Tristram (Robinson)/Canto 7

by Edwin Arlington Robinson

VII

Isolt alone with time, Isolt of Ireland,So candid and exact in her abhorrenceOf Mark that she had driven him in defeatTo favors amiable if unillusioned,Saw, with a silent Jove consuming her,A silent hate inhibiting in MarkA nature not so base as it was common,And not so cruel as it was ruinousTo itself and all who thwarted it. Wherefore,Tristram it was, Tristram alone, she knew,That he would see alive in useless fire,Thereafter to be haunted all his daysBy vengeance unavenging. Where was vengeanceFor the deforming wounds of differenceThat fate had made and hate would only canker,And death corrupt in him till he should die? But this was not for Mark, and she said littleTo Mark of more than must in ceremonyBe said, perforce, fearing him to misreadHer deprecating pity for his birthrightFor the first meltings of renunciation,Where there was none to melt.—“If I’m so fair,Why then was all this comely merchandiseNot sold as colts are, in a market-place,”She asked herself. “Then Tristram could have bought me,Whether he feared my love was hate or not,And whether or not he killed my uncle Morhaus.”And there were days when she would make BrangwaineGo over the bridge and into the woods with herTo cheer her while she thought.—“If I were QueenIn this forsaken land,” Brangwaine said once,“I’d give three bags of gold to three strong men,And let them sew King Mark into a sack,And let them sink him into the dark seaOn a dark night, and Andred after him.So doing, I’d welcome Erebus, and so leaveThis world a better place.”—“If you sew AndredInto a sack, I’ll do the rest myself,And give you more than your three bags of gold,” Isolt said; and a penitential laughTempered an outburst that was unrepeated—Though for a year, and almost a year after,Brangwaine had waited. But Isolt would laughFor her no more. The fires of love and fearHad slowly burned away so much of herThat all there was of her, she would have said,Was only a long waiting for an endOf waiting—till anon she found herself,Still waiting, where a darkening eastern seaMade waves that in their sound along the shoreTold of a doom that was no longer fear.

Incredulous after Lancelot’s departureFrom Joyous Gard, Tristram, alone there now,With a magnificence and a mysteryMore to be felt than seen among the shadowsAround him and behind him, saw the oceanBefore him from the window where he stood,And seeing it heard the sound of Cornish foamSo far away that he must hear it alwaysOn the world’s end that was for him in Cornwall.A forest-hidden sunset filled long clouds Eastward over the sea with a last fire,Dim fire far off, wherein Tristram beheldTintagel slowly smouldering in the westTo a last darkness, while on Cornish rocksThe moan of Cornish water foamed and ceasedAnd foamed again. Pale in a fiery light,With her dark hair and her dark frightened eyes,And their last look at him, Isolt of IrelandAbove him on the stairs, with only a wallWaist-high between her and her last escape,Stood watching there for him who was not there.He could feel all those endless evening leaguesOf England foiling him and mocking himFrom where it was too late for him to go,And where, if he were there, coming so late,There would be only darkness over deathTo meet his coming while she stood aloneBy the dark wall, with dark fire hiding her,Waiting—for him. She would not be there long;She must die there in that dark fire, or fall,Throwing herself away on those cold rocksWhere there was peace, or she must come to himOver those western leagues, mysteriously Defeating time and place. She might do soIf she were dead, he thought, and were a ghost,As even by now she might be, and her body,Where love would leave so little of earth to burn,Might even by now be burning. So, as a ghostIt was that she would have to come to him,On little feet that he should feel were coming.She would be dead, but there might be no painIn that for him when the first death of knowingThat she was dead was ended, and he should knowShe had found rest. She would come back to himSometimes, and touch him in the night so lightlyThat he might see her between sleep and waking,And see that last look in her eyes no more—For it would not be there.

