“Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came”
- I.
- My first thought was, he lied in every word,
- That hoary cripple, with malicious eye
- Askance to watch the workings of his lie
- On mine, and mouth scarce able to afford
- Suppression of the glee, that pursed and scored
- Its edge, at one more victim gained thereby.
- II.
- What else should he be set for, with his staff?
- What, save to waylay with his lies, ensnare
- All travellers who might find him posted there,
- And ask the road? I guessed what skull-like laugh
- Would break, what crutch ’gin write my epitaph
- For pastime in the dusty thoroughfare.
- III.
- If at his counsel I should turn aside
- Into that ominous tract which, all agree,
- Hides the Dark Tower. Yet acquiescingly
- I did turn as he pointed, neither pride
- Now hope rekindling at the end descried,
- So much as gladness that some end might be.
- IV.
- For, what with my whole world-wide wandering,
- What with my search drawn out through years, my hope
- Dwindled into a ghost not fit to cope
- With that obstreperous joy success would bring,
- I hardly tried now to rebuke the spring
- My heart made, finding failure in its scope.
- V.
- As when a sick man very near to death
- Seems dead indeed, and feels begin and end
- The tears and takes the farewell of each friend,
- And hears one bit the other go, draw breath
- Freelier outside, (‘since all is o’er,’ he saith
- And the blow fallen no grieving can amend;’)
- VI.
- When some discuss if near the other graves
- be room enough for this, and when a day
- Suits best for carrying the corpse away,
- With care about the banners, scarves and staves
- And still the man hears all, and only craves
- He may not shame such tender love and stay.
- VII.
- Thus, I had so long suffered in this quest,
- Heard failure prophesied so oft, been writ
- So many times among ’The Band’ to wit,
- The knights who to the Dark Tower’s search addressed
- Their steps - that just to fail as they, seemed best,
- And all the doubt was now - should I be fit?
- VIII.
- So, quiet as despair I turned from him,
- That hateful cripple, out of his highway
- Into the path he pointed. All the day
- Had been a dreary one at best, and dim
- Was settling to its close, yet shot one grim
- Red leer to see the plain catch its estray.
- IX.
- For mark! No sooner was I fairly found
- Pledged to the plain, after a pace or two,
- Than, pausing to throw backwards a last view
- O’er the safe road, ’twas gone; grey plain all round;
- Nothing but plain to the horizon’s bound.
- I might go on, naught else remained to do.
- X.
- So on I went. I think I never saw
- Such starved ignoble nature; nothing throve:
- For flowers - as well expect a cedar grove!
- But cockle, spurge, according to their law
- Might propagate their kind with none to awe,
- You’d think; a burr had been a treasure trove.
- XI.
- No! penury, inertness and grimace,
- In some strange sort, were the land’s portion. ‘See
- Or shut your eyes,’ said Nature peevishly,
- It nothing skills: I cannot help my case:
- ’Tis the Last Judgement’s fire must cure this place
- Calcine its clods and set my prisoners free.’
- XII.
- If there pushed any ragged thistle-stalk
- Above its mates, the head was chopped, the bents
- Were jealous else. What made those holes and rents
- In the dock’s harsh swarth leaves, bruised as to baulk
- All hope of greenness? Tis a brute must walk
- Pashing their life out, with a brute’s intents.
- XIII.
- As for the grass, it grew as scant as hair
- In leprosy; thin dry blades pricked the mud
- Which underneath looked kneaded up with blood.
- One stiff blind horse, his every bone a-stare,
- Stood stupified, however he came there:
- Thrust out past service from the devil’s stud!
- XIV.
- Alive? he might be dead for aught I knew,
- With that red gaunt and colloped neck a-strain.
- And shut eyes underneath the rusty mane;
- Seldom went such grotesqueness with such woe;
- I never saw a brute I hated so;
- He must be wicked to deserve such pain.
- XV.
- I shut my eyes and turned them on my heart,
- As a man calls for wine before he fights,
- I asked one draught of earlier, happier sights,
- Ere fitly I could hope to play my part.
- Think first, fight afterwards, the soldier’s art:
- One taste of the old time sets all to rights.
- XVI.
- Not it! I fancied Cuthbert’s reddening face
- Beneath its garniture of curly gold,
- Dear fellow, till I almost felt him fold
- An arm to mine to fix me to the place,
- The way he used. Alas, one night’s disgrace!
- Out went my heart’s new fire and left it cold.
- XVII.
- Giles then, the soul of honour - there he stands
- Frank as ten years ago when knighted first,
- What honest man should dare (he said) he durst.
- Good - but the scene shifts - faugh! what hangman hands
- Pin to his breast a parchment? His own bands
- Read it. Poor traitor, spit upon and curst!
- XVIII.
