Fatigue and hunger--tempered leisurely With food that some devout magician's oven Might after many failures have delivered, And wine that had for decades in the dark Of Merlin's grave been slowly quickening, And with half-heard, dream-weaving interludes Of distant flutes and viols, made yet more distant By far, nostalgic hautboys blown from nowhere,-- Were tempered not so leisurely, may be, With Vivian's inextinguishable eyes Between two shining silver candlesticks That lifted each a trembling flame to make The rest of her a dusky loveliness Against a bank of shadow. Merlin made, As well as he was able while he ate, A fair division of the fealty due To food and beauty, albeit more times than one Was he at odds with his urbanity In honoring too long the grosser viand. "The best invention in Broceliande Has not been over-taxed in vain, I see," She told him, with her chin propped on her fingers And her eyes flashing blindness into his: "I put myself out cruelly to please you, And you, for that, forget almost at once The name and image of me altogether. You needn't, for when all is analyzed, It's only a bird-pie that you are eating."
"I know not what you call it," Merlin said; "Nor more do I forget your name and image, Though I do eat; and if I did not eat, Your sending out of ships and caravans To get whatever 'tis that's in this thing Would be a sorrow for you all your days; And my great love, which you have seen by now, Might look to you a lie; and like as not You'd actuate some sinewed mercenary To carry me away to God knows where And seal me in a fearsome hole to starve, Because I made of this insidious picking An idle circumstance. My dear fair lady-- And there is not another under heaven So fair as you are as I see you now-- I cannot look at you too much and eat; And I must eat, or be untimely ashes, Whereon the light of your celestial gaze Would fall, I fear me, for no longer time Than on the solemn dust of Jeremiah-- Whose beard you likened once, in heathen jest, To mine that now is no man's."
"Are you sorry?" Said Vivian, filling Merlin's empty goblet; "If you are sorry for the loss of it, Drink more of this and you may tell me lies Enough to make me sure that you are glad; But if your love is what you say it is, Be never sorry that my love took off That horrid hair to make your face at last A human fact. Since I have had your name To dream of and say over to myself, The visitations of that awful beard Have been a terror for my nights and days-- For twenty years. I've seen it like an ocean, Blown seven ways at once and wrecking ships, With men and women screaming for their lives; I've seen it woven into shining ladders That ran up out of sight and so to heaven, All covered with white ghosts with hanging robes Like folded wings,--and there were millions of them, Climbing, climbing, climbing, all the time; And all the time that I was watching them I thought how far above me Merlin was, And wondered always what his face was like. But even then, as a child, I knew the day Would come some time when I should see his face, And hear his voice, and have him in my house Till he should care no more to stay in it, And go away to found another kingdom."-- "Not that," he said; and, sighing, drank more wine; "One kingdom for one Merlin is enough."-- "One Merlin for one Vivian is enough," She said. "If you care much, remember that; But the Lord knows how many Vivians One Merlin's entertaining eye might favor, Indifferently well and all at once, If they were all at hand. Praise heaven they're not."