Tristram (Robinson)/Canto 3

by Edwin Arlington Robinson

III

Lost in a gulf of time where time was lost,And heedless of a light queen’s light last wordsThat were to be remembered, he saw now Before him in the gloom a ghostly shipCleaving a way to Cornwall silentlyFrom Ireland, with himself on board and oneThat with her eyes told him intolerablyHow little of his blind self a crowded youth,With a sight error-flecked and pleasure-flawed,Had made him see till on that silent voyageThere was no more to see than faith betrayedOr life disowned. The sorrow in his nameCame out, and he was Tristram, born for sorrowOf an unguarded and forgotten mother,Who may have seen as those who are to dieAre like to see. A king’s son, he had givenHimself in honor unto another kingFor gratitude, not knowing what he had given,Or seeing what he had done. Now he could see,And there was no need left of a ship’s ghost,Or ghost of anything else than life before him,To make him feel, though he might not yet hear it,The nearness of a doom that was descendingUpon him, and anon should hold him fast—If he were not already held fast enoughTo please the will of fate.

Turning and trembling. Fo“Brangwaine!” he said,Turning and trembling. For a softer voiceThan Morgan’s now had spoken; a truer voice,Which had not come alone to plead with himIn the King’s name for courtesy.

Brangwaine began, and ended. Th“Sir Tristram! . . .”Brangwaine began, and ended. Then she seizedHis hands and held them quickly to her lipsIn fealty that he felt was his for ever.“Brangwaine, for this you make a friend of meUntil I die. If there were more for oneTo say . . .” He said no more, for some one elseThan Brangwaine was above him on the stairs.Coming down slowly and without a soundShe moved, and like a shadow saying nothingSaid nothing while she came. Isolt of Ireland,With all her dark young majesty unshakenBy grief and shame and fear that made her shakeTill to go further would have been to fall,Came nearer still to him and still said nothing,Till terror born of passion became passionReborn of terror while his lips and hers Put speech out like a flame put out by fire.The music poured unheard, Brangwaine had vanished,And there were these two in the world alone,Under the cloudy light of a cold moonThat glimmered now as cold on BrittanyAs on Cornwall.

And would beat soTime was aware of them,And would beat soon upon his empty bellRelease from such a fettered ecstasyAs fate would not endure. But until thenThere was no room for time between their soulsAnd bodies, or between their silences,Which were for them no less than heaven and hell,Fused cruelly out of older silencesThat once a word from either might have ended,And so annihilated into lifeInstead of death—could her pride then have spoken,And his duped eyes have seen, before his oathWas given to make them see. But silencesBy time are slain, and death, or more than death,May come when silence dies. At last IsoltReleased herself enough to look at him, With a world burning for him in her eyes,And two worlds crumbling for him in her words:“What have I done to you, Tristram!” she said;“What have you done to me! What have we doneTo Fate, that she should hate us and destroy us,Waiting for us to speak. What have we doneSo false or foul as to be burned aliveAnd then be buried alive—as we shall be—As I shall be!”

Where all there He gazed upon a faceWhere all there was of beauty and of loveThat was alive for him, and not for him,Was his while it was there. “I shall have burnedAnd buried us both,” he said. “Your pride would notHave healed my blindness then, even had you prayedFor God to let you speak. When a man suesThe fairest of all women for her love,He does not cleave the skull first of her kinsmanTo mark himself a man. That was my way;And it was not the wisest—if your eyesHad any truth in them for a long time.Your pride would not have let me tell them more—Had you prayed God, I say.”

Tristram, but he was then too f“I did do that,Tristram, but he was then too far from heavenTo hear so little a thing as I was, prayingFor you on earth. You had not seen my eyesBefore you fought with Morhaus; and for that,There was your side and ours. All history singsOf two sides, and will do so till all menAre quiet; and then there will be no men left,Or women alive to hear them. It was longBefore I learned so little as that; and youIt was who taught me while I nursed and healedYour wound, only to see you go away.”

