Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came!
- This is the poem that inspired Stephen King to write The Dark Tower
- Original Text: Robert Browning, Men and Women, 2 vols. (1855.) Rev. 1863.
- First Publication Date: 1855.
- Representative Poetry On-line: Editor, I. Lancashire; Publisher, Web Development Group, Inf.
Tech. Services, Univ. of Toronto Lib.
- Edition: 3RP 3.146. © F. E. L. Priestley and I. Lancashire, Dept. of English (Univ. of
Toronto), and Univ. of Toronto Press 1997.
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 o'er," 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 Tower's 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
O'er 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.
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.
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:
'Tis the Last
Judgment's 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 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.
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 devil's 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 soldier's
art:
One taste of the old time sets all to rights.
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.
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 fiend's 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,
Whate'er that was, rolled by, deterred no
whit.
Which, while I forded,--good saints, how I feared
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 speared,
But, ugh! it sounded like a baby's
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
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 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
soil's
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, Apollyon's
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--you're 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
fool's heart
Built of brown stone, without a counterpart
In the whole world. The tempest's
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."
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