Part 2

The King, who sat with folded arms, now bowed His head and felt, unfought and all aflame Like immanent hell-fire, the wretchedness That only those who are to lead may feel-- And only they when they are maimed and worn Too sore to covet without shuddering The fixed impending eminence where death Itself were victory, could they but lead Unbitten by the serpents they had fed. Turning, he spoke: "Merlin, you say the truth: There is no man who could say more to me Today, or say so much to me, and live. But you are Merlin still, or part of him; I did you wrong when I thought otherwise, And I am sorry now. Say what you will. We are alone, and I shall be alone As long as Time shall hide a reason here For me to stay in this infested world Where I have sinned and erred and heeded not Your counsel; and where you yourself--God save us!-- Have gone down smiling to the smaller life That you and your incongruous laughter called Your living grave. God save us all, Merlin, When you, the seer, the founder, and the prophet, May throw the gold of your immortal treasure Back to the God that gave it, and then laugh Because a woman has you in her arms ... Why do you sting me now with a small hive Of words that are all poison? I do not ask Much honey; but why poison me for nothing, And with a venom that I know already As I know crowns and wars? Why tell a king-- A poor, foiled, flouted, miserable king-- That if he lets rats eat his fingers off He'll have no fingers to fight battles with? I know as much as that, for I am still A king--who thought himself a little less Than God; a king who built him palaces On sand and mud, and hears them crumbling now, And sees them tottering, as he knew they must. You are the man who made me to be King-- Therefore, say anything."

Merlin, stricken deep With pity that was old, being born of old Foreshadowings, made answer to the King: "This coil of Lancelot and Guinevere Is not for any mortal to undo, Or to deny, or to make otherwise; But your most violent years are on their way To days, and to a sounding of loud hours That are to strike for war. Let not the time Between this hour and then be lost in fears, Or told in obscurations and vain faith In what has been your long security; For should your force be slower then than hate, And your regret be sharper than your sight, And your remorse fall heavier than your sword,-- Then say farewell to Camelot, and the crown. But say not you have lost, or failed in aught Your golden horoscope of imperfection Has held in starry words that I have read. I see no farther now than I saw then, For no man shall be given of everything Together in one life; yet I may say The time is imminent when he shall come For whom I founded the Siege Perilous; And he shall be too much a living part Of what he brings, and what he burns away in, To be for long a vexed inhabitant Of this mad realm of stains and lower trials. And here the ways of God again are mixed: For this new knight who is to find the Grail For you, and for the least who pray for you In such lost coombs and hollows of the world As you have never entered, is to be The son of him you trusted--Lancelot, Of all who ever jeopardized a throne Sure the most evil-fated, saving one, Your son, begotten, though you knew not then Your leman was your sister, of Morgause; For it is Modred now, not Lancelot, Whose native hate plans your annihilation-- Though he may smile till he be sick, and swear Allegiance to an unforgiven father Until at last he shake an empty tongue Talked out with too much lying--though his lies Will have a truth to steer them. Trust him not, For unto you the father, he the son Is like enough to be the last of terrors-- If in a field of time that looms to you Far larger than it is you fail to plant And harvest the old seeds of what I say, And so be nourished and adept again For what may come to be. But Lancelot Will have you first; and you need starve no more For the Queen's love, the love that never was. Your Queen is now your Kingdom, and hereafter Let no man take it from you, or you die. Let no man take it from you for a day; For days are long when we are far from what We love, and mischief's other name is distance. Let that be all, for I can say no more; Not even to Blaise the Hermit, were he living, Could I say more than I have given you now To hear; and he alone was my confessor."

The King arose and paced the floor again. "I get gray comfort of dark words," he said; "But tell me not that you can say no more: You can, for I can hear you saying it. Yet I'll not ask for more. I have enough-- Until my new knight comes to prove and find The promise and the glory of the Grail, Though I shall see no Grail. For I have built On sand and mud, and I shall see no Grail."-- "Nor I," said Merlin. "Once I dreamed of it, But I was buried. I shall see no Grail, Nor would I have it otherwise. I saw Too much, and that was never good for man. The man who goes alone too far goes mad-- In one way or another. God knew best, And he knows what is coming yet for me. I do not ask. Like you, I have enough."

