Tristram

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TRISTRAM

|By EDWIN ARLINGTON ROBINSON

|Collected Poems: Avon’s Harvest Captain Craig The Children of the Night Lancelot The Man Against the Sky Merlin The Town Down the River The Three Taverns Dionysus in Doubt The Man Who Died Twice The Porcupine Roman Bartholow The Three Taverns Van Zorn

Canto I.

TRISTRAM

I

Isolt of the white hands, in Brittany, Could see no longer northward anywhere A picture more alive or less familiar Than a blank ocean and the same white birds Flying, and always flying, and still flying, Yet never bringing any news of him That she remembered, who had sailed away The spring before—saying he would come back, Although not saying when. Not one of them, For all their flying, she thought, had heard the name Of Tristram, or of him beside her there That was the King, her father. The last ship Was out of sight, and there was nothing now For her to see before the night came down Except her father’s face. She looked at him And found him smiling in the way she feared,

And loved the while she feared it. The King took One of her small still hands in one of his That were so large and hard to be so kind, And weighed a question, not for the first time:

“Why should it be that I must have a child Whose eyes are wandering always to the north? The north is a bad region full of wolves And bears and hairy men that have no manners. Why should her eyes be always on the north, I wonder, when all’s here that one requires Of comfort, love, and of expediency? You are not cheered, I see, or satisfied Entirely by the sound of what I say. You are too young, may be, to make yourself A nest of comfort and expediency.”

“I may be that,” she said, and a quick flush Made a pink forage of her laughing face, At which he smiled again. “But not so young As to be told for ever how young I am. I have been growing for these eighteen years, And waiting here, for one thing and another.

Besides, his manners are as good as yours, And he’s not half so hairy as you are, Even though you be the King of Brittany, Or the great Jove himself, and then my father.” With that she threw her arms around his neck, Throbbing as if she were a child indeed.

“You are no heavier than a cat,” said he, “But otherwise you are somewhat like a tiger. Relinquish your commendable affection A little, and tell me why it is you dream Of someone coming always from the north. Are there no proper knights or princes else Than one whose eyes, wherever they may be fixed, Are surely not fixed hard on Brittany? You are a sort of child, or many sorts, Yet also are too high and too essential To be much longer the quaint sport and food Of shadowy fancies. For a time I’ve laughed And let you dream, but I may not laugh always. Because he praised you as a child one day, And may have liked you as a child one day, Why do you stare for ever into the north,

Over that water, where the good God placed A land known only to your small white ears?”

“Only because the good God, I suppose, Placed England somewhere north of Brittany— Though not so far but one may come and go As many a time as twice before he dies. I know that’s true, having been told about it. I have been told so much about this world That I have wondered why men stay in it. I have been told of devils that are in it, And some right here in Brittany. Griffon Is one of them; and if he ever gets me, I’ll pray for the best way to kill myself.”

King Howel held his daughter closer to him, As if a buried and forgotten fear Had come to life and was confronting him With a new face. “Never you mind the devils,” He said, “be they in Brittany or elsewhere. They are for my attention, if need be. You will affright me and amuse me less By saying, if you are ready, how much longer

You are to starve yourself with your delusion Of Tristram coming back. He may come back, Or Mark, his uncle, who tonight is making Another Isolt his queen—the dark Isolt, Isolt of Ireland—may be coming back, Though I’d as lief he would remain at home In Cornwall, with his new queen—if he keeps her.”

“And who is this far-off Isolt of Ireland?” She said, like a thing waiting to be hurt: “A creature that one hears of constantly, And one that no man sees, or none to say so, Must be unusual—if she be at all.”

“The few men who have told of her to me Have told of silence and of Irish pride, Inhabiting too much beauty for one woman. My eyes have never seen her; and as for beauty, My eyes would rather look on yours, my child. And as for Tristram coming back, what then— One of these days? Any one may come back. King Arthur may come back; and as for that, Our Lord and Saviour may come back some time,

Though hardly all for you. Have you kept hid Some promise or protestation heretofore, That you may shape a thought into a reason For making always of a distant wish A dim belief? You are too old for that— If it will make you happy to be told so. You have been told so much.” King Howel smiled, And waited, holding her white hands in his.

“I have been told that Tristram will come back,” She said; “and it was he who told me so. Also I have this agate that he gave me; And I believe his eyes.”