Woman or ghost, her last looIt was not there.Woman or ghost, her last look in the moonlightWas not in her eyes now. Softly, behind him,The coming of her steps had made him turnTo see there was no fear in her eyes now;And whether she had come to him from death,Or through those dark and heavy velvet curtains, She had come to him silent and alone,And as the living come—living or not.Whether it was a warm ghost he was holding,Or a warm woman, or a dream of one,With tear-filled eyes in a slow twilight shiningUpward and into his, only to leave himWith eyes defeated of all sight of her,Was more than he dared now let fate reveal.Whatever it was that he was holding there,Woman or ghost or dream, was not afraid;And the warm lips that pressed themselves againOn his, and held them there as if to die there,Were not dead now. The rest might be illusion—Camelot, Arthur, Guinevere, Gawaine,Lancelot, and that voyage with LancelotTo Joyous Gard, this castle by the sea—The sea itself, and the clouds over it,Like embers of a day that like a cityFar off somewhere in time was dying alone,Slowly, in fire and silence—the fading lightAround them, and the shadowy room that held them—All these,—if they were shadows, let them be so,He thought. But let these two that were not shadows Be as they were, and live—by time no moreDivided until time for them should cease.They were not made for time as others were,And time therefore would not be long for themWherein for love to learn that in their love,Where fate was more than time and more than love,Time never was, save in their fear of it—Fearing, as one, to find themselves againIntolerably as two that were not there.

Isolt, to see him, melted slowly from him,Moving as if in motion, or in much thought,All this might vanish and the world go with it.Still in his arms, and sure that she was there,She smiled at him as only joy made wiseBy sorrow smiles at fear, as if a smileWould teach him all there was for life to know,Or not to know. Her dark and happy eyesHad now a darkness in them that was light;There was no longer any fear in them,And there was no fear living on a faceThat once, too fair for beauty to endureWithout the jealous graving of slow pain, Was now, for knowledge born of all endurance,Only beyond endurance beautifulWith a pale fire of love where shone togetherPassion and comprehension beyond beingFor any long time; and while she clung to him,Each was a mirror for the other thereTill tears of vision and of understandingWere like a mist of wisdom in their eyes,Lest in each other they might see too soonAll that fate held for them when Guinevere,In a caprice of singularitySeizing on Mark’s unsafe incarceration,Made unrevealed a journey to Cornwall,Convoyed by two attendant eminent leechesWho found anon the other fairest womanAlive no longer like to stay aliveThan a time-tortured and precarious heart,Long wooed by death, might or might not protest.All which being true, Guinevere gave herselfHumbly to God for telling him no lies;And Lancelot gave his conscience to God also,As he had given it once when he had feltThe world shake as he gave it. Stronger than God, When all was done the god of love was fate,Where all was love. And this was in a darknessWhere time was always dying and never dead,And where God’s face was never to be seenTo tell the few that were to lose the worldFor love how much or little they lost for it,Or paid with others’ pain.

He murmured, as if strugglin“Isolt! Isolt!”He murmured, as if struggling to believeThat one name, and one face there in the twilight,Might for a moment, or a moment longer,Defeat oblivion. How could she be with himWhen there were all those western leagues of twilightBetween him and Cornwall? She was not thereUntil she spoke:

And there was a wh“Tristram!” was all she said;And there was a whole woman in the soundOf one word surely spoken. She was there,Be Cornwall where it was or never was,And England all a shadow on the seaThat was another shadow, and on time That was one shadow more. If there was deathDescending on all this, and this was love,Death then was only another shadow’s name;And there was no more fear in Tristram’s heartOf how she fared, and there was no more pain.God must have made it so, if it was God—Or death, if it was death. If it was fate,There was a way to be made terriblyFor more than time, yet one that each knew well,And said well, silently, would not be long.How long now mattered nothing, and what there wasWas all.

And sayin“Tristram!” She said again his name,And saying it she could feel against herselfThe strength of him all trembling like a towerLong shaken by long storms, in darkness farFrom hers, where she had been alone with itToo long for longer fear. But that was nothing,For that was done, and they were done with time.It was so plain that she could laugh to see it;And almost laughing she looked up at him,And said once more, “Tristram!”

