Works of Edwin Arlington Robinson
Page 33
For now and always. Gawaine, I wish you well. 50
Tomorrow I go south, as Merlin went,
But not for Merlin’s end. I go, Gawaine,
And leave you to your ways. There are ways left.”
“There are three ways I know, three famous ways,
And all in Holy Writ,” Gawaine said, smiling: 55
“The snake’s way and the eagle’s way are two,
And then we have a man’s way with a maid —
Or with a woman who is not a maid.
Your late way is to send all women scudding,
To the last flash of the last cramoisy, 60
While you go south to find the fires of God.
Since we came back again to Camelot
From our immortal Quest — I came back first —
No man has known you for the man you were
Before you saw whatever ‘t was you saw, 65
To make so little of kings and queens and friends
Thereafter. Modred? Agravaine? My brothers?
And what if they be brothers? What are brothers,
If they be not our friends, your friends and mine?
You turn away, and my words are no mark 70
On you affection or your memory?
So be it then, if so it is to be.
God save you, Lancelot; for by Saint Stephen,
You are no more than man to save yourself.”
“Gawaine, I do not say that you are wrong, 75
Or that you are ill-seasoned in your lightness;
You say that all you know is what you saw,
And on your own averment you saw nothing.
Your spoken word, Gawaine, I have not weighed
In those unhappy scales of inference 80
That have no beam but one made out of hates
And fears, and venomous conjecturings;
Your tongue is not the sword that urges me
Now out of Camelot. Two other swords
There are that are awake, and in their scabbards 85
Are parching for the blood of Lancelot.
Yet I go not away for fear of them,
But for a sharper care. You say the truth,
But not when you contend the fires of God
Are my one fear, — for there is one fear more. 90
Therefore I go. Gawaine, I wish you well.”
“Well-wishing in a way is well enough;
So, in a way, is caution; so, in a way,
Are leeches, neatherds, and astrologers.
Lancelot, listen. Sit you down and listen: 95
You talk of swords and fears and banishment.
Two swords, you say; Modred and Agravaine,
You mean. Had you meant Gaheris and Gareth,
Or willed an evil on them, I should welcome
And hasten your farewell. But Agravaine 100
Hears little what I say; his ears are Modred’s.
The King is Modred’s father, and the Queen
A prepossession of Modred’s lunacy.
So much for my two brothers whom you fear,
Not fearing for yourself. I say to you, 105
Fear not for anything — and so be wise
And amiable again as heretofore;
Let Modred have his humor, and Agravaine
His tongue. The two of them have done their worst,
And having done their worst, what have they done? 110
A whisper now and then, a chirrup or so
In corners, — and what else? Ask what, and answer.”
Still with a frown that had no faith in it,
Lancelot, pitying Gawaine’s lost endeavour
To make an evil jest of evidence, 115
Sat fronting him with a remote forbearance —
Whether for Gawaine blind or Gawaine false,
Or both, or neither, he could not say yet,
If ever; and to himself he said no more
Than he said now aloud: “What else, Gawaine? 120
What else, am I to say? Then ruin, I say;
Destruction, dissolution, desolation,
I say, — should I compound with jeopardy now.
For there are more than whispers here, Gawaine:
The way that we have gone so long together 125
Has underneath our feet, without our will,
Become a twofold faring. Yours, I trust,
May lead you always on, as it has led you,
To praise and to much joy. Mine, I believe,
Leads off to battles that are not yet fought, 130
And to the Light that once had blinded me.
When I came back from seeing what I saw,
I saw no place for me in Camelot.
There is no place for me in Camelot.
There is no place for me save where the Light 135
May lead me; and to that place I shall go.
Meanwhile I lay upon your soul no load
Of counsel or of empty admonition;
Only I ask of you, should strife arise
In Camelot, to remember, if you may, 140
That you’ve an ardor that outruns your reason,
Also a glamour that outshines your guile;
And you are a strange hater. I know that;
And I’m in fortune that you hate not me.
Yet while we have our sins to dream about, 145
Time has done worse for time than in our making;
Albeit there may be sundry falterings
And falls against us in the Book of Man.”
“Praise Adam, you are mellowing at last!
I’ve always liked this world, and would so still; 150
And if it is your new Light leads you on
To such an admirable gait, for God’s sake,
Follow it, follow it, follow it, Lancelot;
Follow it as you never followed glory.
Once I believed that I was on the way 155
That you call yours, but I came home again
To Camelot — and Camelot was right,
For the world knows its own that knows not you;
You are a thing too vaporous to be sharing
The carnal feast of life. You mow down men 160
Like elder-stems, and you leave women sighing
For one more sight of you; but they do wrong.
