Then answered Merlin careless of her words:
'You breathe but accusation vast and vague,Spleen-born,I think,and proofless.If ye know,Set up the charge ye know,to stand or fall!'
And Vivien answered frowning wrathfully:
'O ay,what say ye to Sir Valence,him Whose kinsman left him watcher o'er his wife And two fair babes,and went to distant lands;Was one year gone,and on returning found Not two but three?there lay the reckling,one But one hour old!What said the happy sire?'
A seven-months'babe had been a truer gift.
Those twelve sweet moons confused his fatherhood.'
Then answered Merlin,'Nay,I know the tale.
Sir Valence wedded with an outland dame:
Some cause had kept him sundered from his wife:
One child they had:it lived with her:she died:
His kinsman travelling on his own affair Was charged by Valence to bring home the child.
He brought,not found it therefore:take the truth.'
'O ay,'said Vivien,'overtrue a tale.
What say ye then to sweet Sir Sagramore,That ardent man?"to pluck the flower in season,"So says the song,"I trow it is no treason."
O Master,shall we call him overquick To crop his own sweet rose before the hour?'
And Merlin answered,'Overquick art thou To catch a loathly plume fallen from the wing Of that foul bird of rapine whose whole prey Is man's good name:he never wronged his bride.
I know the tale.An angry gust of wind Puffed out his torch among the myriad-roomed And many-corridored complexities Of Arthur's palace:then he found a door,And darkling felt the sculptured ornament That wreathen round it made it seem his own;And wearied out made for the couch and slept,A stainless man beside a stainless maid;And either slept,nor knew of other there;
Till the high dawn piercing the royal rose In Arthur's casement glimmered chastely down,Blushing upon them blushing,and at once He rose without a word and parted from her:
But when the thing was blazed about the court,The brute world howling forced them into bonds,And as it chanced they are happy,being pure.'
'O ay,'said Vivien,'that were likely too.
What say ye then to fair Sir Percivale And of the horrid foulness that he wrought,The saintly youth,the spotless lamb of Christ,Or some black wether of St Satan's fold.
What,in the precincts of the chapel-yard,Among the knightly brasses of the graves,And by the cold Hic Jacets of the dead!'
And Merlin answered careless of her charge,'A sober man is Percivale and pure;But once in life was flustered with new wine,Then paced for coolness in the chapel-yard;Where one of Satan's shepherdesses caught And meant to stamp him with her master's mark;And that he sinned is not believable;
For,look upon his face!--but if he sinned,The sin that practice burns into the blood,And not the one dark hour which brings remorse,Will brand us,after,of whose fold we be:
Or else were he,the holy king,whose hymns Are chanted in the minster,worse than all.
But is your spleen frothed out,or have ye more?'
And Vivien answered frowning yet in wrath:
'O ay;what say ye to Sir Lancelot,friend Traitor or true?that commerce with the Queen,I ask you,is it clamoured by the child,Or whispered in the corner?do ye know it?'
To which he answered sadly,'Yea,I know it.
Sir Lancelot went ambassador,at first,To fetch her,and she watched him from her walls.
A rumour runs,she took him for the King,So fixt her fancy on him:let them be.
But have ye no one word of loyal praise For Arthur,blameless King and stainless man?'
She answered with a low and chuckling laugh:
'Man!is he man at all,who knows and winks?
Sees what his fair bride is and does,and winks?
By which the good King means to blind himself,And blinds himself and all the Table Round To all the foulness that they work.Myself Could call him (were it not for womanhood)The pretty,popular cause such manhood earns,Could call him the main cause of all their crime;Yea,were he not crowned King,coward,and fool.'
Then Merlin to his own heart,loathing,said:
'O true and tender!O my liege and King!
O selfless man and stainless gentleman,Who wouldst against thine own eye-witness fain Have all men true and leal,all women pure;How,in the mouths of base interpreters,From over-fineness not intelligible To things with every sense as false and foul As the poached filth that floods the middle street,Is thy white blamelessness accounted blame!'
But Vivien,deeming Merlin overborne By instance,recommenced,and let her tongue Rage like a fire among the noblest names,Polluting,and imputing her whole self,Defaming and defacing,till she left Not even Lancelot brave,nor Galahad clean.
Her words had issue other than she willed.
He dragged his eyebrow bushes down,and made A snowy penthouse for his hollow eyes,And muttered in himself,'Tell her the charm!
So,if she had it,would she rail on me To snare the next,and if she have it not So will she rail.What did the wanton say?
"Not mount as high;"we scarce can sink as low:
For men at most differ as Heaven and earth,But women,worst and best,as Heaven and Hell.
I know the Table Round,my friends of old;
All brave,and many generous,and some chaste.
She cloaks the scar of some repulse with lies;I well believe she tempted them and failed,Being so bitter:for fine plots may fail,Though harlots paint their talk as well as face With colours of the heart that are not theirs.
I will not let her know:nine tithes of times Face-flatterer and backbiter are the same.
