“Sir Gareth, and Sir Gaheris — are dead.”
The rage of a fulfilled expectancy,
Long tortured on a rack of endless moments, 1070
Flashed out of Gawaine’s overflowing eyes
While he flew forward, seizing Lucan’s arms,
And hurled him while he held him.— “Stop, Gawaine,”
The King said grimly. “Now is no time for that.
If Lucan, in a too bewildered heat 1075
Of observation or sad reckoning,
Has added life to death, our joy therefor
Will be the larger. You have lost yourself.”
“More than myself it is that I have lost,”
Gawaine said, with a choking voice that faltered: 1080
“Forgive me, Lucan; I was a little mad.
Gareth? — and Gaheris? Do you say their names,
And then say they are dead! They had no arms —
No armor. They were like you — and you live!
Why do you live when they are dead! You ran, 1085
You say? Well, why were they not running —
If they ran only for a pike to die with?
I knew my brothers, and I know your tale
Is not all told. Gareth? — and Gaheris?
Would they stay there to die like silly children? 1090
Did they believe the King would have them die
For nothing? There are dregs of reason, Lucan,
In lunacy itself. My brothers, Lucan,
Were murdered like two dogs. Who murdered them?
Lucan looked helplessly at Bedivere, 1095
The changeless man of stone, and then at Gawaine:
“I cannot use the word that you have used,
Though yours must have an answer. Your two brothers
Would not have squandered or destroyed themselves
In a vain show of action. I pronounce it, 1100
If only for their known obedience
To the King’s instant wish. Know then your brothers
Were caught and crowded, this way and then that,
With men and horses raging all around them;
And there were swords and axes everywhere 1105
That heads of men were. Armored and unarmored,
They knew the iron alike. In so great press,
Discrimination would have had no pause
To name itself; and therefore Lancelot
Saw not — or seeing, he may have seen too late — 1110
On whom his axes fell.”
“Why do you flood
The name of Lancelot with words enough
To drown him and his army — and his axes!…
His axes? — or his axe! Which, Lucan? Speak! 1115
Speak, or by God you’ll never speak again!…
Forgive me, Lucan; I was a little mad.
You, sir, forgive me; and you, Bedivere.
There are too many currents in this ocean
Where I’m adrift, and I see no land yet. 1120
Men tell of a great whirlpool in the north
Where ships go round until the men aboard
Go dizzy, and are dizzy when they’re drowning.
But whether I’m to drown or find the shore,
There is one thing — and only one thing now — 1125
For me to know…. His axes? or his axe!
Say, Lucan, or I — O Lucan, speak — speak — speak!
Lucan, did Lancelot kill my two brothers?”
“I say again that in all human chance
He knew not upon whom his axe was falling.” 1130
“So! Then it was his axe and not his axes.
It was his hell-begotten self that did it,
And it was not his men. Gareth! Gaheris!
You came too soon. There was no place for you
Where there was Lancelot. My folly it was, 1135
Not yours, to take for true the inhuman glamour
Of his high-shining fame for that which most
Was not the man. The truth we see too late
Hides half its evil in our stupidity;
And we gape while we groan for what we learn. 1140
An hour ago and I was all but eager
To mourn with Bedivere for grief I had
That I did not say something to this villain —
To this true, gracious, murderous friend of mine —
To comfort him and urge him out of this, 1145
While I was half a fool and half believed
That he was going. Well, there is this to say:
The world that has him will not have him long.
You see how calm I am, now I have said it?
And you, sir, do you see how calm I am? 1150
And it was I who told of shipwrecks — whirlpools —
Drowning! I must have been a little mad,
Not having occupation. Now I have one.
And I have now a tongue as many-phrased
As Lucan’s. Gauge it, Lucan, if you will; 1155
Or take my word. It’s all one thing to me —
All one, all one! There’s only one thing left …
Gareth and Gaheris! Gareth!… Lancelot!”
“Look, Bedivere,” the King said: “look to Gawaine.
Now lead him, you and Lucan, to a chair — 1160
As you and Gawaine led me to this chair
Where I am sitting. We may all be led,
If there be coming on for Camelot
Another day like this. Now leave me here,
Alone with Gawaine. When a strong man goes 1165
Like that, it makes him sick to see his friends
Around him. Leave us, and go now. Sometimes
I’ll scarce remember that he’s not my son,
So near he seems. I thank you, gentlemen.”
The King, alone with Gawaine, who said nothing, 1170
Had yet no heart for news of Lancelot
Or Guinevere. He saw them on their way
To Joyous Gard, where Tristram and Isolt
Had islanded of old their stolen love,
While Mark of Cornwall entertained a vengeance 1175
Envisaging an ending of all that;
And he could see the two of them together
As Mark had seen Isolt there, and her knight, —
Though not, like Mark, with murder in his eyes.
