1. ۱My first thought was, he lied in every word,
2. ۲ That hoary cripple, with malicious eye
3. ۳ Askance to watch the working of his lie
4. ۴On mine, and mouth scarce able to afford
5. ۵Suppression of the glee, that pursed and scored
6. ۶ Its edge, at one more victim gained thereby.
7. ۷
8. ۸What else should he be set for, with his staff?
9. ۹ What, save to waylay with his lies, ensnare
10. ۱۰ All travellers who might find him posted there,
11. ۱۱And ask the road? I guessed what skull-like laugh
12. ۱۲Would break, what crutch 'gin write my epitaph
13. ۱۳ For pastime in the dusty thoroughfare,
14. ۱۴
15. ۱۵If at his counsel I should turn aside
16. ۱۶ Into that ominous tract which, all agree,
17. ۱۷ Hides the Dark Tower. Yet acquiescingly
18. ۱۸I did turn as he pointed: neither pride
19. ۱۹Nor hope rekindling at the end descried.
20. ۲۰ So much as gladness that some end might be.
21. ۲۱
22. ۲۲For, what with my whole world-wide wandering,
23. ۲۳ What, with my search drawn out thro' years, my hope
24. ۲۴ Dwindled into a ghost not fit to cope
25. ۲۵With that obstreperous joy success would bring,--
26. ۲۶I hardly tried now to rebuke the spring
27. ۲۷ My heart made, finding failure in its scope.
28. ۲۸
29. ۲۹As when a sick man very near to death
30. ۳۰ Seems dead indeed, and feels begin and end
31. ۳۱ The tears, and takes the farewell of each friend,
32. ۳۲And hears one bid the other go, draw breath
33. ۳۳Freelier outside, ("since all is o'er," he saith,
34. ۳۴ "And the blow fallen no grieving can amend;")
35. ۳۵
36. ۳۶While some discuss if near the other graves
37. ۳۷ Be room enough for this, and when a day
38. ۳۸ Suits best for carrying the corpse away,
39. ۳۹With care about the banners, scarves, and staves:
40. ۴۰And still the man hears all, and only craves
41. ۴۱ He may not shame such tender love and stay.
42. ۴۲
43. ۴۳Thus, I had so long suffered in this quest,
44. ۴۴ Heard failure prophesied so oft, been writ
45. ۴۵ So many times among "The Band"--to wit,
46. ۴۶The knights who to the Dark Tower's search addressed
47. ۴۷Their steps--that just to fail as they, seemed best,
48. ۴۸ And all the doubt was now--should I be fit?
49. ۴۹
50. ۵۰So, quiet as despair, I turned from him,
51. ۵۱ That hateful cripple, out of his highway
52. ۵۲ Into the path he pointed. All the day
53. ۵۳Had been a dreary one at best, and dim
54. ۵۴Was settling to its close, yet shot one grim
55. ۵۵ Red leer to see the plain catch its estray.
56. ۵۶
57. ۵۷For mark! no sooner was I fairly found
58. ۵۸ Pledged to the plain, after a pace or two,
59. ۵۹ Than, pausing to throw backward a last view
60. ۶۰O'er the safe road, 'twas gone; gray plain all round:
61. ۶۱Nothing but plain to the horizon's bound,
62. ۶۲ I might go on; naught else remained to do.
63. ۶۳
64. ۶۴So, on I went. I think I never saw
65. ۶۵ Such starved ignoble nature; nothing throve:
66. ۶۶ For flowers--as well expect a cedar grove!
67. ۶۷But cockle, spurge, according to their law
68. ۶۸Might propagate their kind, with none to awe,
69. ۶۹ You'd think; a burr had been a treasure trove.
70. ۷۰
71. ۷۱No! penury, inertness, and grimace,
72. ۷۲ In some strange sort, were the land's portion. "See
73. ۷۳ Or shut your eyes," said Nature peevishly,
74. ۷۴"It nothing skills: I cannot help my case:
75. ۷۵'Tis the Last Judgment's fire must cure this place,
76. ۷۶ Calcine its clods and set my prisoners free."
77. ۷۷
78. ۷۸If there pushed any ragged thistle-stalk
79. ۷۹ Above its mates, the head was chopped; the bents
80. ۸۰ Were jealous else. What made those holes and rents
81. ۸۱In the dock's harsh swarth leaves, bruised as to balk
82. ۸۲All hope of greenness? 'tis a brute must walk
83. ۸۳ Pashing their life out, with a brute's intents.
