Merlin (Robinson)/Canto 7
VII
By Merlin's Rock, where Dagonet the foolWas given through many a dying afternoonTo sit and meditate on human waysAnd ways divine, Gawaine and BedivereStood silent, gazing down on Camelot.The two had risen and were going home:"It hits me sore, Gawaine," said Bedivere,"To think on all the tumult and afflictionDown there, and all the noise and preparationThat hums of coming death, and, if my fears Be born of reason, of what's more than death.Wherefore, I say to you again, Gawaine,—To you—that this late hour is not too lateFor you to change yourself and change the King;For though the King may love me with a loveMore tried, and older, and more sure, may be,Than for another, for such a time as thisThe friend who turns him to the world againShall have a tongue more gracious and an eyeMore shrewd than mine. For such a time as thisThe King must have a glamour to persuade him."
"The King shall have a glamour, and anon,"Gawaine said, and he shot death from his eyes;"If you were King, as Arthur is—or was—And Lancelot had carried off your Queen,And killed a score or so of your best knights— Not mentioning my two brothers, whom he slewUnarmored and unarmed—God save your wits!Two stewards with skewers could have done as much,And you and I might now be rotting for it."
"But Lancelot's men were crowded,—they were crushed;And there was nothing for them but to strikeOr die, not seeing where they struck. Think youThey would have slain Gareth and Gaheris,And Tor, and all those other friends of theirs?God's mercy for the world he made, I say,And for the blood that writes the story of it.Gareth and Gaheris, Tor and Lamorak,—All dead, with all the others that are dead!These years have made me turn to LamorakFor counsel—and now Lamorak is dead." "Why do you fling those two names in my face?'Twas Modred made an end of Lamorak,Not I; and Lancelot now has done for Tor.I'll urge no king on after LancelotFor such a two as Tor and Lamorak:Their father killed my father, and their friendWas 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 LancelotBy inches till he give you back the Queen;Then hang him—drown him—or do anythingTo rid the world of him.' He killed my brothers,And he was once my friend. Now damn the soulOf him who killed my brothers! There you have me."
"You are a strong man, Gawaine, and your strengthGoes ill where foes are. You may cleave their limbs And heads off, but you cannot damn their souls;What you may do now is to save their souls,And bodies too, and like enough your own.Remember that King Arthur is a king,And where there is a king there is a kingdomIs not the kingdom any more to youThan one brief enemy? Would you see it fall,And the King with it, for one mortal hateThat burns out reason? Gawaine, you are kingToday. Another day may see no kingBut Havoc, if you have no other wordFor Arthur now than hate for Lancelot.Is not the world as large as Lancelot?Is Lancelot, because one woman's eyesAre brighter when they look on him, to sluiceThe world with angry blood? Poor flesh! Poor flesh!And you, Gawaine,—are you so gaffed with hate You cannot leave it and so plunge awayTo stiller places and there see, for once,What hangs on this pernicious expeditionThe King in his insane forgetfulnessWould undertake—with you to drum him on?Are you as mad as he and LancelotMade ravening into one man twice as madAs either? Is the kingdom of the world,Now rocking, to go down in sound and bloodAnd ashes and sick ruin, and for the sakeOf three men and a woman? If it be so,God's mercy for the world he made, I say,—And say again to Dagonet. Sir Fool,Your throne is empty, and you may as wellSit on it and be ruler of the worldFrom now till supper-time."
Sir Dagonet,Appearing, made reply to Bedivere'sDry welcome with a famished look of pain,On which he built a smile: "If I were King,You, Bedivere, should be my counsellor;And we should have no more wars over women.I'll sit me down and meditate on that."Gawaine, for all his anger, laughed a little,And clapped the fool's lean shoulder; for he loved himAnd 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 doneHad I been Lancelot and you King Arthur—Each having in himself the vicious essenceThat now lives in the other and makes war.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 warOf love; the King, being bitten to the soulBy love and hate that work in him together,Makes war of madness; Gawaine hates Lancelot,And he, to be in tune, makes war of hate;Modred hates everything, yet he can seeWith one damned illegitimate small eyeHis father's crown, and with another like itHe 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 thisThere's a squeezed world that elbows for attention.Poor Merlin, buried in Broceliande!He must have had an academic eye For woman when he founded Arthur's kingdom,And in Broceliande he may be sorry.Flutes, hautboys, drums, and viols. God be with him!I'm glad they tell me there's another world,For this one's a disease without a doctor."
"No, not so bad as that," said Bedivere;The doctor, like ourselves, may now be learning;And Merlin may have gauged his enterpriseWhatever the cost he may have paid for knowing.We pass, but many are to follow us,And what they build may stay; though I believeAnother age will have another Merlin,Another Camelot, and another King.Sir Dagonet, farewell."