He saw them as if they were there already, 1180
And he were a lost thought long out of mind;
He saw them lying in each other’s arms,
Oblivious of the living and the dead
They left in Camelot. Then he saw the dead
That lay so quiet outside the city walls, 1185
And wept, and left the Queen to Lancelot —
Or would have left her, had the will been his
To leave or take; for now he could acknowledge
An inrush of a desolate thanksgiving
That she, with death around her, had not died. 1190
The vision of a peace that humbled him,
And yet might save the world that he had won,
Came slowly into view like something soft
And ominous on all-fours, without a spirit
To make it stand upright. “Better be that, 1195
Even that, than blood,” he sighed, “if that be peace.”
But looking down on Gawaine, who said nothing,
He shook his head: “The King has had his world,
And he shall have no peace. With Modred here,
And Agravaine with Gareth, who is dead 1200
With Gaheris, Gawaine will have no peace.
Gawaine or Modred — Gawaine with his hate,
Or Modred with his anger for his birth,
And the black malady of his ambition —
Will make of my Round Table, where was drawn 1205
The circle of a world, a thing of wreck
And yesterday — a furniture forgotten;
And I, who loved the w
orld as Merlin did,
May lose it as he lost it, for a love
That was not peace, and therefore was not love.” 1210
Lancelot VI
THE DARK of Modred’s hour not yet availing,
Gawaine it was who gave the King no peace;
Gawaine it was who goaded him and drove him
To Joyous Gard, where now for long his army,
Disheartened with unprofitable slaughter, 1215
Fought for their weary King and wearily
Died fighting. Only Gawaine’s hate it was
That held the King’s knights and his warrior slaves
Close-hived in exile, dreaming of old scenes
Where Sorrow, and her demon sister Fear, 1220
Now shared the dusty food of loneliness,
From Orkney to Cornwall. There was no peace,
Nor could there be, so Gawaine told the King,
And so the King in anguish told himself,
Until there was an end of one of them — 1225
Of Gawaine or the King, or Lancelot,
Who might have had an end, as either knew,
Long since of Arthur and of Gawaine with him.
One evening in the moonlight Lancelot
And Bors, his kinsman, and the loyalest, 1230
If least assured, of all who followed him,
Sat gazing from an ivy-cornered casement
In angry silence upon Arthur’s horde,
Who in the silver distance, without sound,
Were dimly burying dead men. Sir Bors, 1235
Reiterating vainly what was told
As wholesome hearing for unhearing ears,
Said now to Lancelot: “And though it be
For no more now than always, let me speak:
You have a pity for the King, you say, 1240
That is not hate; and for Gawaine you have
A grief that is not hate. Pity and grief!
And the Queen all but shrieking out her soul
That morning when we snatched her from the faggots
That were already crackling when we came! 1245
Why, Lancelot, if in you is an answer,
Have you so vast a charity for the King,
And so enlarged a grief for his gay nephew,
Whose tireless hate for you has only one
Disastrous appetite? You know for what — 1250
For your slow blood. I knew you, Lancelot,
When all this would have been a merry fable
For smiling men to yawn at and forget,
As they forget their physic. Pity and grief
Are in your eyes. I see them well enough; 1255
And I saw once with you, in a far land,
The glimmering of a Light that you saw nearer —
Too near for your salvation or advantage,
If you be what you seem. What I saw then
Made life a wilder mystery than ever, 1260
And earth a new illusion. You, maybe,
Saw pity and grief. What I saw was a Gleam,
To fight for or to die for — till we know
Too much to fight or die. Tonight you turn
A page whereon your deeds are to engross 1265
Inexorably their story of tomorrow;
And then tomorrow. How many of these tomorrows
Are coming to ask unanswered why this war
Was fought and fought for the vain sake of slaughter?
Why carve a compost of a multitude, 1270
When only two, discriminately despatched,
Would sum the end of what you know is ending
And leave to you the scorch of no more blood
Upon your blistered soul? The Light you saw
Was not for this poor crumbling realm of Arthur, 1275
Nor more for Rome; but for another state
That shall be neither Rome nor Camelot,
Nor one that we may name. Why longer, then,
Are you and Gawaine to anoint with war,
That even in hell would be superfluous, 1280
A reign already dying, and ripe to die?
I leave you to your last interpretation
Of what may be the pleasure of your madness.”
