Edwin Arlington Robinson

“ Could I have sunk myself to sound a fool
To springe a friend.... No, I like not this day.
There’s a cloud coming over Camelot
Larger than any that is in the sky,—
Or Merlin would be still in Brittany,
With Vivian and the viols. It’s all too strange.”
And later, when descending to the city,
Through unavailing casements he could hear
The roaring of a mighty voice within,
Confirming fervidly his own conviction:
“It’s all too strange, and half the world’s half crazy!”—
He scowled: “Well, I agree with Lamorak.”
He frowned, and passed: “And I like not this day.” ”

“ I came to see the King,—but why see kings?
All this that was to be is what I saw
Before there was an Arthur to be king,
And so to be a mirror wherein men
May see themselves, and pause. If they see not,
Or if they do see and they ponder not,—
I saw; but I was neither Fate nor God.
I saw too much; and this would be the end,
Were there to be an end. I saw myself—
A sight no other man has ever seen ”

“ With merciful illusions whereby self
Becomes the will itself and each man swells
In fond accordance with his agency.
Now Arthur, Modred, Lancelot, and Gawaine
Are swollen thoughts of this eternal will
Which have no other way to find the way
That leads them on to their inheritance
Than by the time-infuriating flame
Of a wrecked empire, lighted by the torch
Of woman, who, together with the light
That Galahad found, is yet to light the world. ”

“ Said Vivian, leading Merlin with a laugh
To an arbored seat where they made opposites:
“If you are Merlin—and I know you are,
For I remember you in Camelot,—
You know that I am Vivian, as I am;
And if I go in green, why, let me go so,
[Pg 64] And say at once why you have come to me
Cloaked over like a monk, and with a beard
As long as Jeremiah’s. I don’t like it.
I’ll never like a man with hair like that
While I can feed a carp with little frogs.
I’m rather sure to hate you if you keep it,
And when I hate a man I poison him.” ”

“ She pitied the fond Merlin she had changed,
And saw the Merlin who had changed the world. [Pg 104] 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. ”

“ I’ll urge no king on after Lancelot
For such a two as Tor and Lamorak:
Their father killed my father, and their friend
Was Lancelot, not I. I’ll own my fault—
I’m living; and while I’ve a tongue can talk,
I’ll say this to the King: ‘Burn Lancelot
By inches till he give you back the Queen;
Then hang him—drown him—or do anything
To rid the world of him.’ He killed my brothers,
And he was once my friend. Now damn the soul
Of him who killed my brothers! There you have me.”
“You are a strong man, Gawaine, and your strength
[Pg 140] Goes ill where foes are. ”

“ Gawaine, for all his anger, laughed a little,
And clapped the fool’s lean shoulder; for he loved him
And was with Arthur when he made him knight.
Then Dagonet said on to Bedivere,
As if his tongue would make a jest of sorrow:
“Sometime I’ll tell you what I might have done
Had I been Lancelot and you King Arthur—
Each having in himself the vicious essence
That now lives in the other and makes war.
[Pg 143] When all men are like you and me, my lord,
When all are rational or rickety,
There may be no more war. But what’s here now?
Lancelot loves the Queen, and he makes war
Of love ”

“ Than kings and kingdom-builders, I shall troll
Old men to easy graves and be a child
Again among the children of the earth.
I’ll have no more of kings, even though I loved
King Arthur, who is mad, as I could love
No other man save Merlin, who is dead.”
“Not wholly dead, but old. Merlin is old.” ”

“ As death is true. This Merlin is not mine,
But Vivian’s. My crown is less than hers,
And I am less than woman to this man.”
Then Merlin, as one reading Arthur’s words
On viewless tablets in the air before him:
“Now, Arthur, since you are a child of mine—
A foster-child, and that’s a kind of child—
Be not from hearsay or despair too eager
To dash your meat with bitter seasoning,
So none that are more famished than yourself
Shall have what you refuse. For you are King,
And if you starve yourself, you starve the state ”