“And once having seen me go away from you,You saw me coming back to you again,Cheerful and healed, as Mark’s ambassador.Would God foresee such folly alive as thatIn any thing he had made, and still make more?If so, his ways are darker than divinesHave drawn them for our best bewilderments.Be it so or not, my share in this is clear.I have prepared a way for us to take,Because a king was not so much a devil When I was young as not to be a friend,An uncle, and an easy counsellor.Later, when love was yet no more for meThan a gay folly glancing everywhereFor triumph easier sometimes than defeat,Having made sure that I was blind enough,He sealed me with an oath to make you hisBefore I had my eyes, or my heart wokeFrom pleasure in a dream of other facesThat now are nothing else than silly skullsCovered with skin and hair. The right was hisTo make of me a shining knight at arms,By fortune may be not the least adeptAnd emulous. But God! for seizing you,And having you here tonight, and all his lifeHaving you here, by the blind means of me,I could tear all the cords out of his neckTo make a rope, and hang the rest of him.Isolt, forgive me! This is only soundThat I am making with a tongue gone madThat you should be so near me as to hear meSaying how far away you are to goWhen you go back to him, driven by—me! A fool may die with no great noise or loss;And whether a fool should always live or not . . .”

Isolt, almost as with a frightened leapMuffled his mouth with hers in a long kiss,Blending in their catastrophe two firesThat made one fire. When she could look at himAgain, her tears, unwilling still to flow,Made of her eyes two shining lakes of painWith moonlight living in them; and she said“There is no time for you to tell me this;And you are younger than time says you are,Or you would not be losing it, saying overAll that I know too well, or for my sakeGiving yourself these names that are worth nothing.It was our curse that you were not to seeUntil you saw too late. No scourge of namesThat you may lay for me upon yourselfWill have more consequence for me, or you,Than beating with a leaf would have on horses;So give yourself no more of them tonight.The King says you are coming back with me.How can you come? And how can you not come! It will be cruel enough for me without you,But with you there alive in the same wallsI shall be hardly worthy of life tonightIf I stay there alive—although I shall,For this may not be all. This thing has comeFor us, and you are not to see the endThrough any such fog of honor and self-hateAs you may seek to throw around yourselfFor being yourself. Had you been someone else,You might have been one like your cousin Andred,Who looks at me as if he were a snakeThat has heard something. Had you been someone else,You might have been like Modred, or like Mark.God—you like Mark! You might have been a slave.We cannot say what either of us had beenHad we been something else. All we can sayIs that this thing has come to us tonight.You can do nothing more unless you kill him.And that would be the end of you and me.Time on our side, this may not be the end.”

“I might have been a slave, by you unseen,”He answered, “and you still Isolt of Ireland, To me unknown. That would have been for youThe better way. But that was not the way.”

“No it was not,” she said, trying to smile;And weary then for trying, held him closer.“But I can feel the hands of time on me,And they will soon be tearing me away.Tristram, say to me once before I go,What you believe and what you see for usBefore you. Are you sure that a word givenIs always worth more than a world forsaken?Who knows there may not be a lonely placeIn heaven for souls that are ashamed and sorryFor fearing hell?”

Isolt,” he said, “or a“It is not hell tonight,Isolt,” he said, “or any beyond the grave,That I fear most for you or for myself.Fate has adjusted and made sure of thatWhere we are now—though we see not the end,And time be on our side. Praise God for time,And for such hope of what may come of itAs time like this may grant. I could be strong, But to be over-strong now at this hourWould only be destruction. The King’s waysAre not those of one man against another,And you must live, and I must live—for you.If there were not an army of guards below usTo bring you back to fruitless ignominy,There would soon be an end of this offenseTo God and the long insult of this marriage.But to be twice a fool is not the leastInsane of ways to cure a first affliction.God!—is it so—that you are going backTo be up there with him—with Mark—tonight?Before you came, I had been staring downOn those eternal rocks and the white foamAround them; and I thought how sound and longA sleep would soon begin for us down thereIf we were there together—before you came.That was a fancy, born of circumstance,And I was only visioning some such thingAs that. The moon may have been part of it.I think there was a demon born with meAnd in the malediction of my name,And that his work is to make others suffer— Which is the worst of burdens for a manWhose death tonight were nothing, could the deathOf one be the best end of this for two.”

“If that was to be said,” Isolt replied,“It will at least not have to be said over.For since the death of one would only giveThe other a twofold weight of wretchednessTo bear, why do you pour these frozen wordsOn one who cannot be so confidentAs you that we may not be nearer life,Even here tonight, than we are near to death?I must know more than you have told me yetBefore I see, so clearly as you see it,The sword that must for ever be between us.Something in you was always in my father:A darkness always was around my father,Since my first eyes remembered him. He sawNothing, but he would see the shadow of itBefore he saw the color or shape it had,Or where the sun was. Tristram, fair things yetWill have a shadow black as night before them,And soon will have a shadow black as night Behind them. And all this may be a shadow,Sometime, that we may live to see behind us—Wishing that we had not been all so sureTonight that it was always to be night.”