Meanwhile a mist was hiding the dim work
Of Arthur’s men; and like another mist, 1285
All gray, came Guinevere to Lancelot,
Whom Bors had left, not having had of him
The largess of a word. She laid her hands
Upon his hair, vexing him to brief speech:
“And you — are you like Bors?” 1290
“I may be so,”
She said; and she saw faintly where she gazed,
Like distant insects of a shadowy world,
Dim clusters here and there of shadowy men
Whose occupation was her long abhorrence: 1295
“If he came here and went away again,
And all for nothing, I may be like Bors.
Be glad, at least, that I am not like Mark
Of Cornwall, who stood once behind a man
And slew him without saying he was there. 1300
Not Arthur, I believe, nor yet Gawaine,
Would have done quite like that; though only God
May say what there’s to come before this war
Shall have an end — unless you are to see,
As I have seen so long, a way to end it.” 1305
He frowned, and watched again the coming mist
That hid with a cold veil of augury
The stillness of an empire that was dying:
“And are you here to say that if I kill
Gawaine and Arthur we shall both be happy?” 1310
“Is there still such a word as happiness?
I come to tell you nothing, Lancelot,
That folly and waste have not already told you.
Were you another man than Lancelot,
I might say folly and fear. But no, — no fear, 1315
As I know fear, was yet composed and wrought,
By man, for your delay and your undoing.
God knows how cruelly and how truly now
You might say, that of all who breathe and suffer
There may be others who are not so near 1320
To you as I am, and so might say better
What I say only with a tongue not apt
Or guarded for much argument. A woman,
As men have known since Adam heard the first
Of Eve’s interpreting of how it was 1325
In Paradise, may see but one side only —
Where maybe there are two, to say no more.
Yet here, for you and me, and so for all
Caught with us in this lamentable net,
I see but one deliverance: I see none, 1330
Unless you cut for us a clean way out,
So rending these hate-woven webs of horror
Before they mesh the world. And if the world
Or Arthur’s name be now a dying glory,
Why bleed it for the sparing of a man 1335
Who hates you, and a King that hates himself?
If war be war — and I make only blood
Of your red writing — why dishonor Time
For torture longer drawn in your slow game
Of empty slaughter? Tomorrow it will be 1340
The King’s move, I suppose, and we shall have
One more magnificent waste of nameless pawns,
And of a few more knights. God, how you love
This game! — to make so loud a shambles of it,
When you have only twice to lift your finger 1345
To signal peace, and give to this poor drenched
And clotted earth a time to heal itself.
Twice over I say to you, if war be war,
Why play with it? Why look a thousand ways
Away from what it is, only to find 1350
A few stale memories left that would requite
Your tears wi
th your destruction? Tears, I say,
For I have seen your tears; I see them now,
Although the moon is dimmer than it was
Before I came. I wonder if I dimmed it. 1355
I wonder if I brought this fog here with me
To make you chillier even than you are
When I am not so near you…. Lancelot,
There must be glimmering yet somewhere within you
The last spark of a little willingness 1360
To tell me why it is this war goes on.
Once I believed you told me everything;
And what you may have hidden was no matter,
For what you told was all I needed then.
But crumbs that are a festival for joy 1365
Make a dry fare for sorrow; and the few
Spared words that were enough to nourish faith,
Are for our lonely fears a frugal poison.
So, Lancelot, if only to bring back
For once the ghost of a forgotten mercy, 1370
Say now, even though you strike me to the floor
When you have said it, for what untold end
All this goes on. Am I not anything now?
Is Gawaine, who would feed you to wild swine,
And laugh to see them tear you, more than I am? 1375
Is Arthur, at whose word I was dragged out
To wear for you the fiery crown itself
Of human torture, more to you than I am?
Am I, because you saw death touch me once,
Too gross a trifle to be longer prized? 1380
Not many days ago, when you lay hurt
And aching on your bed, and I cried out
Aloud on heaven that I should bring you there,
You said you would have paid the price of hell
To save me that foul morning from the fire. 1385
You paid enough: yet when you told me that,
With death going on outside the while you said it,
I heard the woman in me asking why.
Nor do I wholly find an answer now
In any shine of any far-off Light 1390
You may have seen. Knowing the world, you know
How surely and how indifferently that Light
Shall burn through many a war that is to be,
To which this war were no more than a smear
On circumstance. The world has not begun. 1395
The Light you saw was not the Light of Rome,
Or Time, though you seem battling here for time,
While you are still at war with Arthur’s host
And Gawaine’s hate. How many thousand men
Are going to their death before Gawaine 1400
And Arthur go to theirs — and I to mine?”
Works of Edwin Arlington Robinson Page 36