84. ۸۴
85. ۸۵As for the grass, it grew as scant as hair
86. ۸۶ In leprosy; thin dry blades pricked the mud
87. ۸۷ Which underneath looked kneaded up with blood.
88. ۸۸One stiff blind horse, his every bone a-stare,
89. ۸۹Stood stupefied, however he came there:
90. ۹۰ Thrust out past service from the devil's stud!
91. ۹۱
92. ۹۲Alive? he might be dead for aught I know,
93. ۹۳ With that red gaunt and colloped neck a-strain,
94. ۹۴ And shut eyes underneath the rusty mane;
95. ۹۵Seldom went such grotesqueness with such woe;
96. ۹۶I never saw a brute I hated so;
97. ۹۷ He must be wicked to deserve such pain.
98. ۹۸
99. ۹۹I shut my eyes and turned them on my heart.
100. ۱۰۰ As a man calls for wine before he fights,
101. ۱۰۱ I asked one draught of earlier, happier sights,
102. ۱۰۲Ere fitly I could hope to play my part.
103. ۱۰۳Think first, fight afterwards--the soldier's art:
104. ۱۰۴ One taste of the old time sets all to rights.
105. ۱۰۵
106. ۱۰۶Not it! I fancied Cuthbert's reddening face
107. ۱۰۷ Beneath its garniture of curly gold,
108. ۱۰۸ Dear fellow, till I almost felt him fold
109. ۱۰۹An arm in mine to fix me to the place,
110. ۱۱۰That way he used. Alas, one night's disgrace!
111. ۱۱۱ Out went my heart's new fire and left it cold.
112. ۱۱۲
113. ۱۱۳Giles then, the soul of honour--there he stands
114. ۱۱۴ Frank as ten years ago when knighted first.
115. ۱۱۵ What honest man should dare (he said) he durst.
116. ۱۱۶Good--but the scene shifts--faugh! what hangman hands
117. ۱۱۷Pin to his ... a parchment? His own bands
118. ۱۱۸ Read it. Poor traitor, spit upon and curst!
119. ۱۱۹
120. ۱۲۰Better this present than a past like that;
121. ۱۲۱ Back therefore to my darkening path again!
122. ۱۲۲ No sound, no sight so far as eye could strain.
123. ۱۲۳Will the night send a howlet or a bat?
124. ۱۲۴I asked: when something on the dismal flat
125. ۱۲۵ Came to arrest my thoughts and change their train.
126. ۱۲۶
127. ۱۲۷A sudden little river crossed my path
128. ۱۲۸ As unexpected as a serpent comes.
129. ۱۲۹ No sluggish tide congenial to the glooms;
130. ۱۳۰This, as it frothed by, might have been a bath
131. ۱۳۱For the fiend's glowing hoof--to see the wrath
132. ۱۳۲ Of its black eddy bespate with flakes and spumes.
133. ۱۳۳
134. ۱۳۴So petty, yet so spiteful! All along,
135. ۱۳۵ Low scrubby alders kneeled down over it;
136. ۱۳۶ Drenched willows flung them headlong in a fit
137. ۱۳۷Of mute despair, a suicidal throng:
138. ۱۳۸The river which had done them all the wrong,
139. ۱۳۹ Whate'er that was, rolled by, deterred no whit.
140. ۱۴۰
141. ۱۴۱Which, while I forded,--good saints, how I feared
142. ۱۴۲ To set my foot upon a dead man's cheek,
143. ۱۴۳ Each step, or feel the spear I thrust to seek
144. ۱۴۴For hollows, tangled in his hair or beard!
145. ۱۴۵--It may have been a water-rat I speared,
146. ۱۴۶ But, ugh! it sounded like a baby's shriek.
147. ۱۴۷
148. ۱۴۸Glad was I when I reached the other bank.
149. ۱۴۹ Now for a better country. Vain presage!
150. ۱۵۰ Who were the strugglers, what war did they wage
151. ۱۵۱Whose savage trample thus could pad the dank
152. ۱۵۲Soil to a plash? Toads in a poisoned tank,
153. ۱۵۳ Or wild cats in a red-hot iron cage--
154. ۱۵۴
155. ۱۵۵The fight must so have seemed in that fell cirque.
156. ۱۵۶ What penned them there, with all the plain, to choose?
157. ۱۵۷ No foot-print leading to that horrid mews,
158. ۱۵۸None out of it. Mad brewage set to work
159. ۱۵۹Their brains, no doubt, like galley-slaves the Turk
160. ۱۶۰ Pits for his pastime, Christians against Jews.
161. ۱۶۱
162. ۱۶۲And more than that--a furlong on--why, there!
