Greyhawk Musings: Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came

Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came

–Robert Browning, 1855

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.

Grey Plain All Round

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; gray plain all round:
Nothing but plain to the horizon's bound,
        I might go on; naught 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 balk
All hope of greenness? 'tis a brute must walk
        Pashing their life out, with a brute's intents.

His Every Bone A-stare

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 man should dare (he said) he durst.
Good—but the scene shifts—faugh! what hangman hands
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 so 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 Serpent Comes

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.

Apollyon's Bosom-Friend

And just as far as ever from the end,
        Naught in the distance but the evening, naught
        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 recognize some trick
        Of mischief happened to me, Gods 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 thro' 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!"

The Dark Tower

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."