But I am not alone. No,… not alone.
We have had all there was, and you were kind —
Even when you tried so hard once to be cruel. 2735
I knew it then… or now I do. Good-bye.”
He crushed her cold white hands and saw them falling
Away from him like flowers into a grave.
When she looked up to see him, he was gone;
And that was all she saw till she awoke 2740
In her white cell, where the nuns carried her
With many tears and many whisperings.
“She was the Queen, and he was Lancelot,”
One said. “They were great lovers. It is not good
To know too much of love. We who love God 2745
Alone are happiest. Is it not so, Mother?” —
“We who love God alone, my child, are safest,”
The Mother replied; “and we are not all safe
Until we are all dead. We watch, and pray.”
Outside again, Lancelot heard the sound 2750
Of reapers he had seen. With lighter tread
He walked away to them to see them nearer;
He walked and heard again the sound of thrushes
Far off. He saw below him, stilled with yellow,
A world that was not Arthur’s, and he saw 2755
The convent roof; and then he could see nothing
But a wan face and two dim lonely hands
That he had left behind. They were down there,
Somewhere, her poor white face and hands, alone.
“No man was ever alone like that,” he thought, 2760
Not knowing what last havoc pity and love
Had still to wreak on wisdom. Gradually,
In one long wave it whelmed him, and then broke —
Leaving him like a lone man on a reef,
Staring for what had been with him, but now 2765
Was gone and was a white face under the sea,
Alive there, and alone — always alone.
He closed his eyes, and the white face was there,
But not the gold. The gold would not come back.
There were gold fields of corn that lay around him, 2770
But they were not the gold of Guinevere —
Though men had once, for sake of saying words,
Prattled of corn about it. The still face
Was there, and the blue eyes that looked at him
Through all the stillness of all distances; 2775
And he could see her lips, trying to say
Again, “I am not alone.” And that was all
His life had said to him that he remembered
While he sat there with his hands over his eyes,
And his heart aching. When he rose again 2780
The reapers had gone home. Over the land
Around him in the twilight there was rest.
There was rest everywhere; and there was none
That found his heart. “Why should I look for peace
When I have made the world a ruin of war?” 2785
He muttered; and a Voice within him said:
“Where the Light falls, death falls; a world has died
For you, that a world may live. There is no peace.
Be glad no man or woman bears for ever
The burden of first days. There is no peace.” 2790
A word stronger than his willed him away
From Almesbury. All alone he rode that night,
Under the stars, led by the living Voice
That would not give him peace. Into the dark
He rode, but not for Dover. Under the stars, 2795
Alone, all night he rode, out of a world
That was not his, or the King’s; and in the night
He felt a burden lifted as he rode,
While he prayed he might bear it for the sake
Of a still face before him that was fading, 2800
Away in a white loneliness. He made,
Once, with groping hand as if to touch it,
But a black branch of leaves was all he found.
Now the still face was dimmer than before,
And it was not so near him. He gazed hard, 2805
But through his tears he could not see it now;
And when the tears were gone he could see only
That all he saw was fading, always fading;
And she was there alone. She was the world
That he was losing; and the world he sought 2810
Was all a tale for those who had been living,
And had not lived. Once even he turned his horse,
And would have brought his army back with him
To make her free. They should be free together.
But the Voice within him said: “You are not free. 2815
You have come to the world’s end, and it is best
You are not free. Where the Light falls, death falls;
And in the darkness comes the Light.” He turned
Again; and he rode on, under the stars,
Out of the world, into he knew not what, 2820
Until a vision chilled him and he saw,
Now as in Camelot, long ago in the garden,
The face of Galahad who had seen and died,
And was alive, now in a mist of gold.
He rode on into the dark, under the stars, 2825
And there were no more faces. There was nothing.
But always in the darkness he rode on,
Alone; and in the darkness came the Light.
THE END
The Three Taverns
TO THOMAS SERGEANT PERRY AND LILLA CABOT PERRY
The Valley of the Shadow
THERE were faces to remember in the Valley of the Shadow,
There were faces unregarded, there were faces to forget;
There were fires of grief and fear that are a few forgotten ashes,
There were sparks of recognition that are not forgotten yet.