“ Said Merlin, driven ruinously along
[Pg 119] 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.”
“Then let us have no more of it,” she said;
“For we are not so common, I believe,
That we need kings and pits and flags and dragons
To make us know that we have let the world
Go by us. ”

“ 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
[Pg 100] 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! ”

“ Gawaine hates Lancelot,
And he, to be in tune, makes war of hate;
Modred hates everything, yet he can see
With one damned illegitimate small eye
His father’s crown, and with another like it
He sees the beauty of the Queen herself;
He needs the two for his ambitious pleasure,
And therefore he makes war of his ambition;
And somewhere in the middle of all this
There’s a squeezed world that elbows for attention.
Poor Merlin, buried in Broceliande!
[Pg 144] He must have had an academic eye
For woman when he founded Arthur’s kingdom,
And in Broceliande he may be sorry. ”

“ For Merlin’s early convoy to the coast,
And Arthur tramped the past. The loneliness
Of kings, around him like the unseen dead,
Lay everywhere; and he was loath to move,
As if in fear to meet with his cold hand
The touch of something colder. Then a whim,
Begotten of intolerable doubt,
Seized him and stung him until he was asking
If any longer lived among his knights
A man to trust as once he trusted all,
And Lancelot more than all. “And it is he
[Pg 43] Who is to have me first,” so Merlin says,—
“As if he had me not in hell already.
Lancelot! Lancelot!” ”

“ Of any man more vision than is his;
Yet I could wish for you a larger part
For your last entrance here than this you play
Tonight of a sad insect stinging Merlin.
The more you sting, the more he pities you;
And you were never overfond of pity.
Had you been so, I doubt if Arthur’s love,
Or Gawaine’s, would have made of you a knight.
[Pg 160] No, Dagonet, you cannot leave me now,
Nor would you if you could. You call yourself
A fool, because the world and you are strangers.
You are a proud man, Dagonet; you have suffered
What I alone have seen. You are no fool ”

“ I might be worse than young; I might be old.”—
Dagonet answered, and without a smile:
“Somehow I fancy Merlin saying that;
A fancy—a mere fancy.” Then he smiled:
“And such a doom as his may be for you,
Gawaine, should your untiring divination
Delve in the veiled eternal mysteries
Too far to be a pleasure for the Lord.
And when you stake your wisdom for a woman,
Compute the woman to be worth a grave,
As Merlin did, and say no more about it.
[Pg 13] But Vivian, she played high. Oh, very high!
Flutes, hautboys, drums, and viols,—and her love.
Gawaine, farewell.” ”

“ We’re late now for much praying, Lamorak,
When you and I can feel upon our faces
A wind that has been blowing over ruins
That we had said were castles and high towers—
[Pg 20] Till Merlin, or the spirit of him, came
As the dead come in dreams. ”

“ Tor, Bors, and Percival, rough Lamorak,
Griflet, and Gareth, and gay Gawaine, all
Were dubious knaves,—or they were like to be,
For cause to make them so; and he had made
Himself to be the cause. “God set me right,
Before this folly carry me on farther,”
He murmured; and he smiled unhappily,
Though fondly, as he thought: “Yes, there is one
Whom I may trust with even my soul’s last shred ”

“ And Merlin may have gauged his enterprise
Whatever the cost he may have paid for knowing.
We pass, but many are to follow us,
And what they build may stay; though I believe
Another age will have another Merlin,
Another Camelot, and another King.
Sir Dagonet, farewell.”
“Farewell, Sir Knight,
[Pg 145] And you, Sir Knight: Gawaine, you have the world
Now in your fingers—an uncommon toy,
Albeit a small persuasion in the balance
With one man’s hate. ”

“ Than Lancelot would have an ear to cherish,
[Pg 3] Had sauntered off with his imagination
To Merlin’s Rock, where now there was no Merlin
To meditate upon a whispering town
Below him in the silence.—Once he said
To Gawaine: “You are young; and that being so,
Behold the shining city of our dreams
And of our King.”—“Long live the King,” said Gawaine.—
“Long live the King,” said Merlin after him;
“Better for me that I shall not be King;
Wherefore I say again, Long live the King,
And add, God save him, also, and all kings—
All kings and queens. I speak in general. ”

