Idylls of the King · Merlin and Vivien (2/3)

And Vivien answered smiling mournfully:

“O not so strange as my long asking it,

Not yet so strange as you yourself are strange,

Nor half so strange as that dark mood of yours.

I ever feared ye were not wholly mine;

And see, yourself have owned ye did me wrong.

The people call you prophet: let it be:

But not of those that can expound themselves.

Take Vivien for expounder; she will call

That three-days-long presageful gloom of yours

No presage, but the same mistrustful mood

That makes you seem less noble than yourself,

Whenever I have asked this very boon,

Now asked again: for see you not, dear love,

That such a mood as that, which lately gloomed

Your fancy when ye saw me following you,

Must make me fear still more you are not mine,

Must make me yearn still more to prove you mine,

And make me wish still more to learn this charm

Of woven paces and of waving hands,

As proof of trust. O Merlin, teach it me.

The charm so taught will charm us both to rest.

For, grant me some slight power upon your fate,

I, feeling that you felt me worthy trust,

Should rest and let you rest, knowing you mine.

And therefore be as great as ye are named,

Not muffled round with selfish reticence.

How hard you look and how denyingly!

O, if you think this wickedness in me,

That I should prove it on you unawares,

That makes me passing wrathful; then our bond

Had best be loosed forever: but think or not,

By Heaven that hears I tell you the clean truth,

As clean as blood of babes, as white as milk:

O Merlin, may this earth, if ever I,

If these unwitty wandering wits of mine,

Even in the jumbled rubbish of a dream,

Have tript on such conjectural treachery⁠—

May this hard earth cleave to the Nadir hell

Down, down, and close again, and nip me flat,

If I be such a traitress. Yield my boon,

Till which I scarce can yield you all I am;

And grant my re-reiterated wish,

The great proof of your love: because I think,

However wise, ye hardly know me yet.”

And Merlin loosed his hand from hers and said,

“I never was less wise, however wise,

Too curious Vivien, though you talk of trust,

Than when I told you first of such a charm.

Yea, if ye talk of trust I tell you this,

Too much I trusted when I told you that,

And stirred this vice in you which ruined man

Through woman the first hour; for howsoe’er

In children a great curiousness be well,

Who have to learn themselves and all the world,

In you, that are no child, for still I find

Your face is practised when I spell the lines,

I call it⁠—well, I will not call it vice:

But since you name yourself the summer fly,

I well could wish a cobweb for the gnat,

That settles, beaten back, and beaten back

Settles, till one could yield for weariness:

But since I will not yield to give you power

Upon my life and use and name and fame,

Why will ye never ask some other boon?

Yea, by God’s rood, I trusted you too much.”

And Vivien, like the tenderest-hearted maid

That ever bided tryst at village stile,

Made answer, either eyelid wet with tears:

“Nay, Master, be not wrathful with your maid;

Caress her: let her feel herself forgiven

Who feels no heart to ask another boon.

I think ye hardly know the tender rhyme

Of ‘trust me not at all or all in all.’

I heard the great Sir Lancelot sing it once,

And it shall answer for me. Listen to it.

‘In Love, if Love be Love, if Love be ours,

Faith and unfaith can ne’er be equal powers:

Unfaith in aught is want of faith in all.

‘It is the little rift within the lute,

That by and by will make the music mute,

And ever widening slowly silence all.

‘The little rift within the lover’s lute

Or little pitted speck in garnered fruit,

That rotting inward slowly moulders all.

‘It is not worth the keeping: let it go:

But shall it? answer, darling, answer, no.

And trust me not at all or all in all.’

O Master, do ye love my tender rhyme?”

And Merlin looked and half believed her true,

So tender was her voice, so fair her face,

So sweetly gleamed her eyes behind her tears

Like sunlight on the plain behind a shower:

And yet he answered half indignantly:

“Far other was the song that once I heard

By this huge oak, sung nearly where we sit:

For here we met, some ten or twelve of us,

To chase a creature that was current then

In these wild woods, the hart with golden horns.

It was the time when first the question rose

About the founding of a Table Round,

That was to be, for love of God and men

And noble deeds, the flower of all the world.

And each incited each to noble deeds.

And while we waited, one, the youngest of us,

We could not keep him silent, out he flashed,

And into such a song, such fire for fame,

Such trumpet-glowings in it, coming down

To such a stern and iron-clashing close,

That when he stopt we longed to hurl together,

And should have done it; but the beauteous beast

Scared by the noise upstarted at our feet,

And like a silver shadow slipt away

Through the dim land; and all day long we rode

Through the dim land against a rushing wind,

That glorious roundel echoing in our ears,

And chased the flashes of his golden horns

Till they vanished by the fairy well

That laughs at iron⁠—as our warriors did⁠—

Where children cast their pins and nails, and cry,

‘Laugh, little well!’ but touch it with a sword,

It buzzes fiercely round the point; and there

We lost him: such a noble song was that.

