Merlin

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 lady Who 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 oven Might after many failures have delivered, And wine that had for decades in the dark Of Merlin"s grave been slowly quickening, And with half-heard, dream-weaving interludes Of distant flutes and viols, made yet more distant By far, nostalgic hautboys blown from nowhere,-- Were tempered not so leisurely, may be, With Vivian"s inextinguishable eyes Between two shining silver candlesticks That lifted each a trembling flame to make The rest of her a dusky loveliness Against a bank of shadow. Merlin made, As well as he was able while he ate, A fair division of the fealty due To food and beauty, albeit more times than one Was he at odds with his urbanity In honoring too long the grosser viand.

"The best invention in Broceliande Has not been over-taxed in vain, I see,"

She told him, with her chin propped on her fingers And her eyes flashing blindness into his: "I put myself out cruelly to please you, And you, for that, forget almost at once The name and image of me altogether.

You needn"t, for when all is a.n.a.lyzed, 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 caravans To get whatever "tis that"s in this thing Would 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 not You"d actuate some sinewed mercenary To carry me away to G.o.d knows where And seal me in a fearsome hole to starve, Because I made of this insidious picking An idle circ.u.mstance. My dear fair lady-- And there is not another under heaven So 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 gaze Would fall, I fear me, for no longer time Than on the solemn dust of Jeremiah-- Whose beard you likened once, in heathen jest, 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 lies Enough 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 off That horrid hair to make your face at last A human fact. Since I have had your name To dream of and say over to myself, The visitations of that awful beard Have 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 ladders That ran up out of sight and so to heaven, All covered with white ghosts with hanging robes Like folded wings,--and there were millions of them, Climbing, climbing, climbing, all the time; And all the time that I was watching them I thought how far above me Merlin was, And wondered always what his face was like.

But even then, as a child, I knew the day Would come some time when I should see his face, And hear his voice, and have him in my house Till 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 Vivians One 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 eye Saw two of them, there might be left him then The 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 eat And drink and say to me before I know The 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 is Of what my father gave to kings alone, And far from always. You are more than kings To me; therefore I give it all to you, Imploring you to spare no more of it Than what a c.o.c.kle-sh.e.l.l would hold for me To 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 dead Annoying me until it fades and sours Of too long cherishing; for Time enjoys The look that"s on our faces when we scowl On unexpected ruins, and thrift itself May be a kind of slow unwholesome fire That 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 alive And 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 eyes A 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 you Because you are so great and I so little."

With a long-kindling gaze that caught from hers A laughing flame, and with a hand that shook Like Arthur"s kingdom, Merlin slowly raised A 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 night Surrounding her, shot glory over gold At Merlin, while their cups touched and his trembled.

He drank, not knowing what, nor caring much For kings who might have cared less for themselves, He thought, had all the darkness and wild light That fell together to make Vivian Been there before them then to flower anew Through sheathing crimson into candle-light With each new leer of their loose, liquorish eyes.

Again he drank, and he cursed every king Who might have touched her even in her cradle; For what were kings to such as he, who made them And saw them totter--for the world to see, And heed, if the world would? He drank again, And yet again--to make himself a.s.sured No manner of king should have the last of it-- The cup that Vivian filled unfailingly Until she poured for nothing. "At the end Of this incomparable flowing gold,"

She prattled on to Merlin, who observed Her solemnly, "I fear there may be specks."-- He sighed aloud, whereat she laughed at him And pushed the golden cup a little nearer.

He scanned it with a sad anxiety, And then her face likewise, and shook his head As 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 gold Before him but he drank no more. There came Between him and the world a crumbling sky Of black and crimson, with a crimson cloud That held a far off town of many towers, All swayed and shaken, till at last they fell, And there was nothing but a crimson cloud That crumbled into nothing, like the sky That vanished with it, carrying away The world, the woman, and all memory of them, Until a slow light of another sky Made gray an open cas.e.m.e.nt, showing him Faint shapes of an exotic furniture That glimmered with a dim magnificence, And letting in the sound of many birds That were, as he lay there remembering, The only occupation of his ears Until it seemed they shared a fainter sound, As if a sleeping child with a black head Beside 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 silver That had for Merlin a more dazzling flash Than jewels rained in dreams, and a richer sound Than harps, and all the morning stars together,-- When jewels and harps and stars and everything That 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 all He knew until she came and took his hand And held it while she talked about the fishes.

