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.'
And Vivien,like the tenderest-hearted maid That ever bided tryst at village stile,Made answer,either eyelid wet with tears:
'Nay,Master,be not wrathful with your maid;Caress her:let her feel herself forgiven Who feels no heart to ask another boon.
I think ye hardly know the tender rhyme Of "trust me not at all or all in all."I heard the great Sir Lancelot sing it once,And it shall answer for me.Listen to it.
"In Love,if Love be Love,if Love be ours,Faith and unfaith can ne'er be equal powers:
Unfaith in aught is want of faith in all.
"It is the little rift within the lute,That by and by will make the music mute,And ever widening slowly silence all.
"The little rift within the lover's lute Or little pitted speck in garnered fruit,That rotting inward slowly moulders all.
"It is not worth the keeping:let it go:
But shall it?answer,darling,answer,no.
And trust me not at all or all in all."
O Master,do ye love my tender rhyme?'
And Merlin looked and half believed her true,So tender was her voice,so fair her face,So sweetly gleamed her eyes behind her tears Like sunlight on the plain behind a shower:
And yet he answered half indignantly:
'Far other was the song that once I heard By this huge oak,sung nearly where we sit:
For here we met,some ten or twelve of us,To chase a creature that was current then In these wild woods,the hart with golden horns.
It was the time when first the question rose About the founding of a Table Round,That was to be,for love of God and men And noble deeds,the flower of all the world.
And each incited each to noble deeds.
