Men and Women (Browning)/Volume 1/Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came

by Robert Browning

"CHILDE ROLAND TO THE DARK TOWER CAME."

(See Edgar's Song in "Lear.")

1.My first thought was, he lied in every word,That hoary cripple, with malicious eyeAskance to watch the working of his lieOn mine, and mouth scarce able to affordSuppression of the glee that pursed and scoredIts edge at one more victim gained thereby.

2.What else should he be set for, with his staff?What, save to waylay with his lies, ensnare All travellers that might find him posted there,And ask the road? I guessed what skull-like laughWould break, what crutch 'gin write my epitaphFor pastime in the dusty thoroughfare,

3.If at his counsel I should turn asideInto that ominous tract which, all agree,Hides the Dark Tower. Yet acquiescinglyI did turn as he pointed; neither prideNor hope rekindling at the end descried,So much as gladness that some end should be.

4.For, what with my whole world-wide wandering,What with my search drawn out thro' years, my hopeDwindled into a ghost not fit to copeWith that obstreperous joy success would bring,—I hardly tried now to rebuke the springMy heart made, finding failure in its scope.

5. 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 o'er,” he saith,“And the blow fall'n no grieving can amend”)

6. While some discuss if near the other gravesBe 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 cravesHe may not shame such tender love and stay.

7. 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.

8. 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.

9. 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 To the safe road, ’twas gone! grey plain all round! Nothing but plain to the horizon's bound. I might go on; nought else remained to do.

10. 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.

11. 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: The Judgment's fire alone can cure this place, Calcine its clods and set my prisoners free.”

12. 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.

13. 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!

14. Alive? he might be dead for all 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.

15. 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 times sets all to rights!

16. 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 used. Alas! one night's disgrace! Out went my heart's new fire and left it cold.

17. Giles, then, the soul of honour—there he standsFrank as ten years ago when knighted first. What honest men should dare (he said) he durst. Good—but the scene shifts—faugh! what hangman's handsPin to his breast a parchment? his own bands Read it. Poor traitor, spit upon and curst!

18. 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.

19. 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.

20.So petty yet so spiteful! all along,Low scrubby alders kneeled down over it;Drenched willows flung them headlong in a fitOf mute despair, a suicidal throng:The river which had done them all the wrong,Whate'er that was, rolled by, deterred no whit.

21.Which, while I forded,—good saints, how I fearedTo set my foot upon a dead man's cheek,Each step, or feel the spear I thrust to seekFor 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.

22.Glad was I when I reached the other bank.Now for a better country. Vain presage! Who were the strugglers, what war did they wageWhose savage trample thus could pad the dankSoil to a plash? toads in a poisoned tank,Or wild cats in a red-hot iron cage—

23.The fight must so have seemed in that fell cirque.What kept them there, with all the plain to choose?No foot-print leading to that horrid mews,None out of it: mad brewage set to workTheir brains, no doubt, like galley-slaves the TurkPits for his pastime, Christians against Jews.

24.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 reelMen's bodies out like silk? with all the airOf Tophet's tool, on earth left unaware,Or brought to sharpen its rusty teeth of steel.

25.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 roodBog, clay and rubble, sand and stark black dearth.

26.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 himLike a distorted mouth that splits its rim Gaping at death, and dies while it recoils.

27. 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,Sailed past, nor beat his wide wing dragon-pennedThat brushed my cap—perchance the guide I sought.

28.For looking up, aware I somehow grew,‘Spite of the dusk, the plain had given placeAll round to mountains—with such name to graceMere ugly heights and heaps now stol’n in view.How thus they had surprised me,—solve it, you!How to get from them was no plainer case.

29.Yet half I seemed to recognise some trickOf mischief happened to me, God knows when—In a bad dream perhaps. Here ended, then,Progress this way. When, in the very nickOf giving up, one time more, came a clickAs when a trap shuts—you're inside the den!

30.Burningly it came on me all at once,This was the place! those two hills on the rightCrouched like two bulls locked horn in horn in fight—While to the left, a tall scalped mountain . . . Dunce,Fool, to be dozing at the very nonce,After a life spent training for the sight!

31.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 counterpartIn the whole world. The tempest's mocking elfPoints to the shipman thus the unseen shelfHe strikes on, only when the timbers start.

32.Not see? because of night perhaps?—Why, dayCame 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!"

33.Not hear? when noise was everywhere? it tolledIncreasing 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 oldLost, lost! one moment knelled the woe of years.

34.There they stood, ranged along the hill-sides—metTo view the last of me, a living frameFor one more picture! in a sheet of flameI saw them and I knew them all. And yetDauntless the slug-horn to my lips I setAnd blew. "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came."