When she looked up he thought a softer light Was in her eyes than once he had found there; And had there been left yet for dusky women A beauty that was heretofore not hers, He told himself he must have seen it then Before him in the face at which he smiled And trembled. "Many men have called me wise,"

He said, "but you are wiser than all wisdom If 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 years That life would be almost a constant yawning Until 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 world Was 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 men Who 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 lips And 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 him A jest, a legend, and a long regret, And with a more commanding wizardry Than his to rule a kingdom where the king Was Love and the queen Vivian, Merlin found His queen without the blemish of a word That was more rough than honey from her lips, Or the first adumbration of a frown To cloud the night-wild fire that in her eyes Had 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 off And feed them to the fishes in the fountain Than buzz like an incorrigible bee For always around yours, and have you hate The sound of me; for some day then, for certain, Your philosophic rage would see in me A bee in earnest, and your hand would smite My life away. And what would you do then?

I know: for years and years you"d sit alone Upon my grave, and be the grieving image Of lean remorse, and suffer miserably; And often, all day long, you"d only shake Your celebrated head and all it holds, Or beat it with your fist the while you groaned Aloud and went on saying to yourself: "Never should I have killed her, or believed She was a bee that buzzed herself to death, First having made me crazy, had there been Judicious distance and wise absences To 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.

G.o.d"s pity on me if I love your feet More now than I could ever love the face Of any one of all those Vivians You summoned out of nothing on the night When I saw towers. I"ll wander and amend."-- At that she flung the noose of her soft arms Around his neck and kissed him instantly: "You are the wisest man that ever was, And I"ve a prayer to make: May all you say To Vivian be a part of what you knew Before the curse of her unquiet head Was on your shoulder, as you have it now, To punish you for knowing beyond knowledge.

You are the only one who sees enough To make me see how far away I am From all that I have seen and have not been; You are the only thing there is alive Between me as I am and as I was When Merlin was a dream. You are to listen When I say now to you that I"m alone.

Like you, I saw too much; and unlike you I 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 far To rule myself. Time"s way with you and me Is our way, in that we are out of Time And 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 head Is no conceit of mine. I had it first When I was born; and I shall have it with me Till my unquiet soul is on its way To be, I hope, where souls are quieter.

So let the first and last activity Of what you say so often is your love Be always to remember that our lyres Are not strung for Today. On you it falls To keep them in accord here with each other, For you have wisdom, I have only sight For distant things--and you. And you are Merlin.

Poor wizard! Vivian is your punishment For making kings of men who are not kings; And you are mine, by the same reasoning, For living out of Time and out of tune With anything but you. No other man Could make me say so much of what I know As I say now to you. And you are Merlin!"

She looked up at him till his way was lost Again in the familiar wilderness Of 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 admonishing And frowned upon her with a fierce reproof That many a time in the old world outside Had set the mark of silence on strong men-- Whereat she laughed, not always wholly sure, Nor always wholly glad, that he who played So 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 remembrance Of Merlin"s old affection for the fellow, Had for this vain, reluctant enterprise Appointed 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 felt Her body throbbing like a bird against him: "This time I go; I go because I must."

And in the morning, when he rode away With Dagonet and Blaise through the same gate That 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 gaze Of helpless love and sad authority She found the gleam of his imprisoned power That Fate withheld; and, pitying herself, She pitied the fond Merlin she had changed, And saw the Merlin who had changed the world.

VI

"No kings are coming on their hands and knees, Nor yet on horses or in chariots, To carry me away from you again,"

Said Merlin, winding around Vivian"s ear A shred of her black hair. "King Arthur knows That I have done with kings, and that I speak No more their crafty language. Once I knew it, But now the only language I have left Is one that I must never let you hear Too long, or know too well. When towering deeds Once done shall only out of dust and words Be done again, the doer may then be wary Lest in the complement of his new fabric There be more words than dust."