"Farewell, Sir Knight,And you, Sir Knight: Gawaine, you have the world Now in your fingers—an uncommon toy,Albeit a small persuasion in the balanceWith one man's hate. I'm glad you're not a fool,For then you might be rickety, as I am,And rational as Bedivere. Farewell.I'll sit here and be king. God save the King!"
But Gawaine scowled and frowned and answered nothingAs he went slowly down with BedivereTo Camelot, where Arthur's army waitedThe King's word for the melancholy marchTo Joyous Gard, where Lancelot hid the QueenAnd armed his host, and there was now no joy,As there was now no joy for DagonetWhile he sat brooding, with his wan cheek-bonesHooked with his bony fingers: "Go, Gawaine," He mumbled: "Go your way, and drag the worldAlong down with you. What's a world or soTo you if you can hide an ell of ironSomewhere in Lancelot, and hear him wheezeAnd sputter once or twice before he goesWherever the Queen sends him? There's a manWho should have been a king, and would have been,Had he been born so. So should I have beenA king, had I been born so, fool or no:King Dagonet, or Dagonet the King;King-Fool, Fool-King; 'twere not impossible.I'll meditate on that and pray for Arthur,Who made me all I am, except a fool.Now he goes mad for love, as I might goHad I been born a king and not a fool.Today I think I'd rather be a fool;Today the world is less than one scared woman— Wherefore a field of waving men may soonBe shorn by Time's indifferent scythe, becauseThe King is mad. The seeds of historyAre small, but given a few gouts of warm bloodFor quickening, they sprout out wondrouslyAnd have a leaping growth whereof no manMay shun such harvesting of change or death,Or life, as may fall on him to be borne.When I am still alive and rickety,And Bedivere's alive and rational—If he come out of this, and there's a doubt,—The King, Gawaine, Modred, and LancelotMay all be lying underneath a weightOf 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,And it be true that Merlin saw the truth, Such harvest were the best. Your fool sees notSo far as Merlin sees: yet if he sawThe truth—why then, such harvest were the best.I'll pray for Arthur; I can do no more."
"Why not for Merlin? Or do you count him,In this extreme, so foreign to salvationThat prayer would be a stranger to his name?"
Poor Dagonet, with terror shaking him,Stood up and saw before him an old faceMade older with an inch of silver beard,And faded eyes more eloquent of painAnd ruin than all the faded eyes of ageTill now had ever been, although in themThere was a mystic and intrinsic peaceOf one who sees where men of nearer sight See nothing. On their way to Camelot,Gawaine and Bedivere had passed him by,With lax attention for the pilgrim cloakThey passed, and what it hid: yet Merlin sawTheir faces, and he saw the tale was trueThat he had lately drawn from solemn strangers.
"Well, Dagonet, and by your leave," he said,"I'll rest my lonely relics for a whileOn this rock that was mine and now is yours.I favor the succession; for you knowFar more than many doctors, though your doubtIs your peculiar poison. I foresawLong since, and I have latterly been toldWhat moves in this commotion down belowTo show men what it means. It means the end—If men whose tongues had less to say to me Than had their shoulders are adept enoughTo know; and you may pray for me or not,Sir Friend, Sir Dagonet."
"Sir Fool, you mean,"Dagonet said, and gazed on Merlin sadly:"I'll never pray again for anything,And last of all for this that you behold—The smouldering faggot of unlovely bonesThat God has given to me to call Myself.When Merlin comes to Dagonet for prayer,It is indeed the end."
"And in the endAre more beginnings, Dagonet, than menShall name or know today. It was the endOf Arthur's insubstantial majesty When to him and his knights the Grail foreshowedThe quest of life that was to be the deathOf many, and the slow discouragingOf many more. Or do I err in this?"
"No," Dagonet replied; "there was a Light;And Galahad, in the Siege Perilous,Alone of all on whom it fell, was calm;There was a Light wherein men saw themselvesIn one another as they might become—Or so they dreamed. There was a long to-do,And Gawaine, of all forlorn ineligibles,Rose up the first, and cried more lustilyThan any after him that he should findThe Grail, or die for it,—though he did neither;For he came back as living and as fitFor new and old iniquity as ever. Then Lancelot came back, and Bors came back,—Like men who had seen more than men should see,And still come back. They told of Percival,Who saw too much to make of this worn lifeA long necessity, and of Galahad,Who died and is alive. They all saw Something.God knows the meaning or the end of it,But they saw Something. And if I've an eye,Small joy has the Queen been to LancelotSince he came back from seeing what he saw;For though his passion hold him like hot claws,He's neither in the world nor out of it.Gawaine is king, though Arthur wears the crown;And Gawaine's hate for Lancelot is the swordThat hangs by one of Merlin's fragile hairsAbove the world. Were you to see the King,The frenzy that has overthrown his wisdom, Instead of him and his upheaving empire,Might have an end."