- Better this present than a past like that:
- Back therefore to my darkening path again!
- No sound, no sight as far as eye could strain.
- Will the night send a howlet or a bat?
- I asked: when something on the dismal flat
- Came to arrest my thoughts and change their train.
- XIX.
- A sudden little river crossed my path
- As unexpected as a serpent comes.
- No sluggish tide congenial to the glooms;
- This, as it frothed by, might have been a bath
- For the fiend’s glowing hoof - to see the wrath
- Of its black eddy bespate with flakes and spumes.
- XX.
- So petty yet so spiteful! All along,
- Low scrubby alders kneeled down over it;
- Drenched willows flung them headlong in a fit
- Of mute despair, a suicidal throng:
- The river which had done them all the wrong,
- Whate’er that was, rolled by, deterred no whit.
- XXI.
- Which, while I forded - good saints, how I feared
- To set my foot upon a dead man’s cheek,
- Each step, of feel the spear I thrust to seek
- For hollows, tangled in his hair or beard!
- - It may have been a water-rat I speared,
- But, ugh! it sounded like a baby’s shriek.
- XXII.
- Glad was I when I reached the other bank.
- Now for a better country. Vain presage!
- Who were the strugglers, what war did they wage,
- Whose savage trample thus could pad the dank
- soil to a plash? Toads in a poisoned tank
- Or wild cats in a red-hot iron cage -
- XXIII.
- The fight must so have seemed in that fell cirque,
- What penned them there, with all the plain to choose?
- No footprint leading to that horrid mews,
- None out of it. Mad brewage set to work
- Their brains, no doubt, like galley-slaves the Turk
- Pits for his pastime, Christians against Jews.
- XXIV.
- And more than that - a furlong on - why, there!
- What bad use was that engine for, that wheel,
- Or brake, not wheel - that harrow fit to reel
- Men’s bodies out like silk? With all the air
- Of Tophet’s tool, on earth left unaware
- Or brought to sharpen its rusty teeth of steel.
- XXV.
- Then came a bit of stubbed ground, once a wood,
- Next a marsh it would seem, and now mere earth
- Desperate and done with; (so a fool finds mirth,
- Makes a thing and then mars it, till his mood
- Changes and off he goes!) within a rood -
- Bog, clay and rubble, sand, and stark black dearth.
- XXVI.
- Now blotches rankling, coloured gay and grim,
- Now patches where some leanness of the soil’s
- Broke into moss, or substances like boils;
- Then came some palsied oak, a cleft in him
- Like a distorted mouth that splits its rim
- Gaping at death, and dies while it recoils.
- XXVII.
- And just as far as ever from the end!
- Naught in the distance but the evening, naught
- To point my footstep further! At the thought,
- A great black bird, Apollyon’s bosom friend,
- Sailed past, not best his wide wing dragon-penned
- That brushed my cap - perchance the guide I sought.
- XXVIII.
- For, looking up, aware I somehow grew,
- ’Spite of the dusk, the plain had given place
- All round to mountains - with such name to grace
- Mere ugly heights and heaps now stolen in view.
- How thus they had surprised me - solve it, you!
- How to get from them was no clearer case.
- XXIX.
- Yet half I seemed to recognise some trick
- Of mischief happened to me, God knows when -
- In a bad dream perhaps. Here ended, then
- Progress this way. When, in the very nick
- Of giving up, one time more, came a click
- As when a trap shuts - you’re inside the den.
- XXX.
- Burningly it came on me all at once,
- This was the place! those two hills on the right,
- Crouched like two bulls locked horn in horn in fight;
- While to the left a tall scalped mountain ... Dunce,
- Dotard, a-dozing at the very nonce,
- After a life spent training for the sight!
- XXXI.
- What in the midst lay but the Tower itself?
- The round squat turret, blind as the fool’s heart,
- Built of brown stone, without a counterpart
- In the whole world. The tempest’s mocking elf
- Points to the shipman thus the unseen shelf
- He strikes on, only when the timbers start.
- XXXII.
- Not see? because of night perhaps? - why day
- Came back again for that! before it left
- The dying sunset kindled through a cleft:
- The hills, like giants at a hunting, lay,
- Chin upon hand, to see the game at bay, -
- ’Now stab and end the creature - to the heft!’
- XXXIII.
- Not hear? When noise was everywhere! it tolled
- Increasing like a bell. Names in my ears
- Of all the lost adventurers, my peers -
- How such a one was strong, and such was bold,
- And such was fortunate, yet each of old
- Lost, lost! one moment knelled the woe of years.
- XXXIV.
- There they stood, ranged along the hillsides, met
- To view the last of me, a living frame
- For one more picture! In a sheet of flame
- I saw them and I knew them all. And yet
- Dauntless the slug-horn to my lips I set,
- And blew. ’Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came.’