Childe Roland To The Dark Tower Came

My first thought was, he lied in every word,     That hoary cripple, with malicious eye     Askance to watch the working 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.     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,     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     Nor hope rekindling at the end descried,     So much as gladness that some end might be.     For, what with my whole world-wide wandering,     What with my search drawn out thro 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.     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 bid the other go, draw breath     Freelier outside (since all is oer, he saith,     And the blow fallen no grieving can amend;)     While 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.     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 Towers search addressed     Their steps that just to fail as they, seemed best,     And all the doubt was now should I be fit?     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.     For mark! no sooner was I fairly found     Pledged to the plain, after a pace or two,     Than, pausing to throw backward a last view     Oer the safe road, twas gone; grey plain all round:     Nothing but plain to the horizons bound.     I might go on; nought else remained to do.     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,     Youd think; a burr had been a treasure-trove.     No! penury, inertness and grimace,     In some strange sort, were the lands portion. See     Or shut your eyes, said Nature peevishly,     It nothing skills: I cannot help my case:     Tis the Last Judgments fire must cure this place,     Calcine its clods and set my prisoners free.     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 docks harsh swarth leaves, bruised as to baulk     All hope of greenness? Tis a brute must walk     Pashing their life out, with a brutes intents.     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 stupefied, however he came there:     Thrust out past service from the devils stud!     Alive? he might be dead for aught I know,     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.     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 soldiers art:     One taste of the old time sets all to rights.     Not it! I fancied Cuthberts reddening face     Beneath its garniture of curly gold,     Dear fellow, till I almost felt him fold     An arm in mine to fix me to the place     That way he used. Alas, one nights disgrace!     Out went my hearts new fire and left it cold.     Giles then, the soul of honour there he stands     Frank as ten years ago when knighted first.     What honest men should dare (he said) he durst.     Good but the scene shifts faugh! what hangman hands     In to his breast a parchment? His own bands     Read it. Poor traitor, spit upon and curst!     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.     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 fiends glowing hoof to see the wrath     Of its black eddy bespate with flakes and spumes.     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,     Whateer that was, rolled by, deterred no whit.     Which, while I forded, good saints, how I feared     To set my foot upon a dead mans cheek,     Each step, or 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 babys shriek.     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     The fight must so have seemed in that fell cirque.     What penned them there, with all the plain to choose?     No foot-print 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.     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     Mens bodies out like silk? with all the air     Of Tophets tool, on earth left unaware,     Or brought to sharpen its rusty teeth of steel.     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.     Now blotches rankling, coloured gay and grim,     Now patches where some leanness of the soils     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.     And just as far as ever from the end!     Nought in the distance but the evening, nought     To point my footstep further! At the thought,     A great black bird, Apollyons bosom-friend,     Sailed past, nor beat his wide wing dragon-penned     That brushed my cap perchance the guide I sought.     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.     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 youre inside the den!     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!     What in the midst lay but the Tower itself?     The round squat turret, blind as the fools heart     Built of brown stone, without a counterpart     In the whole world. The tempests mocking elf     Points to the shipman thus the unseen shelf     He strikes on, only when the timbers start.     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!     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.     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.