|
MY 1 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 purs’d and scor’d |
5 |
Its edge, at one more victim gain’d 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 guess’d what skull-like laugh |
10 |
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 |
15 |
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 |
20 |
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 |
25 |
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 o’er,” he saith, |
|
“And the blow fallen no grieving can amend;”) |
30 |
|
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 |
35 |
He may not shame such tender love and stay. |
|
|
Thus, I had so long suffer’d, 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 address’d |
40 |
Their steps—that just to fail as they, seem’d best. |
|
And all the doubt was now—should I be fit? |
|
|
So, quiet as despair, I turn’d from him, |
|
That hateful cripple, out of his highway |
|
Into the path the pointed. All the day |
45 |
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, |
50 |
Than, pausing to throw backward a last view |
|
O’er the safe road, ’t was gone; gray plain all round: |
|
Nothing but plain to the horizon’s bound. |
|
I might go on; nought else remain’d to do. |
|
|
So, on I went. I think I never saw |
55 |
Such starv’d 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. |
60 |
|
No! penury, inertness and grimace, |
|
In the strange sort, were the land’s portion. “See |
|
Or shut your eyes,” said Nature peevishly, |
|
“It nothing skills: I cannot help my case: |
|
’T is the Last Judgment’s fire must cure this place, |
65 |
Calcine its clods and set my prisoners free.” |
|
|
If there push’d any ragged thistle=stalk |
|
Above its mates, the head was chopp’d; the bents |
|
Were jealous else. What made those holes and rents |
|
In the dock’s harsh swarth leaves, bruis’d as to baulk |
70 |
All hope of greenness? ’T is a brute must walk |
|
Pashing their life out, with a brute’s intents. |
|
|
As for the grass, it grew as scant as hair |
|
In leprosy; thin dry blades prick’d the mud |
|
Which underneath look’d kneaded up with blood. |
75 |
One stiff blind horse, his every bone a-stare, |
|
Stood stupefied, however he came there: |
|
Thrust out past service from the devil’s stud! |
|
|
Alive? he might be dead for aught I know, |
|
With that red, gaunt and collop’d neck a-strain, |
80 |
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 turn’d them on my heart. |
85 |
As a man calls for wine before he fights, |
|
I ask’d 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. |
90 |
|
Not it! I fancied Cuthbert’s 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 us’d. Alas, one night’s disgrace! |
95 |
Out went my heart’s new fire and left it cold. |
|
|
Giles then, the soul of honor—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 |
100 |
Pin 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. |
105 |
Will the night send a howlet of a bat? |
|
I asked: when something on the dismal flat |
|
Came to arrest my thoughts and change their train. |
|
|
A sudden little river cross’d my path |
|
As unexpected as a serpent comes. |
110 |
No sluggish tide congenial to the glooms; |
|
This, as it froth’d 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. |
|
|
So petty yet so spiteful All along, |
115 |
Low scrubby alders kneel’d down over it; |
|
Drench’d 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, roll’d by, deterr’d no whit. |
120 |
|
Which, while I forded,—good saints, how I fear’d |
|
To set my foot upon a dead man’s 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 spear’d, |
125 |
But, ugh! it sounded like a baby’s shriek. |
|
|
Glad was I when I reach’d 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 |
130 |
Soil to a plash? Toads in a poison’d tank, |
|
Or wild cats in a red-hot iron cage— |
|
|
The fight must so have seem’d in that fell cirque. |
|
What penn’d them there, with all the plain to choose? |
|
No foot-print leading to that horrid mews, |
135 |
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, |
140 |
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. |
|
|
Then came a bit of stubb’d ground, once a wood, |
145 |
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. |
150 |
|
Now blotches rankling, color’d gay and grim, |
|
Now patches where some leanness of the soil’s |
|
Broke into moss or substances like thus; |
|
Then came some palsied oak, a cleft in him |
|
Like a distorted mouth that splits its rim |
155 |
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, Apollyon’s bosom-friend, |
160 |
Sail’d past, nor beat his wide wing dragon-penn’d |
|
That brush’d 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 |
165 |
Mere ugly heights and heaps now stolen in view. |
|
How thus they had surpris’d me,—solve it, you! |
|
How to get from them was no clearer case. |
|
|
Yet half I seem’d to recognize some trick |
|
Of mischief happen’d to me, God knows when— |
170 |
In a bad 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. |
|
|
Burningly it came on me all at once, |
175 |
This was the place! those two hills on the right, |
|
Couch’d like two bulls lock’d horn in horn in fight, |
|
While, to the left, a tall scalp’d mountain … Dunce, |
|
Dotard, a-dozing at the very nonce, |
|
After a life spent training for the sight! |
180 |
|
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 counter-part |
|
In the whole world. The tempest’s mocking elf |
|
Points to the shipman thus the unseen shelf |
185 |
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, |
190 |
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 toll’d |
|
Increasing like a bell. Names in my ears |
|
Of all the lost adventurers my peers,— |
195 |
How such a one was strong, and such was bold, |
|
And such was fortunate, yet each of old |
|
Lost, lost! one moment knell’d the woe of years. |
|
|
There they stood, ranged along the hill-sides, met |
|
To view the last of me, a living frame |
200 |
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.” |