For at first, with an amazed and overwhelming indignation 5
At a measureless malfeasance that obscurely willed it thus,
They were lost and unacquainted — till they found themselves in others,
Who had groped as they were groping where dim ways were perilous.
There were lives that were as dark as are the fears and intuitions
Of a child who knows himself and is alone with what he knows; 10
There were pensioners of dreams and there were debtors of illusions,
All to fail before the triumph of a weed that only grows.
There were thirsting heirs of golden sieves that held not wine or water,
And had no names in traffic or more value there than toys:
There were blighted sons of wonder in the Valley of the Shadow, 15
Where they suffered and still wondered why their wonder made no noise.
There were slaves who dragged the shackles of a precedent unbroken,
Demonstrating the fulfilment of unalterable schemes,
Which had been, before the cradle, Time’s inexorable tenants
Of what were now the dusty ruins of their father’s dreams. 20
There were these, and there were many who had stumbled up to manhood,
Where they saw too late the road they should have taken long ago:
There were thwarted clerks and fiddlers in the Valley of the Shadow,
The commemorative wreckage of what others did not know.
And there were daughters older than the mothers who had borne them, 25
Being older in their wisdom, which is older than the earth;
And they were going forward only farther into darkness,
Unrelieved as were the blasting obligations of their birth;
And among them, giving always what was not for their possession,
There were maidens, very quiet, with no quiet in their eyes; 30
There were daughters of the silence in the Valley of the Shadow,
/> Each an isolated item in the family sacrifice.
There were creepers among catacombs where dull regrets were torches,
Giving light enough to show them what was there upon the shelves —
Where there was more for them to see than pleasure would remember 35
Of something that had been alive and once had been themselves.
There were some who stirred the ruins with a solid imprecation,
While as many fled repentance for the promise of despair:
There were drinkers of wrong waters in the Valley of the Shadow,
And all the sparkling ways were dust that once had led them there. 40
There were some who knew the steps of Age incredibly beside them,
And his fingers upon shoulders that had never felt the wheel;
And their last of empty trophies was a gilded cup of nothing,
Which a contemplating vagabond would not have come to steal.
Long and often had they figured for a larger valuation, 45
But the size of their addition was the balance of a doubt:
There were gentlemen of leisure in the Valley of the Shadow,
Not allured by retrospection, disenchanted, and played out.
And among the dark endurances of unavowed reprisals
There were silent eyes of envy that saw little but saw well; 50
And over beauty’s aftermath of hazardous ambitions
There were tears for what had vanished as they vanished where they fell.
Not assured of what was theirs, and always hungry for the nameless,
There were some whose only passion was for Time who made them cold:
There were numerous fair women in the Valley of the Shadow, 55
Dreaming rather less of heaven than of hell when they were old.
Now and then, as if to scorn the common touch of common sorrow,
There were some who gave a few the distant pity of a smile;
And another cloaked a soul as with an ash of human embers,
Having covered thus a treasure that would last him for a while. 60
There were many by the presence of the many disaffected,
Whose exemption was included in the weight that others bore:
There were seekers after darkness in the Valley of the Shadow,
And they alone were there to find what they were looking for.
So they were, and so they are; and as they came are coming others, 65
And among them are the fearless and the meek and the unborn;
And a question that has held us heretofore without an answer
May abide without an answer until all have ceased to mourn.
For the children of the dark are more to name than are the wretched,
Or the broken, or the weary, or the baffled, or the shamed: 70
There are builders of new mansions in the Valley of the Shadow,
And among them are the dying and the blinded and the maimed.
The Wandering Jew
I SAW by looking in his eyes
That they remembered everything;
And this was how I came to know
That he was here, still wandering.
For though the figure and the scene 5
Were never to be reconciled,
I knew the man as I had known
His image when I was a child.
With evidence at every turn,
I should have held it safe to guess 10
That all the newness of New York
Had nothing new in loneliness;
Yet here was one who might be Noah,
Or Nathan, or Abimelech,
Or Lamech, out of ages lost, — 15
Or, more than all, Melchizedek.
