Works of Edwin Arlington Robinson

by Edwin Arlington Robinson

  The lady Vivian in a fragile sheath

  Of crimson, dimmed and veiled ineffably 1155

  By the flame-shaken gloom wherein she sat,

  And twinkled if she moved, heard Merlin coming,

  And smiled as if to make herself believe

  Her joy was all a triumph; yet her blood

  Confessed a tingling of more wonderment 1160

  Than all her five and twenty worldly years

  Of waiting for this triumph could remember;

  And when she knew and felt the slower tread

  Of his unseen advance among the shadows

  To the small haven of uncertain light 1165

  That held her in it as a torch-lit shoal

  Might hold a smooth red fish, her listening skin

  Responded with a creeping underneath it,

  And a crinkling that was incident alike

  To darkness, love, and mice. When he was there, 1170

  She looked up at him in a whirl of mirth

  And wonder, as in childhood she had gazed

  Wide-eyed on royal mountebanks who made

  So brief a shift of the impossible

  That kings and queens would laugh and shake themselves; 1175

  Then rising slowly on her little feet,

  Like a slim creature lifted, she thrust out

  Her two small hands as if to push him back —

  Whereon he seized them. “Go away,” she said;

  “I never saw you in my life before,” — 1180

  “You say the truth,” he answered; “when I met

  Myself an hour ago, my words were yours.

  God made the man you see for you to like,

  If possible. If otherwise, turn down

  These two prodigious and remorseless thumbs 1185

  And leave your lions to annihilate him.” —

  “I have no other lion than yourself,”

  She said; “and since you cannot eat yourself,

  Pray do a lonely woman, who is, you say,

  More like a tree than any other thing 1190

  In your discrimination, the large honor

  Of sharing with her a small kind of supper.” —

  “Yes, you are like a tree, — or like a flower;

  More like a flower to-night.” He bowed his head

  And kissed the ten small fingers he was holding, 1195

  As calmly as if each had been a son;

  Although his heart was leaping and his eyes

  Had sight for nothing save a swimming crimson

  Between two glimmering arms. “More like a flower

  To-night,” he said, as now he scanned again 1200

  The immemorial meaning of her face

  And drew it nearer to his eyes. It seemed

  A flower of wonder with a crimson stem

  Came leaning slowly and regretfully

  To meet his will — a flower of change and peril 1205

  That had a clinging blossom of warm olive

  Half stifled with a tyranny of black,

  And held the wayward fragrance of a rose

  Made woman by delirious alchemy.

  She raised her face and yoked his willing neck 1210

  With half her weight; and with hot lips that left

  The world with only one philosophy

  For Merlin or for Anaxagoras,

  Called his to meet them and in one long hush

  Of capture to surrender and make hers 1215

  The last of anything that might remain

  Of what was now their beardless wizardry.

  Then slowly she began to push herself

  Away, and slowly Merlin let her go

  As far from him as his outreaching hands 1220

  Could hold her fingers while his eyes had all

  The beauty of the woodland and the world

  Before him in the firelight, like a nymph

  Of cities, or a queen a little weary

  Of inland stillness and immortal trees. 1225

  “Are you to let me go again sometime,”

  She said,— “before I starve to death, I wonder?

  If not, I’ll have to bite the lion’s paws,

  And make him roar. He cannot shake his mane,

  For now the lion has no mane to shake; 1230

  The lion hardly knows himself without it,

  And thinks he has no face, but there’s a lady

  Who says he had no face until he lost it.

  So there we are. And there’s a flute somewhere,

  Playing a strange old tune. You know the words: 1235

  ‘The Lion and the Lady are both hungry.’”

  Fatigue and hunger — tempered leisurely

  With food that some devout magician’s oven

  Might after many failures have delivered,

  And wine that had for decades in the dark 1240

  Of Merlin’s grave been slowly quickening,

  And with half-heard, dream-weaving interludes

  Of distant flutes and viols, made more distant

  By far, nostalgic hautboys blown from nowhere, —

  Were tempered not so leisurely, may be, 1245

  With Vivian’s inextinguishable eyes

  Between two shining silver candlesticks

  That lifted each a trembling flame to make

  The rest of her a dusky loveliness

  Against a bank of shadow. Merlin made, 1250

  As well as he was able while he ate,

  A fair division of the fealty due

  To food and beauty, albeit more times than one

  Was he at odds with his urbanity

  In honoring too long the grosser viand. 1255

  “The best invention in Broceliande

  Has not been over-taxed in vain, I see,”

  She told him, with her chin propped on her fingers

  And her eyes flashing blindness into his:

  “I put myself out cruelly to please you, 1260

  And you, for that, forget almost at once

  The name and image of me altogether.