That night King Arthur's apprehension found In Merlin an obscure and restive guest, Whose only thought was on the hour of dawn, When he should see the last of Camelot And ride again for Brittany; and what words Were said before the King was left alone Were only darker for reiteration. They parted, all provision made secure 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 Who is to have me first," so Merlin says,-- "As if he had me not in hell already. Lancelot! Lancelot!" He cursed the tears That cooled his misery, and then he asked Himself again if he had one to trust Among his knights, till even Bedivere, 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 Dagonet will sing for me tonight An old song, not too merry or too sad." When Dagonet, having entered, stood before The King as one affrighted, the King smiled: "You think because I call for you so late That I am angry, Dagonet? Why so? Have you been saying what I say to you, And telling men that you brought Merlin here? No? So I fancied; and if you report No syllable of anything I speak, You will have no regrets, and I no anger. What word of Merlin was abroad today?"

"Today have I heard no man save Gawaine, And to him I said only what all men Are saying to their neighbors. They believe That you have Merlin here, and that his coming Denotes no good. Gawaine was curious, But ever mindful of your majesty. He pressed me not, and we made light of it."

"Gawaine, I fear, makes light of everything," The King said, looking down. "Sometimes I wish I had a full Round Table of Gawaines. But that's a freak of midnight,--never mind it. Sing me a song--one of those endless things That Merlin liked of old, when men were younger And there were more stars twinkling in the sky. I see no stars that are alive tonight, And I am not the king of sleep. So then, Sing me an old song."

Dagonet's quick eye Caught sorrow in the King's; and he knew more, In a fool's way, than even the King himself Of what was hovering over Camelot. "O King," he said, "I cannot sing tonight. If you command me I shall try to sing, But I shall fail; for there are no songs now In my old throat, or even in these poor strings That I can hardly follow with my fingers. Forgive me--kill me--but I cannot sing." Dagonet fell down then on both his knees And shook there while he clutched the King's cold hand And wept for what he knew.

"There, Dagonet; I shall not kill my knight, or make him sing. No more; get up, and get you off to bed. There'll be another time for you to sing, So get you to your covers and sleep well." Alone again, the King said, bitterly: "Yes, I have one friend left, and they who know As much of him as of themselves believe That he's a fool. Poor Dagonet's a fool. And if he be a fool, what else am I Than one fool more to make the world complete? 'The love that never was!' ... Fool, fool, fool, fool!"

The King was long awake. No covenant With peace was his tonight; and he knew sleep As he knew the cold eyes of Guinevere That yesterday had stabbed him, having first 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 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. Then he saw giants rising in the dark, Born horribly of memories and new fears That in the gray-lit irony of dawn Were partly to fade out and be forgotten; And then there might be sleep, and for a time There might again be peace. His head was hot And throbbing; but the rest of him was cold, As he lay staring hard where nothing stood, And hearing what was not, even while he saw And heard, like dust and thunder far away, The coming confirmation of the words Of him who saw so much and feared so little Of all that was to be. No spoken doom That ever chilled the last night of a felon Prepared a dragging anguish more profound And absolute than Arthur, in these hours, Made out of darkness and of Merlin's words; No tide that ever crashed on Lyonnesse Drove echoes inland that were lonelier For widowed ears among the fisher-folk, Than for the King were memories tonight Of old illusions that were dead for ever.