"Why tell me so?"

Said Vivian; and a singular thin laugh Came after her thin question. "Do you think That I"m so far away from history That I require, even of the wisest man Who ever said the wrong thing to a woman, So large a light on what I know already-- When all I seek is here before me now In your new eyes that you have brought for me From Camelot? The eyes you took away Were sad and old; and I could see in them A Merlin who remembered all the kings He ever saw, and wished himself, almost, Away from Vivian, to make other kings, And shake the world again in the old manner.

I saw myself no bigger than a beetle For several days, and wondered if your love Were large enough to make me any larger When you came back. Am I a beetle still?"

She stood up on her toes and held her cheek For some time against his, and let him go.

"I fear the time has come for me to wander A little in my prison-yard," he said.-- "No, tell me everything that you have seen And heard and done, and seen done, and heard done, Since you deserted me. And tell me first What the King thinks of me."--"The King believes That you are almost what you are," he told her: "The beauty of all ages that are vanished, Reborn to be the wonder of one woman."-- "I knew he hated me. What else of him?"-- "And all that I have seen and heard and done, Which is not much, would make a weary telling; And all your part of it would be to sleep, And dream that Merlin had his beard again."-- "Then tell me more about your good fool knight, Sir Dagonet. If Blaise were not half-mad Already with his pondering on the name And shield of his unshielding nameless father, I"d make a fool of him. I"d call him Ajax; I"d have him shake his fist at thunder-storms, And dance a jig as long as there was lightning, And so till I forgot myself entirely.

Not even your love may do so much as that."-- "Thunder and lightning are no friends of mine,"

Said Merlin slowly, "more than they are yours; They bring me nearer to the elements From which I came than I care now to be."-- "You owe a service to those elements; For by their service you outwitted age And made the world a kingdom of your will."-- He touched her hand, smiling: "Whatever service Of mine awaits them will not be forgotten,"

He said; and the smile faded on his face,-- "Now of all graceless and ungrateful wizards--"

But there she ceased, for she found in his eyes The first of a new fear. "The wrong word rules Today," she said; "and we"ll have no more journeys."

Although he wandered rather more than ever Since he had come again to Brittany From Camelot, Merlin found eternally Before him a new loneliness that made Of garden, park, and woodland, all alike, A desolation and a changelessness Defying reason, without Vivian Beside him, like a child with a black head, Or moving on before him, or somewhere So near him that, although he saw it not With eyes, he felt the picture of her beauty And shivered at the nearness of her being.

Without her now there was no past or future, And a vague, soul-consuming premonition He found the only tenant of the present; He wondered, when she was away from him, If his avenging injured intellect Might shine with Arthur"s kingdom a twin mirror, Fate"s plaything, for new ages without eyes To see therein themselves and their declension.

Love made his hours a martyrdom without her; The world was like an empty house without her, Where Merlin was a prisoner of love Confined within himself by too much freedom, Repeating an unending exploration Of many solitary silent rooms, And only in a way remembering now That once their very solitude and silence Had by the magic of expectancy Made sure what now he doubted--though his doubts, Day after day, were founded on a shadow.

For now to Merlin, in his paradise, Had come an unseen angel with a sword Unseen, the touch of which was a long fear For longer sorrow that had never come, Yet might if he compelled it. He discovered, One golden day in autumn as he wandered, That he had made the radiance of two years A misty twilight when he might as well Have had no mist between him and the sun, The sun being Vivian. On his coming then To find her all in green against a wall Of green and yellow leaves, and crumbling bread For birds around the fountain while she sang And the birds ate the bread, he told himself That everything today was as it was At first, and for a minute he believed it.

"I"d have you always all in green out here,"

He said, "if I had much to say about it."-- She clapped her crumbs away and laughed at him: "I"ve covered up my bones with every color That I can carry on them without screaming, And you have liked them all--or made me think so."-- "I must have liked them if you thought I did,"

He answered, sighing; "but the sight of you Today as on the day I saw you first, All green, all wonderful" ... He tore a leaf To pieces with a melancholy care That made her smile.--"Why pause at "wonderful"?