But, Vivien, when you sang me that sweet rhyme,

I felt as though you knew this cursed charm,

Were proving it on me, and that I lay

And felt them slowly ebbing, name and fame.”

And Vivien answered smiling mournfully:

“O mine have ebbed away for evermore,

And all through following you to this wild wood,

Because I saw you sad, to comfort you.

Lo now, what hearts have men! they never mount

As high as woman in her selfless mood.

And touching fame, howe’er ye scorn my song,

Take one verse more⁠—the lady speaks it⁠—this:

“ ‘My name, once mine, now thine, is closelier mine,

For fame, could fame be mine, that fame were thine,

And shame, could shame be thine, that shame were mine.

So trust me not at all or all in all.’

“Says she not well? and there is more⁠—this rhyme

Is like the fair pearl-necklace of the Queen,

That burst in dancing, and the pearls were spilt;

Some lost, some stolen, some as relics kept.

But nevermore the same two sister pearls

Ran down the silken thread to kiss each other

On her white neck⁠—so is it with this rhyme:

It lives dispersedly in many hands,

And every minstrel sings it differently;

Yet is there one true line, the pearl of pearls:

‘Man dreams of Fame while woman wakes to love.’

Yea! Love, though Love were of the grossest, carves

A portion from the solid present, eats

And uses, careless of the rest; but Fame,

The Fame that follows death is nothing to us;

And what is Fame in life but half-disfame,

And counterchanged with darkness? ye yourself

Know well that Envy calls you Devil’s son,

And since ye seem the Master of all Art,

They fain would make you Master of all vice.”

And Merlin locked his hand in hers and said,

“I once was looking for a magic weed,

And found a fair young squire who sat alone,

Had carved himself a knightly shield of wood,

And then was painting on it fancied arms,

Azure, an Eagle rising or, the Sun

In dexter chief; the scroll ‘I follow fame.’

And speaking not, but leaning over him

I took his brush and blotted out the bird,

And made a Gardener putting in a graff,

With this for motto, ‘Rather use than fame.’

You should have seen him blush; but afterwards

He made a stalwart knight. O Vivien,

For you, methinks you think you love me well;

For me, I love you somewhat; rest: and Love

Should have some rest and pleasure in himself,

Not ever be too curious for a boon,

Too prurient for a proof against the grain

Of him ye say ye love: but Fame with men,

Being but ampler means to serve mankind,

Should have small rest or pleasure in herself,

But work as vassal to the larger love,

That dwarfs the petty love of one to one.

Use gave me Fame at first, and Fame again

Increasing gave me use. Lo, there my boon!

What other? for men sought to prove me vile,

Because I fain had given them greater wits:

And then did Envy call me Devil’s son:

The sick weak beast seeking to help herself

By striking at her better, missed, and brought

Her own claw back, and wounded her own heart.

Sweet were the days when I was all unknown,

But when my name was lifted up, the storm

Brake on the mountain and I cared not for it.

Right well know I that Fame is half-disfame,

Yet needs must work my work. That other fame,

To one at least, who hath not children, vague,

The cackle of the unborn about the grave,

I cared not for it: a single misty star,

Which is the second in a line of stars

That seem a sword beneath a belt of three,

I never gazed upon it but I dreamt

Of some vast charm concluded in that star

To make fame nothing. Wherefore, if I fear,

Giving you power upon me through this charm,

That you might play me falsely, having power,

However well ye think ye love me now

(As sons of kings loving in pupilage

Have turned to tyrants when they came to power)

I rather dread the loss of use than fame;

If you⁠—and not so much from wickedness,

As some wild turn of anger, or a mood

Of overstrained affection, it may be,

To keep me all to your own self⁠—or else

A sudden spurt of woman’s jealousy⁠—

Should try this charm on whom ye say ye love.”

And Vivien answered smiling as in wrath:

“Have I not sworn? I am not trusted. Good!

Well, hide it, hide it; I shall find it out;

And being found take heed of Vivien.

A woman and not trusted, doubtless I

Might feel some sudden turn of anger born

Of your misfaith; and your fine epithet

Is accurate too, for this full love of mine

Without the full heart back may merit well

Your term of overstrained. So used as I,

My daily wonder is, I love at all.