IV

The tortured King--seeing Merlin wholly meshed In his defection, even to indifference, And all the while attended and exalted By some unfathomable obscurity Of divination, where the Grail, unseen, Broke yet the darkness where a king saw nothing-- Feared now the lady Vivian more than Fate; For now he knew that Modred, Lancelot, The Queen, the King, the Kingdom, and the World, Were less to Merlin, who had made him King, Than one small woman in Broceliande. Whereas the lady Vivian, seeing Merlin Acclaimed and tempted and allured again To service in his old magnificence, Feared now King Arthur more than storms and robbers; For Merlin, though he knew himself immune To no least whispered little wish of hers That might afflict his ear with ecstasy, Had yet sufficient of his old command Of all around him to invest an eye With quiet lightning, and a spoken word With easy thunder, so accomplishing A profit and a pastime for himself-- And for the lady Vivian, when her guile Outlived at intervals her graciousness; And this equipment of uncertainty, Which now had gone away with him to Britain With Dagonet, so plagued her memory That soon a phantom brood of goblin doubts Inhabited his absence, which had else Been empty waiting and a few brave fears, And a few more, she knew, that were not brave, Or long to be disowned, or manageable. She thought of him as he had looked at her When first he had acquainted her alarm At sight of the King's letter with its import; And she remembered now his very words: "The King believes today as in his boyhood That I am Fate," he said; and when they parted She had not even asked him not to go; She might as well, she thought, have bid the wind Throw no more clouds across a lonely sky Between her and the moon,--so great he seemed In his oppressed solemnity, and she, In her excess of wrong imagining, So trivial in an hour, and, after all A creature of a smaller consequence Than kings to Merlin, who made kings and kingdoms And had them as a father; and so she feared King Arthur more than robbers while she waited For Merlin's promise to fulfil itself, And for the rest that was to follow after: "He said he would come back, and so he will. He will because he must, and he is Merlin, The master of the world--or so he was; And he is coming back again to me Because he must and I am Vivian. It's all as easy as two added numbers: Some day I'll hear him ringing at the gate, As he rang on that morning in the spring, Ten years ago; and I shall have him then For ever. He shall never go away Though kings come walking on their hands and knees To take him on their backs." When Merlin came, She told him that, and laughed; and he said strangely: "Be glad or sorry, but no kings are coming. Not Arthur, surely; for now Arthur knows That I am less than Fate."

Ten years ago The King had heard, with unbelieving ears At first, what Merlin said would be the last Reiteration of his going down To find a living grave in Brittany: "Buried alive I told you I should be, By love made little and by woman shorn, Like Samson, of my glory; and the time Is now at hand. I follow in the morning Where I am led. I see behind me now The last of crossways, and I see before me A straight and final highway to the end Of all my divination. You are King, And in your kingdom I am what I was. Wherever I have warned you, see as far As I have seen; for I have shown the worst There is to see. Require no more of me, For I can be no more than what I was." So, on the morrow, the King said farewell; And he was never more to Merlin's eye The King than at that hour; for Merlin knew How much was going out of Arthur's life With him, as he went southward to the sea.

Over the waves and into Brittany Went Merlin, to Broceliande. Gay birds Were singing high to greet him all along A broad and sanded woodland avenue That led him on forever, so he thought, Until at last there was an end of it; And at the end there was a gate of iron, Wrought heavily and invidiously barred. He pulled a cord that rang somewhere a bell Of many echoes, and sat down to rest, Outside the keeper's house, upon a bench Of carven stone that might for centuries Have waited there in silence to receive him. The birds were singing still; leaves flashed and swung Before him in the sunlight; a soft breeze Made intermittent whisperings around him Of love and fate and danger, and faint waves Of many sweetly-stinging fragile odors Broke lightly as they touched him; cherry-boughs Above him snowed white petals down upon him, And under their slow falling Merlin smiled Contentedly, as one who contemplates No longer fear, confusion, or regret, May smile at ruin or at revelation.

A stately fellow with a forest air Now hailed him from within, with searching words And curious looks, till Merlin's glowing eye Transfixed him and he flinched: "My compliments And homage to the lady Vivian. Say Merlin from King Arthur's Court is here, A pilgrim and a stranger in appearance, Though in effect her friend and humble servant. Convey to her my speech as I have said it, Without abbreviation or delay, And so deserve my gratitude forever." "But Merlin?" the man stammered; "Merlin? Merlin?"-- "One Merlin is enough. I know no other. Now go you to the lady Vivian And bring to me her word, for I am weary." Still smiling at the cherry-blossoms falling Down on him and around him in the sunlight, He waited, never moving, never glancing This way or that, until his messenger Came jingling into vision, weighed with keys, And inly shaken with much wondering At this great wizard's coming unannounced And unattended. When the way was open The stately messenger, now bowing low In reverence and awe, bade Merlin enter; And Merlin, having entered, heard the gate Clang back behind him; and he swore no gate Like that had ever clanged in Camelot, Or any other place if not in hell. "I may be dead; and this good fellow here, With all his keys," he thought, "may be the Devil,-- Though I were loath to say so, for the keys Would make him rather more akin to Peter; And that's fair reasoning for this fair weather."