You are a man of mist, and have no shadow.
God save you, Lancelot. If I laugh at you,
I laugh in envy and in admiration.” 165
The joyless evanescence of a smile,
Discovered on the face of Lancelot
By Gawaine’s unrelenting vigilance,
Wavered, and with a sullen change went out;
And then there was the music of a woman 170
Laughing behind them, and a woman spoke:
“Gawaine, you said ‘God save you, Lancelot.’
Why should He save him any more to-day
Than on another day? What has he done,
Gawaine, that God should save him?” Guinevere, 175
With many questions in her dark blue eyes
And one gay jewel in her golden hair,
Had come upon the two of them unseen,
Till now she was a russet apparition
At which the two arose — one with a dash 180
Of easy leisure in his courtliness,
One with a stately calm that might have pleased
The Queen of a strange land indifferently.
The firm incisive languor of her speech,
Heard once, was heard through battles: “Lancelot, 185
What have you done to-day that God should save you?
What has he done, Gawaine, that God should save him?
I grieve that you two pinks of chivalry
Should be so near me in my desolation,
And I, poor soul alone, know nothing of it. 190
What has he done, Gawaine?”
With all her poise,
To Gawaine’s undeceived urbanity
; She was less queen than woman for the nonce,
And in her eyes there was a flickering 195
Of a still fear that would not be veiled wholly
With any mask of mannered nonchalance.
“What has he done? Madam, attend your nephew;
And learn from him, in your incertitude,
That this inordinate man Lancelot, 200
This engine of renown, this hewer down daily
Of potent men by scores in our late warfare,
Has now inside his head a foreign fever
That urges him away to the last edge
Of everything, there to efface himself 205
In ecstasy, and so be done with us.
Hereafter, peradventure certain birds
Will perch in meditation on his bones,
Quite as if they were some poor sailor’s bones,
Or felon’s jettisoned, or fisherman’s, 210
Or fowler’s bones, or Mark of Cornwall’s bones.
In fine, this flower of men that was our comrade
Shall be for us no more, from this day on,
Than a much remembered Frenchman far away.
Magnanimously I leave you now to prize 215
Your final sight of him; and leaving you,
I leave the sun to shine for him alone,
Whiles I grope on to gloom. Madam, farewell;
And you, contrarious Lancelot, farewell.”
Lancelot II
THE FLASH of oak leaves over Guinevere 220
That afternoon, with the sun going down,
Made memories there for Lancelot, although
The woman who in silence looked at him
Now seemed his inventory of the world
That he must lose, or suffer to be lost 225
For love of her who sat there in the shade,
With oak leaves flashing in a golden light
Over her face and over her golden hair.
“Gawaine has all the graces, yet he knows;
He knows enough to be the end of us, 230
If so he would,” she said. “He knows and laughs
And we are at the mercy of a man
Who, if the stars went out, would only laugh.”
She looked away at a small swinging blossom,
And then she looked intently at her fingers, 235
While a frown gathered slowly round her eyes,
And wrinkled her white forehead.
Lancelot,
Scarce knowing whether to himself he spoke
Or to the Queen, said emptily: “As for Gawaine, 240
My question is, if any curious hind
Or knight that is alive in Britain breathing,
Or prince, or king, knows more of us, or less,
Than Gawaine, in his gay complacency,
Knows or believes he knows. There’s over much 245
Of knowing in this realm of many tongues,
Where deeds are less to those who tell of them
Than are the words they sow; and you and I
Are like to yield a granary of such words,
For God knows what next harvesting. Gawain 250
I fear no more than Gareth, or Colgrevance;
So far as it is his to be the friend
Of any man, so far is he may friend —
Till I have crossed him in some enterprise
Unlikely and unborn. So fear not Gawaine 255
But let your primal care be now for one
Whose name is yours.”
The Queen, with her blue eyes
Too bright for joy, still gazed on Lancelot,
Who stared as if in angry malediction 260
Upon the shorn grass growing at his feet.
“Why do you speak as if the grass had ears
And I had none? What are you saying now,
So darkly to the grass, of knights and hinds?
Are you the Lancelot who rode, long since, 265
Away from me on that unearthly Quest,
Which left no man the same who followed it —
Or none save Gawaine, who came back so soon
That we had hardly missed him?” Faintly then
She smiled a little, more in her defence, 270
He knew, than for misprision of a man
Whom yet she feared: “Why do you set this day —
This golden day, when all are not so golden —
To tell me, with your eyes upon the ground,
That idle words have been for idle tongues 275
And ears a moment’s idle entertainment?