“Your father may have fancied where the sun wasWhen first he saw the shadow of King MarkComing with mine before me. You are braveTonight, my love. A bravery like yours nowWould be the summons for a mightier loveThan mine, if there were room for such a loveAmong things hidden in the hearts of men.Isolt! Isolt! . . .”

There were tears floOut of her struggling eyesThere were tears flowing, and withheld in his,Tears were a veil of pity and desperationThrough which he saw the dim face of IsoltBefore him like a phantom in a mist—Till to be sure that she was not a phantom,He clutched and held her fast against his heart,And through the cloak she wore felt the warm lifeWithin her trembling to the life in him, And to the sorrow and the passion thereThat would be always there. “Isolt! Isolt!”Was all the language there was left in himAnd she was all that was left anywhere—She that would soon be so much worse than goneThat if he must have seen her lying still,Dead where she was, he could have said that fateWas merciful at least to one of them.He would have worn through life a living crownOf death, for memory more to be desiredThan any furtive and forsworn desire,Or shattered oath of his to serve a King,His mother’s brother, without wilful stain,Was like to be with all else it might be.So Tristram, in so far as there was reasonLeft in him, would have reasoned—when IsoltDrew his face down to hers with all her strength,Or so it seemed, and kissed his eyes and cheeksAnd mouth until there was no reason leftIn life but love—love that was not to be,Save as a wrenching and a separationPast reason or reprieve. If she forgotFor long enough to smile at him through tears, He may have read it as a sign that GodWas watching her and all might yet be well;And if he knew that all might not be well,Some God might still be watching over her,With no more power than theirs now against Rome,Or the pernicious valor of sure ruin,Or against fate, that like an unseen ogreMade hungry sport of these two there aloneAbove the moaning wash of Cornish water,Cold upon Cornish rocks.

She said, “or surely none lik“No bravery, love,”She said, “or surely none like mine, would hide,Among things in my heart that are not hidden,A love larger than all time and all places,And stronger beyond knowledge than all numbersAround us that can only make us deadWhen they are done with us. Tristram, believeThat if I die my love will not be dead,As I believe that yours will not be dead.If in some after time your will may beTo slay it for the sake of a new face,It will not die. Whatever you do to it, It will not die. We cannot make it die,We are not mighty enough to sentence loveStronger than death to die, though we may die.I do not think there is much love like oursHere in this life, or that too much of itWould make poor men and women who go aloneInto their graves without it more content,Or more by common sorrow to be enviedThan they are now. This may be true, or not.Perhaps I am not old enough to know—Not having lived always, nor having seenMuch else than everything disorderlyDeformed to order into a small court,Where love was most a lie. Might not the world,If we could sift it into a small picture,Be more like that than it would be like—this?No, there is not much like this in the world—And there may not be this!”

Deep in the dark wet splendor Tristram could seeDeep in the dark wet splendor of her eyes,A terror that he knew was more for himThan for herself. “You are still brave enough,” He said, “and you might look to me for strength,If I were a magician and a wizard,To vanquish the invincible. DestructionOf such a sort as one here among hundredsMight wreak upon himself would be a pastime,If ruin of him would make you free againWithout him.”

Isolt said, as if a“I would not be free without him,”Isolt said, as if angry: “And you knowThat I should not be free if I were freeWithout him. Say no more about destructionTill we see more, who are not yet destroyed.O God, if only one of us had spoken—When there was all that time!”

If only I had spoken,” Tristram s“You mean by that,If only I had spoken,” Tristram said;And he could say no more till her quick lipsThat clung to his again would let him speak.“You mean, if only I had been awakeIn paradise, instead of asleep there,No jealous angel with a burning sword Would have had power enough to drive me out,Though God himself had sent him.”

As with a willing pity, and closed her eIsolt smiled,As with a willing pity, and closed her eyesTo keep more tears from coming out of them;And for a time nothing was to be heardExcept the pounding of two hearts in prison,The torture of a doom-begotten musicAbove them, and the wash of a cold foamBelow them on those cold eternal rocksWhere Tristram and Isolt had yesterdayCome to be wrecked together. When her eyesOpened again, he saw there, watching him,An aching light of memory; and his heartBeat harder for remembering the same lightThat he had seen before in the same eyes.