  You needn’t, for when all is analyzed,

  It’s only a bird-pie that you are eating.”

  “I know not what you call it,” Merlin said; 1265

  “Nor more do I forget your name and image,

  Though I do eat; and if I did not eat,

  Your sending out of ships and caravans

  To get whatever ’tis that’s in this thing

  Would be a sorrow for you all your days; 1270

  And my great love, which you have seen by now,

  Might look to you a lie; and like as not

  You’d actuate some sinewed mercenary

  To carry me away to God knows where

  And seal me in a fearsome hole to starve, 1275

  Because I made of this insidious picking

  An idle circumstance. My dear fair lady —

  And there is not another under heaven

  So fair as you are as I see you now —

  I cannot look at you too much and eat; 1280

  And I must eat, or be untimely ashes,

  Whereon the light of your celestial gaze

  Would fall, I fear me, for no longer time

  Than on the solemn dust of Jeremiah —

  Whose beard you likened once, in heathen jest, 1285

  To mine that now is no man’s.”

  “Are you sorry?”

  Said Vivian, filling Merlin’s empty goblet;

  “If you are sorry for the loss of it,

  Drink more of this and you may tell me lies 1290

  Enough to make me sure that you are glad;

  But if your love is what you say it is,

  Be never sorry that my love took off

  That horrid hair to make your face at last

  A human fact. Since I have had your name 1295

  To dream of and say over to myself,

  The visitations of that awful beard

  Have been a terror for my nights and day
s —

  For twenty years. I’ve seen it like an ocean,

  Blown seven ways at once and wrecking ships, 1300

  With men and women screaming for their lives;

  I’ve seen it woven into shining ladders

  That ran up out of sight and so to heaven,

  All covered with white ghosts with hanging robes

  Like folded wings, — and there were millions of them, 1305

  Climbing, climbing, climbing, all the time;

  And all the time that I was watching them

  I thought how far above me Merlin was,

  And wondered always what his face was like.

  But even then, as a child, I knew the day 1310

  Would come some time when I should see his face

  And hear his voice, and have him in my house

  Till he should care no more to stay in it,

  And go away to found another kingdom.” —

  “Not that,” he said; and, sighing, drank more wine; 1315

  “One kingdom for one Merlin is enough.” —

  “One Merlin for one Vivian is enough,”

  She said. “If you care much, remember that;

  But the Lord knows how many Vivians

  One Merlin’s entertaining eye might favor, 1320

  Indifferently well and all at once,

  If they were all at hand. Praise heaven they’re not.”

  “If they were in the world — praise heaven they’re not —

  And if one Merlin’s entertaining eye

  Saw two of them, there might be left him then 1325

  The sight of no eye to see anything —

  Not even the Vivian who is everything,

  She being Beauty, Beauty being She,

  She being Vivian, and so on for ever.” —

  “I’m glad you don’t see two of me,” she said; 1330

  “For there’s a whole world yet for you to eat

  And drink and say to me before I know

  The sort of creature that you see in me.

  I’m withering for a little more attention,

  But, being woman, I can wait. These cups 1335

  That you see coming are for the last there is

  Of what my father gave to kings alone,

  And far from always. You are more than kings

  To me; therefore I give it all to you,

  Imploring you to spare no more of it 1340

  Than a small cockle-shell would hold for me

  To pledge your love and mine in. Take the rest,

  That I may see tonight the end of it.

  I’ll have no living remnant of the dead

  Annoying me until it fades and sours 1345

  Of too long cherishing; for Time enjoys

  The look that’s on our faces when we scowl

  On unexpected ruins, and thrift itself

  May be a sort of slow unwholesome fire

  That eats away to dust the life that feeds it. 1350

  You smile, I see, but I said what I said.

  One hardly has to live a thousand years

  To contemplate a lost economy;

  So let us drink it while it’s yet alive

  And you and I are not untimely ashes. 1355

  My last words are your own, and I don’t like ‘em.” —

  A sudden laughter scattered from her eyes

  A threatening wisdom. He smiled and let her laugh,

  Then looked into the dark where there was nothing:

  “There’s more in this than I have seen,” he thought, 1360

  “Though I shall see it.”— “Drink,” she said again;

  “There’s only this much in the world of it,

  And I am near to giving all to you

  Because you are so great and I so little.”

