|
| 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 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.” | |
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