“Believe his agate,” The king said, “for as long as you may save it. An agate’s a fair plaything for a child, Though not so boundless and immovable In magnitude but that a child may lose it. Since you esteem it such an acquisition, Treasure it more securely, and believe it As a bright piece of earth, and nothing more. Believe his agate, and forget his eyes;

And go to bed. You are not young enough, I see, to stay awake and entertain Much longer your exaggerated fancies. And if he should come back? Would you prepare Upon the ruinous day of his departure To drown yourself, and with yourself his agate?”

Isolt, now on a cushion at his feet, Finding the King’s hard knees a meagre pillow, Sat upright, thinking. “No I should not do that; Though I should never trust another man So far that I should go away with him. King’s daughters, I suppose, are bought and sold, But you would not sell me.”

“You seize a question As if it were an agate—or a fact,” The King said, laughing at the calm gray eyes That were so large in the small face before him. “I might sell you, perhaps, at a fair bargain. To play with an illustrious example, If Modred were to overthrow King Arthur— And there are prophets who see Arthur’s end In Modred, who’s an able sort of reptile—

And come for you to go away with him, And to be Queen of Britain, I might sell you, Perhaps. You might say prayers that you be sold.”

“I may say prayers that you be reasonable And serious, and that you believe me so.” There was a light now in his daughter’s eyes Like none that he remembered having seen In eyes before, whereat he paused and heard, Not all amused. “He will come back,” she said, “And I shall wait. If he should not come back, I shall have been but one poor woman more Whose punishment for being born a woman Was to believe and wait. You are my King, My father, and of all men anywhere, Save one, you are the world of men to me. When I say this of him you must believe me, As I believe his eyes. He will come back; And what comes then I leave to him, and God.”

Slowly the King arose, and with his hands He lifted up Isolt, so frail, so light, And yet, with all, mysteriously so strong. He raised her patient face between his hands,

Observing it as if it were some white And foreign flower, not certain in his garden To thrive, nor like to die. Then with a vague And wavering effect of shaking her Affectionately back to his own world, Which never would be hers, he smiled once more And set her free. “You should have gone to bed When first I told you. You had best go now, And while you are still dreaming. In the morning Your dreams, if you remember them, will all Be less than one bird singing in a tree.”

Isolt of the white hands, unchangeable, Half childlike and half womanly, looked up Into her father’s eyes and shook her head, Smiling, but less for joy than certainty: “There’s a bird then that I have never seen In Brittany; and I have never heard him. Good night, my father.” She went slowly out, Leaving him in the gloom.

“Good night, my child, Good night,” he said, scarce hearing his own voice For crowded thoughts that were unseizable

And unforeseen within him. Like Isolt, He stood now in the window looking north Over the misty sea. A seven days’ moon Was in the sky, and there were a few stars That had no fire. “I have no more a child,” He thought, “and what she is I do not know. It may be fancy and fantastic youth That ails her now; it may be the sick touch Of prophecy concealing disillusion. If there were not inwoven so much power And poise of sense with all her seeming folly, I might assume a concord with her faith As that of one elected soon to die. But surely no infringement of the grave In her conceits and her appearances Encourages a fear that still is fear; And what she is to know, I cannot say. A changeling down from one of those white stars Were more like her than like a child of mine.”

Nothing in the cold glimmer of a moon Over a still, cold ocean there before him Would answer for him in the silent voice

Of time an idle question. So the King, With only time for company, stood waiting Alone there in the window, looking off At the still sea between his eyes and England.

Canto II.

II

The moon that glimmered cold on Brittany Glimmered as cold on Cornwall, where King Mark, Only by kingly circumstance endowed With friends enough to make a festival, On this dim night had married and made Queen— Of all fair women in the world by fate The most forgotten in her loveliness Till now—Isolt of Ireland, who had flamed And fought so long with love that she called hate, Inimical to Tristram for the stroke That felled Morhaus her kinsman. Tristram, blind With angry beauty, or in honor blind, Or in obscure obedience unawakened, Had given his insane promise to his uncle Of intercession with the Irish King And so drawn out of him a slow assent, Not fathoming or distinguishing aright

Within himself a passion that was death, Nor gauging with a timely recognition The warfare of a woman’s enmity With love without love’s name. He knew too late How one word then would have made arras-rats For her of all his uncles, and all kings That he might serve with cloudy promises, Not weighed until redeemed. Now there was time For him to weigh them, and to weigh them well, To the last scorching ounce of desperation, Searing his wits and flesh like heated mail Amidst the fiery downfall of a palace, Where there was no one left except himself To save, and no way out except through fire.

