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,
Nor yet so strange as you yourself are strange,
Nor half so strange as that dark mood of
I ever feared you were not wholly mine;
And see, yourself have owned you 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 you 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 you 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,
To make you lose your use and name and fame,
That makes me most indignant; then o ́r 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,
Ev'n 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, you 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 you 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 you 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 you 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 you 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.
And while we waited, one, the youngest of us,
We could not keep him silent, out he flashed,
And into such a song, such fire for fame,
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