Smothered and crushed in a forgetfuShe felt herselfSmothered and crushed in a forgetful strengthLike that of an incredulous blind giant,Seizing amain on all there was of lifeFor him, and all that he had said was lost.She waited, and he said, “Isolt! Isolt!”He that had spoken always with a wordTo spare, found hungrily that only oneSaid all there was to say, till she drew moreFrom him and he found speech.

Tonight,” he told her, with at last “There are no kingsTonight,” he told her, with at last a smile,“To make for you another prison of this—Or none like one in Cornwall. These two armsAre prison enough to keep you safe in themSo long as they are mine.”

Tristam,” she said. “All the“They are enough,Tristam,” she said. “All the poor kings and queensOf time are nothing now. They are all goneWhere shadows go, after the sun goes down.The last of them are far away from here, And you and I are here alone together.We are the kings and queens of everything;And if we die, nothing can alter that,Or say it was not so. Before we die,Tell me how many lives ago it wasI left you in the moonlight on those stairs,And went up to that music and those voices,And for God’s reason then did not go mad!Tell me how old the world was when it died—For I have been alone with time so longThat time and I are strangers. My heart knowsThat I was there too long, but knows not yetWhy I was there, or why so many aliveAre as they are. They are not with me here.They all went when the world went. You and IOnly are left, waiting alone for God—Down here where the world was!”

And twilight on her warm dark-wavinFire in her eyes,And twilight on her warm dark-waving hairAnd on a warm white face too beautifulTo be seen twice alive and still be foundAlive and white and warm and the same face, Compelled him with her pallid happinessTo see where life had been so long the fuelOf love, that for a season he saw nothing,Save a still woman somewhere in a moonlight,Where there were stairs and lamps and a cold soundThat waves made long ago. Yet she was warmThere in his arms, and she was not the ghostHe feared she was, chilling him first with doubt.

“We are the last that are alive, Isolt,Where the world was. Somewhere surrounding usThere are dim shapes of men with many names,And there are women that are made of mist,Who may have names and faces. If I see them,They are too far away for you to see.They all went when the world went. You are the world,Isolt—you are the world!”

You are the last alive to make“Whatever I am,You are the last alive to make me listenWhile you say that. You are the world, Tristram.My worth is only what it is to you.In Cornwall I was not appraised unduly,Save as a queen to garnish, when essential, A court where almost anything with a faceWould have been queen enough. And you know bestHow much I was a queen. The best I knowIs all there is to know—that some commandIn heaven, or some imperial whim of mercyBrought Guinevere to Cornwall, and brought meHere to this place that may be real sometime,And to your arms that must be real indeed.Let them be real! . . . O God, Tristram! Tristram!Where are those blindfold years that we have lostBecause a blind king bought of a blind fatherA child blinder than they? She might have drawnA knife across her throat rather than go! . . .But no—had she done that, she would have died;And all her seeming needlessness aliveWould have been all it seemed. Oh, it would beA fearful thing for me to close my eyesToo long, and see too much that is behind me!When they were open you might not be here.Your arms that hold me now might not be yours,But those of a strong monster and a stranger.Make me believe again that you are here! . . .Yes, you are here!”

Into the sure surrender All her firm litheness meltedInto the sure surrender of a childWhen she said that; and her dark eyes becameFor a dim moment gray, and were like eyesThat he had left behind in Brittany.Another moment, and they were dark again,And there was no such place as Brittany.Brittany must have died when the world died—The world, and time. He had forgotten that,Till he found now, insensibly almost,How soft and warm and small so proud a queenAs this Isolt could be. Dimly deceivedBy the dark surety of her statelinessAnd by the dark indignity of distance,His love may not have guessed how this IsoltOf Ireland, with her pride that frightened kings,Should one day so ineffably becomeSo like a darker child for him to breakOr save, with a word hushed or a word spoken;And so his love may well never have seenHow surely it was fate that his love nowShould light with hers at the last fire of timeA flaming way to death. Fire in her eyes, And sorrow in her smile, foretold unsaidMore than he saw.

