Page:Collected poems Robinson, Edwin Arlington.djvu/321

 For quickening, they sprout out wondrously And have a leaping growth whereof no man May shun such harvesting of change or death, Or life, as may fall on him to be borne When I am still alive and rickety, And Bedivere's alive and rational If he come out of this, and there's a doubt, The King, Gawaine, Modred, and Lancelot May all be lying underneath a weight Of bloody sheaves too heavy for their shoulders All spent, and all dishonored, and all dead; And if it come to be that this be so, And it be true that Merlin saw the truth, Such harvest were the best. Your fool sees not So far as Merlin sees : yet if he saw The truth why then, such harvest were the best. I'll pray for Arthur; I can do no more." "Why not for Merlin ? Or do you count him, In this extreme, so foreign to salvation That prayer would be a stranger to his name?" Poor Dagonet, with terror shaking him, Stood up and saw before him an old face Made older with an inch of silver beard, And faded eyes more eloquent of pain And ruin than all the faded eyes of age Till now had ever been, although in them There was a mystic and intrinsic peace Of one who sees where men of nearer sight See nothing. On their way to Camelot, Gawaine and Bedivere had passed him by, With lax attention for the pilgrim cloak They passed, and what it hid : yet Merlin saw