  With a long-kindling gaze that caught from hers 1365

  A laughing flame, and with a hand that shook

  Like Arthur’s kingdom, Merlin slowly raised

  A golden cup that for a golden moment

  Was twinned in air with hers; and Vivian,

  Who smiled at him across their gleaming rims, 1370

  From eyes that made a fuel of the night

  Surrounding her, shot glory over gold

  At Merlin, while their cups touched and his trembled.

  He drank, not knowing what, nor caring much

  For kings who might have cared less for themselves, 1375

  He thought, had all the darkness and wild light

  That fell together to make Vivian

  Been there before them then to flower anew

  Through sheathing crimson into candle-light

  With each new leer of their loose, liquorish eyes. 1380

  Again he drank, and he cursed every king

  Who might have touched her even in her cradle;

  For what were kings to such as he, who made them

  And saw them totter — for the world to see,

  And heed, if the world would? He drank again, 1385

  And yet again — to make himself assured

  No manner of king should have the last of it —

  The cup that Vivian filled unfailingly

  Until she poured for nothing. “At the end

  Of this incomparable flowing gold,” 1390

  She prattled on to Merlin, who observed

  Her solemnly, “I fear there may be specks.” —

  He sighed aloud, whereat she laughed at him

  And pushed the golden cup a little nearer.

  He scanned it with a sad anxiety, 1395

  And then her face likewise, and shook his head

  As if at her concern for such a matter:

  “Specks? What are specks? Are you afraid of them?”

  He murmured slowly, with a drowsy tongue;

  “There are specks everywhere. I fear them not. 1400

  If I were king in Camelot, I might

  Fear more than specks. But now I fear them not.

  You are too strange a lady to fear specks.”

  He stared a long time at the cup of gold

  Before him but he drank no more. There came 1405

  Between him and the world a crumbling sky

  Of black and crimson, with a crimson cloud

  That held a far off town of many towers.

  All swayed and shaken, till at last they fell,

  And there was nothing but a crimson cloud 1410

  That crumbled into nothing, like the sky

  That vanished with it, carrying away

  The world, the woman, and all memory of them,

  Until a slow light of another sky

  Made gray an open casement, showing him 1415

  Faint shapes of an exotic furniture

  That glimmered with a dim magnificence,

  And letting in the sound of many birds

  That were, as he lay there remembering,

  The only occupation of his ears 1420

  Until it seemed they shared a fainter sound,

  As if a sleeping child with a black head

  Beside him drew the breath of innocence.

  One shining afternoon around the fountain,

  As on the shining day of his arrival, 1425

  The sunlight was alive with flying silver

  That had for Merlin a more dazzling flash

  Than jewels rained in dreams, and a richer sound

  Than harps, and all the morning stars together, —

  When jewels and harps and stars and everything 1430

  That flashed and sang and was not Vivian,

  Seemed less than echoes of her least of words —

  For she was coming. Suddenly, somewhere

  Behind him, she was coming; that was all

  He knew until she came and took his hand 1435

  And held it while she talked about the fishes.

  When she looked up he thought a softer light

  Was in her eyes than once he had found there;

  And had there been left yet fo
r dusky women

  A beauty that was heretofore not hers, 1440

  He told himself he must have seen it then

  Before him in the face at which he smiled

  And trembled. “Many men have called me wise,”

  He said, “but you are wiser than all wisdom

  If you know what you are.”— “I don’t,” she said; 1445

  “I know that you and I are here together;

  I know that I have known for twenty years

  That life would be almost a constant yawning

  Until you came; and now that you are here,

  I know that you are not to go away 1450

  Until you tell me that I’m hideous;

  I know that I like fishes, ferns, and snakes, —

  Maybe because I liked them when the world

  Was young and you and I were salamanders;

  I know, too, a cool place not far from here, 1455

  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.” — 1460

  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: 1465

  “There is no other Merlin than yourself,

  And you are never going to be old.”

  Oblivious of a world that made of him

  A jest, a legend, and a long regret,

  And with a more commanding wizardry 1470

  Than his to rule a kingdom where the king

  Was Love and the queen Vivian, Merlin found

  His queen without the blemish of a word

  That was more rough than honey from her lips,

  Or the first adumbration of a frown 1475

  To cloud the night-wild fire that in her eyes

  Had yet a smoky friendliness of home,

  And a foreknowing care for mighty trifles.

  “There are miles and miles for you to wander in,”

  She told him once: “Your prison yard is large, 1480

  And I would rather take my two ears off

  And feed them to the fishes in the fountain

  Than buzz like an incorrigible bee

  For always around yours, and have you hate

  The sound of me; for some day then, for certain, 1485

  Your philosophic rage would see in me

  A bee in earnest, and your hand would smite

  My life away. And what would you do then?

  I know: for years and years you’d sit alone