Should hide us here t“You are not sad that heavenShould hide us here together, God knows how long,And surely are not fearful,” he said, smiling.“Before there was a man or woman living,It was all chronicled with nights and daysThat we should find each other tonight like this,There was no other way for love like oursTo be like this than always to have been.Your love that I see looking into mineMight have in it a shining of more knowledgeThan love needs to be wise; and love that’s wiseWill not say all it means. Untimely words,Where love and wisdom are not quarrelling,Are good words not to say.”

Shining out of my eyes at you “If you see wisdomShining out of my eyes at you sometime,Say it is yours, not mine. Untimely wordsAre not for love, and are like frost on flowersWhere love is not for long. When we are done With time, Tristram, nothing can be for long.You would know that if you had been a womanAlone in Cornwall since those lights went out,And you went down those stairs. Sometime I’ll askHow far you wandered and what rainy endThere ever was to that unending night,But now I shall not ask an answer moreOf you than this, or more of God than this;For this is all—no matter for how long.Do not forget, my love, that once IsoltSaid that; and wheresoever she may be then,See her where she is now—alone with you,And willing enough to be alone in heaven—Or hell, if so it be—and let you liveDown here without her for a thousand years,Were that the way of happiness for you,Tristram. So long as fate itself may findNo refuge or concealment or escapeFrom heaven for me save in some harm for you.I shall not be unhappy after this.”

“He that pays all for all is past all harm,”He said, “I can forgive your thousand years, And you are sorry for them. The one harmDeserving a fantastic apprehensionIs one that surely cannot come tonight.Only an army of infernal men—And they would not be men—will find a wayOver these walls, or through them, to find me—Or you, tonight. Untimely words again,But only as a folly to match yoursIn feigning harm for me. Dear God in heaven!If one such reptile thought inhabitedA nature that was never mine before,Some woman at hand should watch you properlyWhile I, like Judas, only running faster,Might hang myself.”

As if it held a laugh buHe felt her body throbbingAs if it held a laugh buried alive,And suddenly felt all his eloquenceHushed with her lips. Like a wild wine her loveWent singing through him and all over him;And like a warning her warm lovelinessTold him how far away it would all beWhen it was warm no longer. For some time He was a man rather by dread possessedThan by possession, when he found againThat he was listening to the blended goldAnd velvet that was always in her voice:

“Your meditations are far wanderers,And you must have them all home before dark;Or I shall find myself at work to learnWhat’s in me so to scatter them. Dear love,If only you had more fear for yourselfYou might, for caution, be my cause for less.My cage is empty, and I’m out of it;And you and I are in another cage—A golden cage—together. Reason it is,Not fear, that lets me know so much as that;Also, the while you care not for yourselfWhere shadows are, there are things always walking.Meanwhile your fear for me has been a screenOf distance between me and my destruction—Mine, love, and yours. Fears are not always blind.If love be blind, mine has been so for watchingToo long across an empty world for you;And if it be myself now that is blind, I may still hide myself somewhere alone—Somewhere away from you. Whatever we are,We are not so blind that we are not to knowThe darkness when it comes, if it must come.We are not children teasing little wavesTo follow us along a solid shore.I see a larger and a darker tide,Somewhere, than one like that. But where and when,I do not wish to see.”

He said, holding her face“If love that’s blind,”He said, holding her face and gazing at it,“Sees only where a tide that’s dark and largeMay be somewhere sometime, love that has eyesWill fix itself, and with a nearer wonder,Upon Isolt—who is enough to see.Isolt alone. All else that emulatesAnd envies her—black faggots in red flame,A sunshine slanting into a dark forest,A moonlight on white foam along black ledges,Sunlight and rain, trees twinkling after rain,Panthers and antelopes, children asleep—All these are native elsewhere, and for now Are not important. Love that has eyes to seeSees now only Isolt. Isolt alone.Isolt, and a few stars.”