"The lady Vivian says you are most welcome," Said now the stately-favored servitor, "And are to follow me. She said, 'Say Merlin-- A pilgrim and a stranger in appearance, Though in effect my friend and humble servant-- Is welcome for himself, and for the sound Of his great name that echoes everywhere.'"-- "I like you and I like your memory," Said Merlin, curiously, "but not your gate. Why forge for this elysian wilderness A thing so vicious with unholy noise?"-- "There's a way out of every wilderness For those who dare or care enough to find it," The guide said: and they moved along together, Down shaded ways, through open ways with hedgerows. And into shade again more deep than ever, But edged anon with rays of broken sunshine In which a fountain, raining crystal music, Made faery magic of it through green leafage, Till Merlin's eyes were dim with preparation For sight now of the lady Vivian. He saw at first a bit of living green That might have been a part of all the green Around the tinkling fountain where she gazed Upon the circling pool as if her thoughts Were not so much on Merlin--whose advance Betrayed through his enormity of hair The cheeks and eyes of youth--as on the fishes. But soon she turned and found him, now alone, And held him while her beauty and her grace Made passing trash of empires, and his eyes Told hers of what a splendid emptiness Her tedious world had been without him in it Whose love and service were to be her school, Her triumph, and her history: "This is Merlin," She thought; "and I shall dream of him no more. And he has come, he thinks, to frighten me With beards and robes and his immortal fame; Or is it I who think so? I know not. I'm frightened, sure enough, but if I show it, I'll be no more the Vivian for whose love He tossed away his glory, or the Vivian Who saw no man alive to make her love him Till she saw Merlin once in Camelot, And seeing him, saw no other. In an age That has no plan for me that I can read Without him, shall he tell me what I am, And why I am, I wonder?" While she thought, And feared the man whom her perverse negation Must overcome somehow to soothe her fancy, She smiled and welcomed him; and so they stood, Each finding in the other's eyes a gleam Of what eternity had hidden there.

"Are you always all in green, as you are now?" Said Merlin, more employed with her complexion, Where blood and olive made wild harmony With eyes and wayward hair that were too dark For peace if they were not subordinated; "If so you are, then so you make yourself A danger in a world of many dangers. If I were young, God knows if I were safe Concerning you in green, like a slim cedar, As you are now, to say my life was mine: Were you to say to me that I should end it, Longevity for me were jeopardized. Have you your green on always and all over?"

"Come here, and I will tell you about that," 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, 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."

"You've never fed a carp with little frogs," Said Merlin; "I can see it in your eyes."-- "I might then, if I haven't," said the lady; "For I'm a savage, and I love no man As I have seen him yet. I'm here alone, With some three hundred others, all of whom Are ready, I dare say, to die for me; I'm cruel and I'm cold, and I like snakes; And some have said my mother was a fairy, Though I believe it not."

"Why not believe it?" Said Merlin; "I believe it. I believe Also that you divine, as I had wished, In my surviving ornament of office A needless imposition on your wits, If not yet on the scope of your regard. Even so, you cannot say how old I am, Or yet how young. I'm willing cheerfully To fight, left-handed, Hell's three headed hound If you but whistle him up from where he lives; I'm cheerful and I'm fierce, and I've made kings; And some have said my father was the Devil, Though I believe it not. Whatever I am, I have not lived in Time until to-day." A moment's worth of wisdom there escaped him, But Vivian seized it, and it was not lost. Embroidering doom with many levities, Till now the fountain's crystal silver, fading, Became a splash and a mere chilliness, They mocked their fate with easy pleasantries That were too false and small to be forgotten, And with ingenious insincerities That had no repetition or revival. At last the lady Vivian arose, And with a crying of how late it was Took Merlin's hand and led him like a child Along a dusky way between tall cones Of tight green cedars: "Am I like one of these? You said I was, though I deny it wholly."-- "Very," said Merlin, to his bearded lips Uplifting her small fingers.--"O, that hair!" She moaned, as if in sorrow: "Must it be? Must every prophet and important wizard Be clouded so that nothing but his nose And eyes, and intimations of his ears, Are there to make us know him when we see him? Praise heaven I'm not a prophet! Are you glad?"--