“Alone once in the moonlight on that ship,”She said, still watching him and clinging warmAgainst him, “I believed that you would speak,For I could hear your silence like a songOut of the sea. I stood by the ship’s rail, Looking away into the night, with onlyYou and the ocean and the moon and starsThere with me. I was not seeing where I looked,For I had waited too long for your stepBehind me to care then if the ship sailedOr sank, so long as one true word of yoursWent wheresoever the ship went with me.If these eyes, that were looking off so farOver the foam, found anything there that nightWorth looking at, they have forgotten it;And if my ears heard even the waves that night,Or if my cheeks felt even the wind that night,They have forgotten waves and wind together,Remembering only there was you somewhereOn the same ship where I was, all aloneAs I was, and alive When you did come,At last, and were there with me, and still silent,You had already made yourself in vainThe loyal counterfeit of someone elseThat never was, and I hope never shall be,To make me sure there was no love for meTo find in you, where love was all I found.You had not quite the will or quite the wish, Knowing King Mark, not to reveal yourself,When revelation was no more the needOf my far larger need than revelation.There was enough revealed, but nothing told.Since I dare say to you how sure I amOf the one thing that’s left me to be sure of,Know me and love me as I was that night,As I am now, and as I shall be always—All yours; and all this means for you and meIs no small care for you. If you had spokenThere on that ship what most was in your heartTo say—if you had held me close—like this—If you had kissed me then—like this—I wonderIf there would have been kings and crowns enoughIn Cornwall or in England or elsewhereTo make the crowns of all kings everywhereShine with a light that would have let me seeNo king but you and no crown but our love.Tristram, believe, whatever the rest may be,This is all yours—for God to weigh at last,And as he will. And if it be found wanting,He will not find what’s left so ordinaryAs not to say of it, ‘This was Isolt— Isolt who was all love.’ He made her so,And some time he may tell her why it isSo many that are on earth are there to suffer.I say this now, for time will not wait always,And we shall not be here when we are old—If time can see us old. I had not thoughtOf that; and will not think of it again.There must be women who are made for love,And of it, and are mostly pride and fireWithout it. There would not be much else leftOf them without it than sold animalsThat might as well be driven and eating grassAs weaving, riding, hunting, and being queens,Or not being queens. But when two loves like oursWear down the wall of time dividing them,Two oceans come together and flow overTime and his evil work. It was too long,That wall, but there is nothing left of it,And there is only love where the wall was.And while you love me you will not forgetThat you are all there is in my life nowThat I would live for longer. And since nothingIs left to me but to be sure of nothing That you have not been sure of and been told,You can believe me, though you cannot save me.No, there is only one way to do that. . . .If I were sure this was to be the end,I should make this the end . . . Tristram! Tristram!With you in the same house!”

He shook, and held her face awa“Do not say that.”He shook, and held her face away from him,Gazing upon it as a man condemnedTo darkness might have gazed for the last timeAt all there was of life that he should seeBefore his eyes were blinded by white irons.“Tell me to throw myself over this wall,Down upon those dead rocks, and I will do it.Tell me to fall down now upon the pointOf this too restive sword, and you will seeHow brief a sting death has. Tell me to drinkTonight the most efficient mortal poison,And of all drink that may be poured tomorrowNone shall be poured for me. But do not say,Or make me say, where I shall be tonight.All I can say is, I shall not be here. Something within me is too near to breaking,And it is not my heart. That will not break,Nor shall a madness that is in me nowBreak time in two—time that is on our side.Yet I would see as little of Mark tonightAs may be well for my forgetfulness.That was the best for me to say to you,For now it has been said, I shall not kill him.”

She trembled in his arms, and with a cryOf stricken love gave all there was of herThat she could give to him in one more kissIn which the world was melted and was nothingFor them but love—until another cry,From Brangwaine, all forgotten in the garden,Made the world firm again. He leapt away,Leaving Isolt bewildered and heart-sickWith fear for him, and for she knew not what,And lastly for herself. But soon she feltA noise that was like one of shadows fighting.Then she saw Tristram, who was bringing with himA choking load that he dragged after him;And then she could see Brangwaine, white as death Behind those two. And while she saw them there,She could hear music from those walls above her,And waves foaming on the cold rocks below.

When Tristram spoke, his words came hoarse and few.“I knew the vermin I should find,” he said,And said no more. He muttered and hurled somethingAway from him against the parapet,Hearing the sound that a skull makes on stone;And without looking one way or another,He stood there for a time like a man struckBy doom to an ungovernable silence,Breathing above the crumpled shape of Andred.