Of half so much as this th“Were I the shadowOf half so much as this that you are seeingOf me, I should not be Isolt of Ireland,Or any Isolt alive. All you can seeOf me is only what the Lord accomplishedWhen he made me for love. When he made you,His love remembered that; and whether or notHis way was the most merciful, he knows—Not we. Or was it fate, stronger than all?A voice within me says that God, seeing all,Was more compassionate than to let love seeToo far—loving his world too well for that.We do not have to know—not yet. The flowerThat will have withered from the world for everWith us, will die sometime; and when it fades,And dies, and goes, we shall have gone already,And it will all be done. If I go first,No fear of your forgetting shall attend me,Leaving with you the mind and heart of love— The love that knows what most it will remember.If I lose you, I shall not have to wait—Not long. There will be only one thing thenWorth waiting for. No, I shall not wait long . . .I have said that. Now listen, while I say this:My life to me is not a little thing;It is a fearful and a lovely thing;Only my love is more.”

“How far a man may be f“God knows,” he said,“How far a man may be from his deservingAnd yet be fated for the undeserved.I might, were I the lord of your misgivings,Be worthier of them for destroying them;And even without the mightiness in meFor that, I’ll tell you, for your contemplation,Time is not life. For many, and many more,Living is mostly for a time not dying—But not for me. For me, a few more yearsOf shows and slaughters, or the tinsel seatOf a small throne, would not be life. WhateverIt is that fills life high and full, till fateItself may do no more, it is not time.Years are not life.”

To learn,” she said, a“I have not come so farTo learn,” she said, and shook her head at him,“What years are, for I know. Years are not life;Years are the shells of life, and empty shellsWhen they hold only days, and days, and days.God knows if I know that—so let it pass.Let me forget; and let me ask you onlyNot to forget that all your feats at arms,Your glamour that is almost above envy,Your strength and eminence and everything,Leave me a woman still—a one-love woman,Meaning a sort of ravenous one-child mother,Whose one-love pictures in her compositionPanthers and antelopes, children asleep,And all sorts of engaging animalsThat most resemble a much-disordered queen,Her crown abandoned and her hair in peril,And she herself a little deranged, no doubt,With too much happiness. Whether he livesOr dies for her, he tells her is no matter,Wherefore she must obediently believe him.All he would ask of her would be as easyAs hearing waves, washing the shore down there For ever, and believing herself drowned.In seeing so many of her, he might believe herTo be as many at once as drops of rain;Perhaps a panther and a child asleepAt the same time.”

Out of her eyes, but oHe saw dark laughter sparklingOut of her eyes, but only until her faceFound his, and on his mouth a moving fireTold him why there was death, and what lost songUlysses heard, and would have given his handsAnd friends to follow and to die for. Slowly,At last, the power of helplessness there wasIn all that beauty of hers that was for him,Breathing and burning there alone with him,Until it was almost a part of him,Suffused his passion with a tendernessAttesting a sealed certainty not hisTo cozen or wrench from fate, and one withheldIn waiting mercy from oblivious eyes—His eyes and hers, that over darker water,Where darker things than shadows would be coming,Saw now no more than more stars in the sky. He felt her throbbing softly in his arms,And held her closer still—with half a fearReturning that she might not be Isolt,And might yet vanish where she sat with him,Leaving him there alone, with only devilsOf hell supplanting her.

A little longer,” said Isolt. “Leave me the starsA little longer,” said Isolt. “In Cornwall,So much alone there with them as I was,One sees into their language and their story.They must be more than fire; and if the starsAre more than fire, what else is there for themTo be than love? I found all that myself;For when a woman is left too much alone,Sooner or later she begins to think;And no man knows what then she may discover.”

