COLLECTED POEMS
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
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