"I came to see the King,"Said Merlin, like a man who labors hardAnd long with an importunate confession."No, Dagonet, you cannot tell me why,Although your tongue is eager with wild hopeTo tell me more than I may tell myselfAbout myself. All this that was to beMight show to man how vain it were to wreckThe world for self, if it were all in vain.When I began with Arthur I could seeIn each bewildered man who dots the earthA moment with his days a groping thoughtOf an eternal will, strangely endowedWith merciful illusions whereby self Becomes the will itself and each man swellsIn fond accordance with his agency.Now Arthur, Modred, Lancelot, and GawaineAre swollen thoughts of this eternal willWhich have no other way to find the wayThat leads them on to their inheritanceThan by the time-infuriating flameOf a wrecked empire, lighted by the torchOf woman, who, together with the lightThat Galahad found, is yet to light the world."
A wan smile crept across the weary faceOf Dagonet the fool: "If you knew thatBefore your burial in Broceliande,No wonder your eternal will accordsWith all your dreams of what the world requires.My master, I may say this unto you Because I am a fool, and fear no man;My fear is that I've been a groping thoughtThat never swelled enough. You say the torchOf woman and the light that Galahad foundAre some day to illuminate the world?I'll meditate on that. The world is doneFor me; and I have been, to make men laugh,A lean thing of no shape and many capers.I made them laugh, and I could laugh anonMyself to see them killing one anotherBecause a woman with corn-colored hairHas pranked a man with horns. 'Twas but a flashOf chance, and Lancelot, the other dayThat saved this pleasing sinner from the fireThat she may spread for thousands. Were she nowThe cinder the King willed, or were you nowTo see the King, the fire might yet go out; But the eternal will says otherwise.So be it; I'll assemble certain goldThat I may say is mine and get myselfAway from this accurst unhappy court,And in some quiet place where shepherd clownsAnd cowherds may have more respondent earsThan kings and kingdom-builders, I shall trollOld men to easy graves and be a childAgain among the children of the earth.I'll have no more of kings, even though I lovedKing Arthur, who is mad, as I could loveNo other man save Merlin, who is dead."
"Not wholly dead, but old. Merlin is old."The wizard shivered as he spoke, and staredAway into the sunset where he sawOnce more, as through a cracked and cloudy glass, A crumbling sky that held a crimson cloudWherein there was a town of many towersAll swayed and shaken, in a woman's handThis time, till out of it there spilled and flashedAnd tumbled, like loose jewels, town, towers, and walls,And there was nothing but a crumbling skyThat made anon of black and red and ruinA wild and final rain on Camelot.He bowed, and pressed his eyes: "Now by my soul,I have seen this before—all black and red—Like that—like that—like Vivian—black and red;Like Vivian, when her eyes looked into mineAcross the cups of gold. A flute was playing—Then all was black and red."
Another smileCrept over the wan face of Dagonet, Who shivered in his turn. "The torch of woman,"He muttered, "and the light that Galahad found,Will some day save us all, as they saved Merlin.Forgive my shivering wits, but I am cold,And it will soon be dark. Will you go downWith me to see the King, or will you not?If not, I go tomorrow to the shepherds.The world is mad, and I'm a groping thoughtOf your eternal will; the world and IAre strangers, and I'll have no more of it—Except you go with me to see the King."