Partly to balk his rage, partly to curse Unhindered an abject ineptitude That like a drug had held him and withheld him In seizing once from love’s imperial garden The flower of all things there, now Tristram leaned Alone upon a parapet below The lights of high Tintagel, where gay music Had whipped him as a lash and driven him out

Into the misty night, which might have held A premonition and a probing chill For one more tranquil and less exigent, And not so much on fire. Down through the gloom He gazed at nothing, save a moving blur Where foamed eternally on Cornish rocks The moan of Cornish water; and he asked, With a malignant inward voice of envy, How many scarred cold things that once had laughed And loved and wept and sung, and had been men, Might have been knocked and washed indifferently On that hard shore, and eaten gradually By competent quick fishes and large crabs And larger birds, not caring a wink which Might be employed on their spent images, No longer tortured there, if God was good, By memories of the fools and royal pimps That once unwittingly they might have been— Like Tristram, who could wish himself as far As they were from a wearing out of life On a racked length of days. Now and again A louder fanfare of malicious horns Would sing down from the festival above him,

Smiting his angry face like a wet clout That some invisible scullion might have swung, Too shadowy and too agile to be seized And flung down on those rocks. Now and again Came over him a cold soul-retching wave Of recognition past reality, Recurrent, vile, and always culminating In a forbidden vision thrice unholy Of Mark, his uncle, like a man-shaped goat Appraising with a small salacious eye, And slowly forcing into his gaunt arms, And all now in a few impossible hours That were as possible as pain and death, The shuddering unreal miracle of Isolt, Which was as real as torture to the damned In hell, or in Cornwall. Before long now That music and that wordless murmuring Of distant men and women, who divined As much or little as they might, would cease; The mocking lights above him would go out; There would be silence; and the King would hold Isolt—Isolt of the dark eyes—Isolt Of the patrician passionate helplessness—

Isolt of the soft waving blue-black hair— Isolt of Ireland—in his vicious arms And crush the bloom of her resisting life On his hot, watery mouth, and overcome The protest of her suffering silk skin With his crude senile claws. And it was he, Tristram, the loud-accredited strong warrior, Tristram, the loved of women, the harp-player, Tristram, the learned Nimrod among hunters, Tristram, the most obedient imbecile And humble servant of King Mark his uncle, Who had achieved all this. For lack of sight And sense of self, and imperturbably, He had achieved all this and might do more, No doubt, if given the time. Whereat he cursed Himself again, and his complacent years Of easy blindness. Time had saved for him The flower that he had not the wit to seize And carry a few leagues across the water, Till when he did so it was his no more, And body and soul were sick to think of it. Why should he not be sick? “Good God in heaven,” He groaned aloud, “why should I not be sick!”

“No God will answer you to say why not,” Said one descending heavily but unheard, And slowly, down the stairs. “And one like me, Having seen more seasons out than you have seen, Would say it was tonight your prime intention To make yourself the sickest man in Cornwall.” Gouvernail frowned and shivered as he spoke, And waited as a stranger waits in vain Outside a door that none within will open.

“I may be that already,” Tristram said, “But I’m not cold. For I’m a seer tonight, And consequently full of starry thoughts. The stars are not so numerous as they were, But there’s a brotherly white moon up there, Such as it is. Well, Gouvernail, what word Has my illustrious and most amorous And most imperious Uncle Mark prepared For you to say to me that you come scowling So far down here to say it? You are next To nearest, not being my father, of all men Of whom I am unworthy. What’s the word?”

“Tristram, I left the King annoyed and anxious On your account, and for the nonce not pleased.”

“What most annoys my uncle, for the nonce? God knows that I have done for him of late More than an army, made of nephews only, Shall ever be fools enough to do again. When tired of feasting and of too much talk, And too much wine and too much happy music, May not his royal nephew have some air, Even though his annoyed uncle be a king? My father is a king, in Lyonesse; And that’s about as much as being a king In Cornwall is—or one here now might say so.”

“Forgive me Tristram, but I’m old for this. The King knows well what you have done for him, And owns a gratitude beyond the gift Of utterance for the service of your word. But the King does not know, and cannot know, Your purpose in an act ungenerous, If not unseemly. What shall I say to him If I go back to him alone? Tristram, There are some treasured moments I remember When you have made me loyal to you always For saying good words of me, and with no care

Whether or not they came back to my ears. Surely, if past attention and tuition Are not forgotten, you will not forget This present emptiness of my confusion. If I go back alone, what shall I say?”