And as to woman’s jealousy, O why not?

O to what end, except a jealous one,

And one to make me jealous if I love,

Was this fair charm invented by yourself?

I well believe that all about this world

Ye cage a buxom captive here and there,

Closed in the four walls of a hollow tower

From which is no escape for evermore.”

Then the great Master merrily answered her:

“Full many a love in loving youth was mine;

I needed then no charm to keep them mine

But youth and love; and that full heart of yours

Whereof ye prattle, may now assure you mine;

So live uncharmed. For those who wrought it first,

The wrist is parted from the hand that waved,

The feet unmortised from their ankle-bones

Who paced it, ages back: but will ye hear

The legend as in guerdon for your rhyme?

“There lived a king in the most Eastern East,

Less old than I, yet older, for my blood

Hath earnest in it of far springs to be.

A tawny pirate anchored in his port,

Whose bark had plundered twenty nameless isles;

And passing one, at the high peep of dawn,

He saw two cities in a thousand boats

All fighting for a woman on the sea.

And pushing his black craft among them all,

He lightly scattered theirs and brought her off,

With loss of half his people arrow-slain;

A maid so smooth, so white, so wonderful,

They said a light came from her when she moved:

And since the pirate would not yield her up,

The King impaled him for his piracy;

Then made her Queen: but those isle-nurtured eyes

Waged such unwilling though successful war

On all the youth, they sickened; councils thinned,

And armies waned, for magnet-like she drew

The rustiest iron of old fighters’ hearts;

And beasts themselves would worship; camels knelt

Unbidden, and the brutes of mountain back

That carry kings in castles, bowed black knees

Of homage, ringing with their serpent hands,

To make her smile, her golden ankle-bells.

What wonder, being jealous, that he sent

His horns of proclamation out through all

The hundred under-kingdoms that he swayed

To find a wizard who might teach the King

Some charm, which being wrought upon the Queen

Might keep her all his own: to such a one

He promised more than ever king has given,

A league of mountain full of golden mines,

A province with a hundred miles of coast,

A palace and a princess, all for him:

But on all those who tried and failed, the King

Pronounced a dismal sentence, meaning by it

To keep the list low and pretenders back,

Or like a king, not to be trifled with⁠—

Their heads should moulder on the city gates.

And many tried and failed, because the charm

Of nature in her overbore their own:

And many a wizard brow bleached on the walls:

And many weeks a troop of carrion crows

Hung like a cloud above the gateway towers.”

And Vivien breaking in upon him, said:

“I sit and gather honey; yet, methinks,

Thy tongue has tript a little: ask thyself.

The lady never made unwilling war

With those fine eyes: she had her pleasure in it,

And made her good man jealous with good cause.

And lived there neither dame nor damsel then

Wroth at a lover’s loss? were all as tame,

I mean, as noble, as the Queen was fair?

Not one to flirt a venom at her eyes,

Or pinch a murderous dust into her drink,

Or make her paler with a poisoned rose?

Well, those were not our days: but did they find

A wizard? Tell me, was he like to thee?”

She ceased, and made her lithe arm round his neck

Tighten, and then drew back, and let her eyes

Speak for her, glowing on him, like a bride’s

On her new lord, her own, the first of men.

He answered laughing, “Nay, not like to me.

At last they found⁠—his foragers for charms⁠—

A little glassy-headed hairless man,

Who lived alone in a great wild on grass;

Read but one book, and ever reading grew

So grated down and filed away with thought,

So lean his eyes were monstrous; while the skin

Clung but to crate and basket, ribs and spine.

And since he kept his mind on one sole aim,

Nor ever touched fierce wine, nor tasted flesh,

Nor owned a sensual wish, to him the wall

That sunders ghosts and shadow-casting men

Became a crystal, and he saw them through it,

And heard their voices talk behind the wall,

And learnt their elemental secrets, powers

And forces; often o’er the sun’s bright eye

Drew the vast eyelid of an inky cloud,

And lashed it at the base with slanting storm;

Or in the noon of mist and driving rain,

When the lake whitened and the pinewood roared,

And the cairned mountain was a shadow, sunned

The world to peace again: here was the man.

And so by force they dragged him to the King.

And then he taught the King to charm the Queen

In such-wise, that no man could see her more,

Nor saw she save the King, who wrought the charm,

Coming and going, and she lay as dead,

And lost all use of life: but when the King

Made proffer of the league of golden mines,

The province with a hundred miles of coast,

The palace and the princess, that old man

Went back to his old wild, and lived on grass,

And vanished, and his book came down to me.”