"No, Dagonet, you cannot leave me now,"Said Merlin, sadly. "You and I are old;And, as you say, we fear no man. God knowsI would not have the love that once you hadFor me be fear of me, for I am past All fearing now. But Fate may send a flySometimes, and he may sting us to the grave,So driven to test our faith in what we see.Are you, now I am coming to an end,As Arthur's days are coming to an end,To sting me like a fly? I do not askOf you to say that you see what I see,Where you see nothing; nor do I requireOf any man more vision than is his;Yet I could wish for you a larger partFor your last entrance here than this you playTonight 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.No, Dagonet, you cannot leave me now, Nor would you if you could. You call yourselfA fool, because the world and you are strangers.You are a proud man, Dagonet; you have sufferedWhat I alone have seen. You are no fool;And surely you are not a fly to stingMy love to last regret. Believe or notWhat I have seen, or what I say to you,But say no more to me that I am deadBecause the King is mad, and you are old,And I am older. In BroceliandeTime overtook me as I knew he must;And I, with a fond overplus of words,Had warned the lady Vivian already,Before these wrinkles and this hesitancyInhibiting my joints oppressed her sightWith age and dissolution. She said onceThat she was cold and cruel; but she meant That she was warm and kind, and over-wiseFor woman in a world where men see notBeyond themselves. She saw beyond them all,As I did; and she waited, as I did,The coming of a day when cherry-blossomsWere to fall down all over me like snowIn springtime. I was far from CamelotThat afternoon; and I am farther nowFrom her. I see no more for me to doThan to leave her and Arthur and the worldBehind me, and to pray that all be wellWith Vivian, whose unquiet heart is hungryFor what is not, and what shall never beWithout her, in a world that men are making,Knowing not how, nor caring yet to knowHow slowly and how grievously they do it,—Though Vivian, in her golden shell of exile, Knows now and cares, not knowing that she cares,Nor caring that she knows. In time to be,The like of her shall have another nameThan Vivian, and her laugh shall be a fire,Not shining only to consume itselfWith what it burns. She knows not yet the nameOf what she is, for now there is no name;Some day there shall be. Time has many names,Unwritten yet, for what we say is oldBecause we are so young that it seems old.And this is all a part of what I sawBefore you saw King Arthur. When we parted,I told her I should see the King again,And, having seen him, might go back againTo see her face once more. But I shall seeNo more the lady Vivian. Let her loveWhat man she may, no other love than mine Shall be an index of her memories.I fear no man who may come after me,And I see none. I see her, still in green,Beside the fountain. I shall not go back.We pay for going back; and all we getIs one more needless ounce of weary wisdomTo bring away with us. If I come not,The lady Vivian will remember me,And say: 'I knew him when his heart was young,Though I have lost him now. Time called him home,And that was as it was; for much is lostBetween Broceliande and Camelot.'"
He stared away into the west again,Where now no crimson cloud or phantom townDeceived his eyes. Above a living townThere were gray clouds and ultimate suspense, And a cold wind was coming. Dagonet,Now crouched at Merlin's feet in his dejection,Saw multiplying lights far down below,Where lay the fevered streets. At length he feltOn his lean shoulder Merlin's tragic handAnd trembled, knowing that a few more daysWould see the last of Arthur and the firstOf Modred, whose dark patience had attainedTo one precarious half of what he sought:"And even the Queen herself may fall to him,"Dagonet murmured.—"The Queen fall to Modred?Is that your only fear tonight?" said Merlin;"She may, but not for long."—"No, not my fear;For I fear nothing. But I wish no fateLike that for any woman the King loves,Although she be the scourge and end of himThat you saw coming, as I see it now." Dagonet shook, but he would have no tears,He swore, for any king, queen, knave, or wizard—Albeit he was a stranger among thoseWho laughed at him because he was a fool."You said the truth, I cannot leave you now,"He stammered, and was angry for the tearsThat mocked his will and choked him.
Merlin smiled,Faintly, and for the moment: "Dagonet,I need your word as one of Arthur's knightsThat you will go on with me to the endOf my short way, and say unto no manOr woman that you found or saw me here.No good would follow, for a doubt would liveUnstifled of my loyalty to himWhose deeds are wrought for those who are to come; And many who see not what I have seen,Or what you see tonight, would prattle onFor ever, and their children after them,Of what might once have been had I gone downWith you to Camelot to see the King.I came to see the King,—but why see kings?All this that was to be is what I sawBefore there was an Arthur to be king,And so to be a mirror wherein menMay 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;And through the dark that lay beyond myselfI saw two fires that are to light the world." On Dagonet the silent hand of MerlinWeighed now as living iron that held him downWith a primeval power. Doubt, wonderment,Impatience, and a self-accusing sorrowBorn of an ancient love, possessed and held himUntil his love was more than he could name,And he was Merlin's fool, not Arthur's now:"Say what you will, I say that I'm the foolOf Merlin, King of Nowhere; which is Here.With you for king and me for court, what elseHave we to sigh for but a place to sleep?I know a tavern that will take us in;And on the morrow I shall follow youUntil I die for you. And when I die . . ."—"Well, Dagonet, the King is listening."—And Dagonet answered, hearing in the wordsOf Merlin a grave humor and a sound Of graver pity, "I shall die a fool."He heard what might have been a father's laugh,Faintly behind him; and the living weightOf Merlin's hand was lifted. They arose,And, saying nothing, found a groping wayDown through the gloom together. Fiercer now,The wind was like a flying animalThat beat the two of them incessantlyWith icy wings, and bit them as they went.The rock above them was an empty placeWhere neither seer nor fool should view againThe stricken city. Colder blew the windAcross the world, and on it heavier layThe shadow and the burden of the night;And there was darkness over Camelot.
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