“Say to the King that if the King command Implacably my presence, I will come. But say as an addition that I’m sick, And that another joyful hour with him This night might have eventful influences. Nothing could be more courteous, if said well, Or more consistent with infirm allegiance. Say to the King I’m sick. If he doubts that, Or takes it ill, say to the King I’m drunk. His comprehensions and remembrances Will compass and envisage, peradventure, The last deplorable profundity Of my defection if you say, for me, That in my joy my caution crept away Like an unfaithful hound and went to sleep. Gouvernail, you are cold.”

Gouvernail sighed And fixed an eye calm with experience,

And with affection kind, on Tristram, sadly. “Yes, I am cold,” he said. “Here at my heart I feel a blasting chill. Will you not come With me to see the King and Queen together? Or must I mumble as I may to them, Alone, this weary jest of your complaint?”

“God’s love, have I not seen the two together! And as for my complaint, mumble or not. Mumble or shriek it; or, as you see fit, Call for my harp and sing it.” Tristram laid His hands on Gouvernail’s enduring shoulders Which many a time had carried him for sport In a far vanished childhood, and looked off Where patient skill had made of shrubs and rocks Together a wild garden half way down To the dusk-hidden shore. “Believe my word, My loyal and observing Gouvernail,” He said, and met the older man’s regard With all that he could muster of a smile. “Believe my word, and say what I have said, Or something as much better as you may. Believe my word no less that I am sick,

And that I’d feed a sick toad to my brother If in my place he were not sick without it.”

Gouvernail sighed, and with a deeper sigh Looked off across the sea. “Tristram,” he said, “I can see no good coming out of this, But I will give your message as I can, And with as light misgiving as I may. Yet where there is no love, too often I find As perilous a constriction in our judgment As where there is too much.”

Tristram pursued The mentor of his childhood and his youth With no more words, and only made of him In the returning toil of his departure A climbing silence that would soon be met By sound and light, and by King Mark again, And by Isolt again. Isolt of Ireland! Isolt, so soon to be the bartered prey Of an unholy sacrifice, by rites Of Rome made holy. Tristram groaned and wept, And heard once more the changeless moan below

Of an insensate ocean on those rocks Whereon he had a mind to throw himself. “My God! If I were dreaming this,” he said, “My sleep would be a penance for a year. But I am neither dead nor dreaming now, I’m living and awake. If this be life, What a soul-healing difference death must be, Being something else … Isolt! Isolt of Ireland!”

Gazing at emptiness for a long time He looked away from life, and scarcely heard, Coming down slowly towards him from above, A troubling sound of cloth. “Good evening, sir, Perhaps you do not know me, or remember That once you gave a lady so much honor As to acknowledge her obscure existence. From late accounts you are not here to know Your friends on this especial famous evening. Why do you stay away from history Like this? Kings are not married every night.”

Perceiving there beside him a slim figure Provisionally cloaked against the cold,

He bowed as in a weary deference To childish fate. “Surely I know you, Madam; You are among the creatures of distinction Whose quality may be seen even in the dark. You are Queen Morgan, a most famous lady, And one that only kings in holy joy Could ask or dream to be their messenger. What new persuasion has the King conceived Beyond this inspiration of your presence?”

“It is not dark,” she said; “or not so dark But that a woman sees—if she be careful Not to fall down these memorable stairs And break her necessary little neck At Tristram’s feet. And you might make of that Only another small familiar triumph Hardly worth sighing for. Well then, the King Is vexed and vicious. Your man Gouvernail Says you are sick with wine. Was that the best That your two heads together could accomplish? Will you not for the King’s sake, or the Queen’s, Be more compliant, and not freeze to death?”

“Madam, say to the King that if the King Command me, I will come. Having said that,

It would be gracious of you to be merry— Malicious, if you must—and say, also, You found in me a melancholy warning For all who dim their wits obliviously. Say it as delicately or as directly As humors your imperial preference.”

Queen Morgan, coming closer, put a small And cat-like hand on Tristram: “In this world Of lies, you lay a burden on my virtue When you would teach me a new alphabet. I’ll turn my poor wits inside out, of course, Telling an angry king how sick you are— With wine or whatsoever. Though I shall know The one right reason why you are not merry, I’ll never scatter it, not for the King’s life— Though I might for the Queen’s. Isolt should live, If only to be sorry she came here— With you—away from Ireland to be married To a man old enough to bury himself. But kings are kings, and by contriving find Ways over many walls. This being their fate, It was a clever forethought of the Lord

That there should be a woman or two left With even Isolt no longer possible. A school of prudence would establish you Among the many whose hearts have bled and healed.”