Assured that he was none of these,
I gave them back their names again,
To scan once more those endless eyes
Where all my questions ended then. 20
I found in them what they revealed
That I shall not live to forget,
And wondered if they found in mine
Compassion that I might regret.
Pity, I learned, was not the least 25
Of time’s offending benefits
That had now for so long impugned
The conservation of his wits:
Rather it was that I should yield,
Alone, the fealty that presents 30
The tribute of a tempered ear
To an untempered eloquence.
Before I pondered long enough
On whence he came and who he was,
I trembled at his ringing wealth 35
Of manifold anathemas;
I wondered, while he seared the world,
What new defection ailed the race,
And if it mattered how remote
Our fathers were from such a place. 40
Before there was an hour for me
To contemplate with less concern
The crumbling realm awaiting us
Than his that was beyond return,
A dawning on the dust of years 45
Had shaped with an elusive light
Mirages of remembered scenes
That were no longer for the sight.
For now the gloom that hid the man
Became a daylight on his wrath, 50
And one wherein my fancy viewed
New lions ramping in his path.
The old were dead and had no fangs,
Wherefore he loved them — seeing not
They were the same that in their time 55
Had eaten everything they caught.
The world around him was a gift
Of anguish to his eyes and ears,
And one that he had long reviled
As fit for devils, not for seers. 60
Where, then, was there a place for him
That on this other side of death
Saw nothing good, as he had seen
No good come out of Nazareth?
Yet here there was a reticence, 65
And I believe his only one,
That hushed him as if he beheld
A Presence that would not be gone.
In such a silence he confessed
How much there was to be denied; 70
And he would look at me and live,
As others might have looked and died.
As if at last he knew again
That he had always known, his eyes
Were like to those of one who gazed 75
On those of One who never dies.
For such a moment he revealed
What life has in it to be lost;
And I could ask if what I saw,
Before me there, was man or ghost. 80
He may have died so many times
That all there was of him to see
Was pride, that kept itself alive
As too rebellious to be free;
He may have told, when more than once 85
Humility seemed imminent,
How many a lonely time in vain
The Second Coming came and went.
Whether he still defies or not
The failure of an angry task 90
That relegates him out of time
To chaos, I can only ask.
But as I knew him, so he was;
And somewhere among men to-day
Those old, unyielding eyes may flash, 95
And flinch — and look the other way.
Neighbors
AS often as we thought of her,
We thought of a gray life
That made a quaint economist
Of a wolf-haunted wife;
We made the best of all she bore 5
That was not ours to bear,
And honored her for wearing things
That were not things to wear.
There was a distance in her look
That made us look again; 10
And if she smiled, we might believe
That we had lo
oked in vain.
Rarely she came inside our doors,
And had not long to stay;
And when she left, it seemed somehow 15
That she was far away.
At last, when we had all forgot
That all is here to change,
A shadow on the commonplace
Was for a moment strange. 20
Yet there was nothing for surprise,
Nor much that need be told:
Love, with his gift of pain, had given
More than one heart could hold.
The Mill
THE MILLER’S wife had waited long,
The tea was cold, the fire was dead;
And there might yet be nothing wrong
In how he went and what he said:
“There are no millers any more,” 5
Was all that she heard him say;
And he had lingered at the door
So long that it seemed yesterday.
Sick with a fear that had no form
She knew that she was there at last; 10
And in the mill there was a warm
And mealy fragrance of the past.
What else there was would only seem
To say again what he had meant;
And what was hanging from a beam 15
Would not have heeded where she went.
And if she thought it followed her,
She may have reasoned in the dark
That one way of the few there were
Would hide her and would leave no mark: 20
Black water, smooth above the weir
Like starry velvet in the night,
Though ruffled once, would soon appear
The same as ever to the sight.
The Dark Hills
DARK hills at evening in the west,
Where sunset hovers like a sound
Of golden horns that sang to rest
Old bones of warriors under ground,
Far now from all the bannered ways 5
Where flash the legions of the sun,
You fade — as if the last of days
Were fading, and all wars were done.
The Three Taverns
When the brethren heard of us, they came to meet us as far as Appii Forum, and The Three Taverns. — (Acts xxviii, 15)
Works of Edwin Arlington Robinson Page 41
