Tristram (Robinson)/Canto 1

by Edwin Arlington Robinson

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.”

The king said, “for as lon“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.”

As if it were an agate—or a fact“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,” he said, scarce h“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.