Page:Collected poems Robinson, Edwin Arlington.djvu/300

 Of helpless love and sad authority She found the gleam of his imprisoned power That Fate withheld; and, pitying herself, She pitied the fond Merlin she had changed, And saw the Merlin who had changed the world. "No kings are coming on their hands and knees, Nor yet on horses or in chariots, To carry me away from you again," Said Merlin, winding around Vivian's ear A shred of her black hair. "King Arthur knows That I have done with kings, and that I speak No more their crafty language. Once I knew it, But now the only language I have left Is one that I must never let you hear Too long, or know too well. When towering deeds Once done shall only out of dust and words Be done again, the doer may then be wary Lest in the complement of his new fabric There be more words than dust." "Why tell me so?" Said Vivian; and a singular thin laugh Came after her thin question. "Do you think That I'm so far away from history That I require, even of the wisest man Who ever said the wrong thing to a woman, So large a light on what I know already When all I seek is here before me now In your new eyes that you have brought for me From Camelot? The eyes you took away Were sad and old; and I could see in them A Merlin who remembered all the kings