“ So Vivian holds him with her love, they say,
And he, who has no age, has not grown old.
I swear to nothing, but that’s what they say.
That’s being buried in Broceliande
For too much wisdom and clairvoyancy.
But you and all who live, Gawaine, have heard
This tale, or many like it, more than once;
And you must know that Love, when Love invites
Philosophy to play, plays high and wins,
Or low and loses. And you say to me,
‘If Merlin would have peace, let Merlin stay
Away from Brittany.’ Gawaine, you are young,
[Pg 12] And Merlin’s in his grave. ”

“ On Lancelot’s name struck fire, and left him then
As now they left him—with a wounded heart,
A wounded pride, and a sickening pang worse yet
[Pg 48] Of lost possession. He thought wearily
Of watchers by the dead, late wayfarers,
Rough-handed mariners on ships at sea,
Lone-yawning sentries, wastrels, and all others
Who might be saying somewhere to themselves,
“The King is now asleep in Camelot;
God save the King.”—“God save the King, indeed,
If there be now a king to save,” he said. ”

“ 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,
[Pg 95] And you are never going to be old.” ”

“ The King, Gawaine, Modred, and Lancelot
May all be lying underneath a weight
Of bloody sheaves too heavy for their shoulders,
All spent, and all dishonored, and all dead;
And if it come to be that this be so,
[Pg 148] And it be true that Merlin saw the truth,
Such harvest were the best. Your fool sees not
So far as Merlin sees: yet if he saw
The truth—why then, such harvest were the best.
I’ll pray for Arthur; I can do no more.”
“Why not for Merlin? ”

“ Gawaine, having risen, eyed the fool curiously:
“I’ll not forget I had it of a knight,
[Pg 7] Whose only folly is to fool himself;
And as for making other men to laugh,
And so forget their sins and selves a little,
There’s no great folly there. So keep it up,
As long as you’ve a legend or a song,
And have whatever sport of us you like
Till havoc is the word and we fall howling.
For I’ve a guess there may not be so loud
A sound of laughing here in Camelot
When Merlin goes again to his gay grave
In Brittany. To mention lesser terrors,
Men say his beard is gone.”
“Do men say that?” ”

“ Said Lamorak, as he lowered his wrath and laughed
A sort of poisonous apology
To Kay: “And in the meantime, I’ll be gyved!
Here’s Bedivere a-wailing for the King,
And you, Kay, with a moist eye for the Queen.
I think I’ll blow a horn for Lancelot;
For by my soul a man’s in sorry case
When Guineveres are out with eyes to scorch him:
I’m not so ancient or so frozen certain
[Pg 26] That I’d ride horses down to skeletons
If she were after me. Has Merlin seen him—
This Lancelot, this Queen-fed friend of ours?” ”

“ The story is that Merlin warned the King
Of what’s come now to pass; and I believe it.
And Arthur, he being Arthur and a king,
Has made a more pernicious mess than one,
We’re told, for being so great and amorous:
It’s that unwholesome and inclement cub
Young Modred I’d see first in hell before
I’d hang too high the Queen or Lancelot;
The King, if one may say it, set the pace,
And we’ve two strapping bastards here to prove it.
[Pg 19] Young Borre, he’s well enough; but as for Modred,
I squirm as often as I look at him. ”

“ I think, that we shall not be kings.”
Gawaine,
Remembering Merlin’s words of long ago,
Frowned as he thought, and having frowned again,
He smiled and threw an acorn at a lizard:
“There’s more afoot and in the air to-day
Than what is good for Camelot. Merlin
May or may not know all, but he said well
To say to me that he would not be King.
No more would I be King.” Far down he gazed
On Camelot, until he made of it
A phantom town of many stillnesses,
[Pg 5] Not reared for men to dwell in, or for kings
To reign in, without omens and obscure
Familiars to bring terror to their days ”