Merlin and Vivien, part 2 of 6

¶Then fell on Merlin a great melancholy; He walked with dreams and darkness, and he found A doom that ever poised itself to fall, An ever-moaning battle in the mist, World-war of dying flesh against the life, Death in all life and lying in all love, The meanest having power upon the highest, And the high purpose broken by the worm.

¶So leaving Arthur’s court he gained the beach; There found a little boat, and stept into it; And Vivien followed, but he marked her not. She took the helm and he the sail; the boat Drave with a sudden wind across the deeps, And touching Breton sands, they disembarked. And then she followed Merlin all the way, Even to the wild woods of Broceliande. For Merlin once had told her of a charm, The which if any wrought on anyone With woven paces and with waving arms, The man so wrought on ever seemed to lie Closed in the four walls of a hollow tower, From which was no escape for evermore; And none could find that man for evermore, Nor could he see but him who wrought the charm Coming and going, and he lay as dead And lost to life and use and name and fame. And Vivien ever sought to work the charm Upon the great Enchanter of the Time, As fancying that her glory would be great According to his greatness whom she quenched.

¶There lay she all her length and kissed his feet, As if in deepest reverence and in love. A twist of gold was round her hair; a robe Of samite without price, that more exprest Than hid her, clung about her lissome limbs, In colour like the satin-shining palm On sallows in the windy gleams of March: And while she kissed them, crying, “Trample me, Dear feet, that I have followed through the world, And I will pay you worship; tread me down And I will kiss you for it;” he was mute: So dark a forethought rolled about his brain, As on a dull day in an Ocean cave The blind wave feeling round his long sea-hall In silence: wherefore, when she lifted up A face of sad appeal, and spake and said, “O Merlin, do ye love me?” and again, “O Merlin, do ye love me?” and once more, “Great Master, do ye love me?” he was mute. And lissome Vivien, holding by his heel, Writhed toward him, slided up his knee and sat, Behind his ankle twined her hollow feet Together, curved an arm about his neck, Clung like a snake; and letting her left hand Droop from his mighty shoulder, as a leaf, Made with her right a comb of pearl to part The lists of such a beard as youth gone out Had left in ashes: then he spoke and said, Not looking at her, “Who are wise in love Love most, say least,” and Vivien answered quick, “I saw the little elf-god eyeless once In Arthur’s arras hall at Camelot: But neither eyes nor tongue—O stupid child! Yet you are wise who say it; let me think Silence is wisdom: I am silent then, And ask no kiss;” then adding all at once, “And lo, I clothe myself with wisdom,” drew The vast and shaggy mantle of his beard Across her neck and bosom to her knee, And called herself a gilded summer fly Caught in a great old tyrant spider’s web, Who meant to eat her up in that wild wood Without one word. So Vivien called herself, But rather seemed a lovely baleful star Veiled in gray vapour; till he sadly smiled: “To what request for what strange boon,” he said, “Are these your pretty tricks and fooleries, O Vivien, the preamble? yet my thanks, For these have broken up my melancholy.”

¶And Vivien answered smiling saucily, “What, O my Master, have ye found your voice? I bid the stranger welcome. Thanks at last! But yesterday you never opened lip, Except indeed to drink: no cup had we: In mine own lady palms I culled the spring That gathered trickling dropwise from the cleft, And made a pretty cup of both my hands And offered you it kneeling: then you drank And knew no more, nor gave me one poor word; O no more thanks than might a goat have given With no more sign of reverence than a beard. And when we halted at that other well, And I was faint to swooning, and you lay Foot-gilt with all the blossom-dust of those Deep meadows we had traversed, did you know That Vivien bathed your feet before her own? And yet no thanks: and all through this wild wood And all this morning when I fondled you: Boon, ay, there was a boon, one not so strange— How had I wronged you? surely ye are wise, But such a silence is more wise than kind.”

¶And Merlin locked his hand in hers and said: “O did ye never lie upon the shore, And watch the curled white of the coming wave Glassed in the slippery sand before it breaks? Even such a wave, but not so pleasurable, Dark in the glass of some presageful mood, Had I for three days seen, ready to fall. And then I rose and fled from Arthur’s court To break the mood. You followed me unasked; And when I looked, and saw you following me still, My mind involved yourself the nearest thing In that mind-mist: for shall I tell you truth? You seemed that wave about to break upon me And sweep me from my hold upon the world, My use and name and fame. Your pardon, child. Your pretty sports have brightened all again. And ask your boon, for boon I owe you thrice, Once for wrong done you by confusion, next For thanks it seems till now neglected, last For these your dainty gambols: wherefore ask; And take this boon so strange and not so strange.”

¶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 for ever: 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.”