You"ve hardly been yourself since you came back From Camelot, where that unpleasant King Said things that you have never said to me."-- He looked upon her with a worn reproach: "The King said nothing that I keep from you."-- "What is it then?" she asked, imploringly; "You man of moods and miracles, what is it?"-- He shook his head and tore another leaf: "There is no need of asking what it is; Whatever you or I may choose to name it, The name of it is Fate, who played with me And gave me eyes to read of the unwritten More lines than I have read. I see no more Today than yesterday, but I remember.

My ways are not the ways of other men; My memories go forward. It was you Who said that we were not in tune with Time; It was not I who said it."--"But you knew it; What matter then who said it?"--"It was you Who said that Merlin was your punishment For being in tune with him and not with Time-- With Time or with the world; and it was you Who said you were alone, even here with Merlin; It was not I who said it. It is I Who tell you now my inmost thoughts." He laughed As if at hidden pain around his heart, But there was not much laughing in his eyes.

They walked, and for a season they were silent: "I shall know what you mean by that," she said, "When you have told me. Here"s an oak you like, And here"s a place that fits me wondrous well To sit in. You sit there. I"ve seen you there Before; and I have spoiled your n.o.ble thoughts By walking all my fingers up and down Your countenance, as if they were the feet Of a small animal with no great claws.

Tell me a story now about the world, And the men in it, what they do in it, And why it is they do it all so badly."-- "I"ve told you every story that I know, Almost," he said.--"O, don"t begin like that."-- "Well, once upon a time there was a King."-- "That has a more commendable address; Go on, and tell me all about the King; I"ll bet the King had warts or carbuncles, Or something wrong in his divine insides, To make him wish that Adam had died young."

Merlin observed her slowly with a frown Of saddened wonder. She laughed rather lightly, And at his heart he felt again the sword Whose touch was a long fear for longer sorrow.

"Well, once upon a time there was a king,"

He said again, but now in a dry voice That wavered and betrayed a venturing.

He paused, and would have hesitated longer, But something in him that was not himself Compelled an utterance that his tongue obeyed, As an unwilling child obeys a father Who might be richer for obedience If he obeyed the child: "There was a king Who would have made his reign a monument For kings and peoples of the waiting ages To reverence and remember, and to this end He coveted and won, with no ado To make a story of, a neighbor queen Who limed him with her smile and had of him, In token of their sin, what he found soon To be a sort of mongrel son and nephew-- And a most precious reptile in addition-- To ornament his court and carry arms, And latterly to be the darker half Of ruin. Also the king, who made of love More than he made of life and death together, Forgot the world and his example in it For yet another woman--one of many-- And this one he made Queen, albeit he knew That her unsworn allegiance to the knight That he had loved the best of all his order Must one day bring along the coming end Of love and honor and of everything; And with a kingdom builded on two pits Of living sin,--so founded by the will Of one wise counsellor who loved the king, And loved the world and therefore made him king To be a mirror for it,--the king reigned well For certain years, awaiting a sure doom; For certain years he waved across the world A royal banner with a Dragon on it; And men of every land fell worshipping The Dragon as it were the living G.o.d, And not the living sin."

She rose at that, And after a calm yawn, she looked at Merlin: "Why all this new insistence upon sin?"

She said; "I wonder if I understand This king of yours, with all his pits and dragons; I know I do not like him." A thinner light Was in her eyes than he had found in them Since he became the willing prisoner That she had made of him; and on her mouth Lay now a colder line of irony Than all his fears or nightmares could have drawn Before today: "What reason do you know For me to listen to this king of yours?

What reading has a man of woman"s days, Even though the man be Merlin and a prophet?"

"I know no call for you to love the king,"

Said Merlin, driven ruinously along By the vindictive urging of his fate; "I know no call for you to love the king, Although you serve him, knowing not yet the king You serve. There is no man, or any woman, For whom the story of the living king Is not the story of the living sin.

I thought my story was the common one, For common recognition and regard."