“Madam, you are a woman and a queen; Wherefore a man, by force of courtesy, Will hardly choose but listen. No doubt your words Have a significance in their disguise; Yet having none for me, they might be uttered As well in a lost language found on ruins As in our northern manner. If kings are kings In your report, queens, I perceive, are queens, And have their ways also.”

“A sort of queen.” She laughed, showing her teeth and shining eyes, And shrugged herself a little nearer to him, Having not far to come: “But not the sort That makes a noise where now there are so many. If silly men pursue me and make songs About me, it may be because they’ve heard Some legend that I’m strange. I am not strange— Not half so strange as you are.”

Tristram saw Before him a white neck and a white bosom Beneath a fair and feline face whereon Demure determination was engraved As on a piece of moonlit living marble, And could at once have smiled and sighed to see So much premeditated danger wasted On his despair and wrath. “Yes, you are strange,” He said, “and a sagacious peril to men— Wherefore they must pursue you and make songs. You are an altogether perilous lady, And you had best go back now to the King, Saying that I’m not well. I would conserve The few shreds left of my integrity From your displeasure and for wiser vision. Say to the King I feasted over much In recognition of his happiness— An error that apology too soon Might qualify too late. Tell the King so, And I am your obedient slave for ever.

A wry twist, all but imperceptible Disfigured for an instant her small mouth

Before she smiled and said: “We are the slaves, Not you. Not even when most we are in power Are women else than slaves to men they honor. Men worthy of their reverence know this well, And honor them sometimes to humor them. We are their slaves and their impediments, And there is much in us to be forgiven.”

He drew the fringes of her cloak together, Smiling as one who suffers to escape Through silence to familiar misery. “Madam, I fear that you are taking cold,” He said. “Say to the King that I’m not well.” She laughed, and having mounted a few steps Paused and looked down at him inscrutably: An error that apology too soon May qualify too late?’ Was it like that? England is not so large as the wide sky That holds the stars, and we may meet again. Good night, Sir Tristram, Prince of Lyonesse.”

Canto III.

III

Lost in a gulf of time where time was lost, And heedless of a light queen’s light last words That were to be remembered, he saw now

Before him in the gloom a ghostly ship Cleaving a way to Cornwall silently From Ireland, with himself on board and one That with her eyes told him intolerably How little of his blind self a crowded youth, With a sight error-flecked and pleasure-flawed, Had made him see till on that silent voyage There was no more to see than faith betrayed Or life disowned. The sorrow in his name Came out, and he was Tristram, born for sorrow Of an unguarded and forgotten mother, Who may have seen as those who are to die Are like to see. A king’s son, he had given Himself in honor unto another king For gratitude, not knowing what he had given, Or seeing what he had done. Now he could see, And there was no need left of a ship’s ghost, Or ghost of anything else than life before him, To make him feel, though he might not yet hear it, The nearness of a doom that was descending Upon him, and anon should hold him fast— If he were not already held fast enough To please the will of fate.

“Brangwaine!” he said, Turning and trembling. For a softer voice Than Morgan’s now had spoken; a truer voice, Which had not come alone to plead with him In the King’s name for courtesy.

“Sir Tristram! …” Brangwaine began, and ended. Then she seized His hands and held them quickly to her lips In fealty that he felt was his for ever. “Brangwaine, for this you make a friend of me Until I die. If there were more for one To say …” He said no more, for some one else Than Brangwaine was above him on the stairs. Coming down slowly and without a sound She moved, and like a shadow saying nothing Said nothing while she came. Isolt of Ireland, With all her dark young majesty unshaken By grief and shame and fear that made her shake Till to go further would have been to fall, Came nearer still to him and still said nothing, Till terror born of passion became passion Reborn of terror while his lips and hers

Put speech out like a flame put out by fire. The music poured unheard, Brangwaine had vanished, And there were these two in the world alone, Under the cloudy light of a cold moon That glimmered now as cold on Brittany As on Cornwall.

Time was aware of them, And would beat soon upon his empty bell Release from such a fettered ecstasy As fate would not endure. But until then There was no room for time between their souls And bodies, or between their silences, Which were for them no less than heaven and hell, Fused cruelly out of older silences That once a word from either might have ended, And so annihilated into life Instead of death—could her pride then have spoken, And his duped eyes have seen, before his oath Was given to make them see. But silences By time are slain, and death, or more than death, May come when silence dies. At last Isolt Released herself enough to look at him,