163. ۱۶۳ What bad use was that engine for, that wheel,
164. ۱۶۴ Or brake, not wheel--that harrow fit to reel
165. ۱۶۵Men's bodies out like silk? with all the air
166. ۱۶۶Of Tophet's tool, on earth left unaware,
167. ۱۶۷ Or brought to sharpen its rusty teeth of steel.
168. ۱۶۸
169. ۱۶۹Then came a bit of stubbed ground, once a wood,
170. ۱۷۰ Next a marsh, it would seem, and now mere earth
171. ۱۷۱ Desperate and done with; (so a fool finds mirth,
172. ۱۷۲Makes a thing and then mars it, till his mood
173. ۱۷۳Changes, and off he goes!) within a rood--
174. ۱۷۴ Bog, clay, and rubble, sand, and stark black dearth.
175. ۱۷۵
176. ۱۷۶Now blotches rankling, coloured ... and grim,
177. ۱۷۷ Now patches where some leanness of the soil's
178. ۱۷۸ Broke into moss or substances like boils;
179. ۱۷۹Then came some palsied oak, a cleft in him
180. ۱۸۰Like a distorted mouth that splits its rim
181. ۱۸۱ Gaping at death, and dies while it recoils.
182. ۱۸۲
183. ۱۸۳And just as far as ever from the end,
184. ۱۸۴ Naught in the distance but the evening, naught
185. ۱۸۵ To point my footstep further! At the thought,
186. ۱۸۶A great black bird, Apollyon's bosom-friend,
187. ۱۸۷Sailed past, nor beat his wide wing dragon-penned
188. ۱۸۸ That brushed my cap--perchance the guide I sought.
189. ۱۸۹
190. ۱۹۰For, looking up, aware I somehow grew,
191. ۱۹۱ 'Spite of the dusk, the plain had given place
192. ۱۹۲ All round to mountains--with such name to grace
193. ۱۹۳Mere ugly heights and heaps now stolen in view.
194. ۱۹۴How thus they had surprised me,--solve it, you!
195. ۱۹۵ How to get from them was no clearer case.
196. ۱۹۶
197. ۱۹۷Yet half I seemed to recognize some trick
198. ۱۹۸ Of mischief happened to me, Gods knows when--
199. ۱۹۹ In a bad dream, perhaps. Here ended, then,
200. ۲۰۰Progress this way. When, in the very nick
201. ۲۰۱Of giving up, one time more, came a click
202. ۲۰۲ As when a trap shuts--you're inside the den.
203. ۲۰۳
204. ۲۰۴Burningly it came on me all at once,
205. ۲۰۵ This was the place! those two hills on the right,
206. ۲۰۶ Crouched like two bulls locked horn in horn in fight;
207. ۲۰۷While, to the left, a tall scalped mountain ... Dunce,
208. ۲۰۸Dotard, a-dozing at the very nonce,
209. ۲۰۹ After a life spent training for the sight!
210. ۲۱۰
211. ۲۱۱What in the midst lay but the Tower itself?
212. ۲۱۲ The round squat turret, blind as the fool's heart,
213. ۲۱۳ Built of brown stone, without a counterpart
214. ۲۱۴In the whole world. The tempest's mocking elf
215. ۲۱۵Points to the shipman thus the unseen shelf
216. ۲۱۶ He strikes on, only when the timbers start.
217. ۲۱۷
218. ۲۱۸Not see? because of night perhaps?--why, day
219. ۲۱۹ Came back again for that! before it left,
220. ۲۲۰ The dying sunset kindled thro' a cleft:
221. ۲۲۱The hills, like giants at a hunting, lay,
222. ۲۲۲Chin upon hand, to see the game at bay,
223. ۲۲۳ "Now stab and end the creature--to the heft!"
224. ۲۲۴
225. ۲۲۵Not hear? when noise was everywhere! it tolled
226. ۲۲۶ Increasing like a bell. Names in my ears,
227. ۲۲۷ Of all the lost adventurers my peers,--
228. ۲۲۸How such a one was strong, and such was bold,
229. ۲۲۹And such was fortunate, yet each of old
230. ۲۳۰ Lost, lost! one moment knelled the woe of years.
231. ۲۳۱
232. ۲۳۲There they stood, ranged along the hillsides, met
233. ۲۳۳ To view the last of me, a living frame
234. ۲۳۴ For one more picture! in a sheet of flame
235. ۲۳۵I saw them and I knew them all. And yet
236. ۲۳۶Dauntless the slug-horn to my lips I set,
237. ۲۳۷ And blew. "_Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came._"