad region full of wolvesAnd bears and hairy men that have no manners.Why should her eyes be always on the north,I wonder, when all’s here that one requiresOf comfort, love, and of expediency?You are not cheered, I see, or satisfiedEntirely by the sound of what I say.You are too young, may be, to make yourselfA nest of comfort and expediency.”

“I may be that,” she said, and a quick flushMade a pink forage of her laughing face,At which he smiled again. “But not so youngAs to be told for ever how young I am.I have been growing for these eighteen years,And waiting here, for one thing and another. Besides, his manners are as good as yours,And he’s not half so hairy as you are,Even though you be the King of Brittany,Or the great Jove himself, and then my father.”With that she threw her arms around his neck,Throbbing as if she were a child indeed.

“You are no heavier than a cat,” said he,“But otherwise you are somewhat like a tiger.Relinquish your commendable affectionA little, and tell me why it is you dreamOf someone coming always from the north.Are there no proper knights or princes elseThan one whose eyes, wherever they may be fixed,Are surely not fixed hard on Brittany?You are a sort of child, or many sorts,Yet also are too high and too essentialTo be much longer the quaint sport and foodOf shadowy fancies. For a time I’ve laughedAnd let you dream, but I may not laugh always.Because he praised you as a child one day,And may have liked you as a child one day,Why do you stare for ever into the north, Over that water, where the good God placedA land known only to your small white ears?”

“Only because the good God, I suppose,Placed England somewhere north of Brittany—Though not so far but one may come and goAs many a time as twice before he dies.I know that’s true, having been told about it.I have been told so much about this worldThat I have wondered why men stay in it.I have been told of devils that are in it,And some right here in Brittany. GriffonIs one of them; and if he ever gets me,I’ll pray for the best way to kill myself.”

King Howel held his daughter closer to him,As if a buried and forgotten fearHad come to life and was confronting himWith a new face. “Never you mind the devils,”He said, “be they in Brittany or elsewhere.They are for my attention, if need be.You will affright me and amuse me lessBy saying, if you are ready, how much longer You are to starve yourself with your delusionOf Tristram coming back. He may come back,Or Mark, his uncle, who tonight is makingAnother Isolt his queen—the dark Isolt,Isolt of Ireland—may be coming back,Though I’d as lief he would remain at homeIn Cornwall, with his new queen—if he keeps her.”

“And who is this far-off Isolt of Ireland?”She said, like a thing waiting to be hurt:“A creature that one hears of constantly,And one that no man sees, or none to say so,Must be unusual—if she be at all.”

“The few men who have told of her to meHave told of silence and of Irish pride,Inhabiting too much beauty for one woman.My eyes have never seen her; and as for beauty,My eyes would rather look on yours, my child.And as for Tristram coming back, what then—One of these days? Any one may come back.King Arthur may come back; and as for that,Our Lord and Saviour may come back some time, Though hardly all for you. Have you kept hidSome promise or protestation heretofore,That you may shape a thought into a reasonFor making always of a distant wishA dim belief? You are too old for that—If it will make you happy to be told so.You have been told so much.” King Howel smiled,And waited, holding her white hands in his.

“I have been told that Tristram will come back,”She said; “and it was he who told me so.Also I have this agate that he gave me;And I believe his eyes.”

The king said, “for as lon“Believe his agate,”The king said, “for as long as you may save it.An agate’s a fair plaything for a child,Though not so boundless and immovableIn magnitude but that a child may lose it.Since you esteem it such an acquisition,Treasure it more securely, and believe itAs a bright piece of earth, and nothing more.Believe his agate, and forget his eyes; And go to bed. You are not young enough,I see, to stay awake and entertainMuch longer your exaggerated fancies.And if he should come back? Would you prepareUpon the ruinous day of his departureTo drown yourself, and with yourself his agate?”

Isolt, now on a cushion at his feet,Finding the King’s hard knees a meagre pillow,Sat upright, thinking. “No I should not do that;Though I should never trust another manSo far that I should go away with him.King’s daughters, I suppose, are bought and sold,But you would not sell me.”

As if it were an agate—or a fact“You seize a questionAs if it were an agate—or a fact,”The King said, laughing at the calm gray eyesThat were so large in the small face before him.“I might sell you, perhaps, at a fair bargain.To play with an illustrious example,If Modred were to overthrow King Arthur—And there are prophets who see Arthur’s endIn Modred, who’s an able sort of reptile— And come for you to go away with him,And to be Queen of Britain, I might sell you,Perhaps. You might say prayers that you be sold.”

“I may say prayers that you be reasonableAnd serious, and that you believe me so.”There was a light now in his daughter’s eyesLike none that he remembered having seenIn eyes before, whereat he paused and heard,Not all amused. “He will come back,” she said,“And I shall wait. If he should not come back,I shall have been but one poor woman moreWhose punishment for being born a womanWas to believe and wait. You are my King,My father, and of all men anywhere,Save one, you are the world of men to me.When I say this of him you must believe me,As I believe his eyes. He will come back;And what comes then I leave to him, and God.”

Slowly the King arose, and with his handsHe lifted up Isolt, so frail, so light,And yet, with all, mysteriously so strong.He raised her patient face between his hands, Observing it as if it were some whiteAnd foreign flower, not certain in his gardenTo thrive, nor like to die. Then with a vagueAnd wavering effect of shaking herAffectionately back to his own world,Which never would be hers, he smiled once moreAnd set her free. “You should have gone to bedWhen first I told you. You had best go now,And while you are still dreaming. In the morningYour dreams, if you remember them, will allBe less than one bird singing in a tree.”

Isolt of the white hands, unchangeable,Half childlike and half womanly, looked upInto her father’s eyes and shook her head,Smiling, but less for joy than certainty:“There’s a bird then that I have never seenIn Brittany; and I have never heard him.Good night, my father.” She went slowly out,Leaving him in the gloom.

Good night,” he said, scarce h“Good night, my child,Good night,” he said, scarce hearing his own voiceFor crowded thoughts that were unseizable And unforeseen within him. Like Isolt,He stood now in the window looking northOver the misty sea. A seven days’ moonWas in the sky, and there were a few starsThat had no fire. “I have no more a child,”He thought, “and what she is I do not know.It may be fancy and fantastic youthThat ails her now; it may be the sick touchOf prophecy concealing disillusion.If there were not inwoven so much powerAnd poise of sense with all her seeming folly,I might assume a concord with her faithAs that of one elected soon to die.But surely no infringement of the graveIn her conceits and her appearancesEncourages a fear that still is fear;And what she is to know, I cannot say.A changeling down from one of those white starsWere more like her than like a child of mine.”

Nothing in the cold glimmer of a moonOver a still, cold ocean there before himWould answer for him in the silent voice Of time an idle question. So the King,With only time for company, stood waitingAlone there in the window, looking offAt the still sea between his eyes and England.