“Whether she be in Cornwall, or not there,A woman driven to thinking of the starsToo hard is in some danger,” he said, sighing,“Of being too much alone wherever she is.”

Her face unseen, she smiled, hearing him sigh—So much as if all patient chivalry Were sighing with him. “One alone too longIn Cornwall has to think somewhat,” she said,“Or one may die. One may do worse than die.If life that comes of love is more than death,Love must be more than death and life together.”

“Whether I know that life is more or notThan death,” he said, “I swear, with you for witness-You and the stars—that love is more than either.”

“If I should have to answer twice to that,I should not let myself be here with youTonight, with all the darkness I see comingOn land and over water.” Then she ceased,And after waiting as one waits in vainFor distant voices that are silent, “Tell me!”She cried, seizing him hard and gazing at him,“Tell me if I should make you go away!I’m not myself alone now, and the starsAll tell me so.”

From his arms geHe plucked her clinging handsFrom his arms gently, and said, holding them, “You cannot make me go away from you,Isolt, for I believe, with you to tell me,All your stars say. But never mind what they sayOf shadows coming. They are always coming—Coming and going like all things but one.Love is the only thing that in its beingIs what it seems to be. Glory and gold,And all the rest, are weak and hollow stavesFor even the poor to lean on. We know that—We that have been so poor while grinning hindsAnd shining wenches with all crowns to laugh at,Have envied us, know that. Yet while you seeSo many things written for you in starry fire,Somehow you fear that I may lose my visionNot seeing them. I shall not be losing it—Not even in seeing beyond where you have seen.Yes, I have seen your stars. You are the stars!You are the stars when they all sing together.You live, you speak, and you have not yet vanished.You are Isolt—or I suppose you are!”

He was not sure of her not vanishingUntil he felt her tears, and her warm arms Holding him with a sudden strength of loveThat would have choked him had it not been love.Each with unyielding lips refused the otherLanguage unasked; and their forgotten earsKnew only as a murmur not rememberedA measured sea that always on the sandUnseen below them, where time’s only wordWas told in foam along a lonely shore,Poured slowly its unceasing sound of doom—Unceasing and unheard, and still unheard,As with an imperceptible surrenderThey moved and found each other’s eyes again,Burning away the night between their faces.

“Sometimes I fear that I shall fear for youNo more,” she said; and to his ears her wordsWere shaken music. “Why should I fear for you,Or you for me, where nothing of earth is left,Nothing of earth or time, that is worth fearing?Sometimes I wonder if we are not like leavesThat have been blown by some warm wind of heavenFar from the tree of life, still to be livingHere between life and death.”

“Why do those twoVainglorious and abysmal little wordsPursue you and torment your soul?” said he.“They are the serpents and uncertaintiesThat coil and rustle tonight among your fears,Only because your fears have given to themA shape without a substance. Life and death?Do not believe your stars if they are sayingThat any such words are in their language now.Whenever they tell you they are made of love,Believe it; and forget them when they tell youOf this or that man’s living a thousand years.Why should he wish to live a thousand years?Whether your stars are made of love or fire,There is a love that will outshine the stars.There will be love when there are no more stars.Never mind what they say of darkness comingThat may come sometime, or what else they sayOf terrors hidden in words like life and death.What do they mean? Never mind what they mean!We have lived and we have died, and are aloneWhere the world has no more a place for us,Or time a fear for us, or death . . . Isolt!” Her lips again had hushed him, and her name,As when first he had found her in his arms,Was all there was to say till he was sayingMuffled and husky words that groped and faltered,Half silenced in a darkness of warm hair:“Whatever it is that brings us here tonight,Never believe—never believe again—Your fear for me was more than love. Time lied,If he said that. When we are done with time,There is no time for fear. It was not fear—It was love’s other name. Say it was that!Say to me it was only one of time’s lies!Whatever it was—never mind what it was!There will be time enough for me to die.Never mind death tonight. . . . Isolt! Isolt!”