Have I become, and all at once, a thing
So new to courts, and to the buzz they make,
That I should hear no murmur, see no sign?
Where malice and ambition dwell with envy, 280
They go the farthest who believe the least;
So let them, — while I ask of you again,
Why this day for all this? Was yesterday
A day of ouphes and omens? Was it Friday?
I don’t remember. Days are all alike 285
When I have you to look on; when you go,
There are no days but hours. You might say now
What Gawaine said, and say it in our language.”
The sharp light still was in her eyes, alive
And anxious with a reminiscent fear. 290
Lancelot, like a strong man stricken hard
With pain, looked up at her unhappily;
And slowly, on a low and final note,
Said: “Gawaine laughs alike at what he knows,
And at the loose convenience of his fancy; 295
He sees in others what his humor needs
To nourish it, and lives a merry life.
Sometimes a random shaft of his will hit
Nearer the mark than one a wise man aims
With infinite address and reservation; 300
So has it come to pass this afternoon.”
Blood left the quivering cheeks of Guinevere
As color leaves a cloud; and where white was
Before, there was a ghostliness not white,
But gray; and over it her shining hair 305
Coiled heavily its mocking weight of gold.
The pride of her forlorn light-heartedness
Fled like a storm-blown feather; and her fear,
Possessing her, was all that she possessed.
She sought for Lancelot, but he seemed gone. 310
There was a strong man glowering in a chair
Before her, but he was not Lancelot,
Or he would look at her and say to her
That Gawaine’s words were less than chaff in the wind —
A nonsense about exile, birds, and bones, 315
Born of an indolence of empty breath.
“Say what has come to pass this afternoon,”
She said, “or I shall hear you all my life,
Not hearing what it was you might have told.”
He felt the trembling of her slow last words, 320
And his were trembling as he answered them:
“Why this day, why no other? So you ask,
And so must I in honor tell you more —
For what end, I have yet no braver guess
Than Modred has of immortality, 325
Or you of Gawaine. Could I have him alone
Between me and the peace I cannot know,
My life were like the sound of golden bells
Over still fields at sunset, where no storm
Should ever blast the sky with fire again, 330
Or thunder follow ruin for you and me, —
As like it will, if I for one more day,
Assume that I see not what I have seen,
See now, and shall see. There are no more lies
Left anywhere now for me to tell myself 335
That I have not already told myself,
And overtold, until today I seem
To taste them as I might the poisoned fruit
/> That Patrise had of Mador, and so died.
And that same apple of death was to be food 340
For Gawaine; but he left it and lives on,
To make his joy of living your confusion.
His life is his religion; he loves life
With such a manifold exuberance
That poison shuns him and seeks out a way 345
To wreak its evil upon innocence.
There may be chance in this, there may be
Be what there be, I do not fear Gawaine.”
The Queen, with an indignant little foot,
Struck viciously the unoffending grass 350
And said: “Why not let Gawaine go his way?
I’ll think of him no more, fear him no more,
And hear of him no more. I’ll hear no more
Of any now save one who is, or was,
All men to me. And he said once to me 355
That he would say why this day, of all days,
Was more mysteriously felicitous
For solemn commination than another.”
Again she smiled, but her blue eyes were telling
No more their story of old happiness. 360
“For me today is not as other days,”
He said, “because it is the first, I find,
That has empowered my will to say to you
What most it is that you must hear and heed.
When Arthur, with a faith unfortified, 365
Sent me alone, of all he might have sent,
That May-day to Leodogran your father,
I went away from him with a sore heart;
For in my heart I knew that I should fail
My King, who trusted me too far beyond 370
The mortal outpost of experience.
And this was after Merlin’s admonition,
Which Arthur, in his passion, took for less
Than his inviolable majesty.
When I rode in between your father’s guards 375
And heard his trumpets blown for my loud honor,
I sent my memory back to Camelot,
And said once to myself, ‘God save the king!’
But the words tore my throat and were like blood
Upon my tongue. Then a great shout went up 380
From shining men around me everywhere;
And I remember more fair women’s eyes
Than there are stars in autumn, all of them
Thrown on me for a glimpse of that high knight
Sir Lancelot — Sir Lancelot of the Lake. 385
I saw their faces and I saw not one
To sever a tendril of my integrity;
But I thought once again, to make myself
Believe a silent lie, ‘God save the King’ …