(See Edgar's song in "LEAR.")

   I

   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.

   II

   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,        10

   And ask the road? I guessed what skull-like laugh

   Would break, what crutch 'gin write my epitaph

           For pastime in the dusty thoroughfare,

   III

   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.

   IV

   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.

   V

   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");          30

   VI

   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.

   VII

   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           40

   Their steps—that just to fail as they, seemed best,

           And all the doubt was now—should I be fit?

   VIII

   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.

   IX

   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, 'twas gone; grey plain all round:

   Nothing but plain to the horizon's bound.

           I might go on; nought else remained to do.

   X

   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.         60

   XI

   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."

   XII

   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         70

   All hope of greenness? 'tis a brute must walk

           Pashing their life out, with a brute's intents.

   XIII

   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!

   XIV

   Alive? he might be dead for aught I know,

           With that red gaunt and colloped 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.

   XV

   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.          90

   XVI

   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.

   XVII

   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         100

   Pin to his breast a parchment?  His own bands

           Read it.  Poor traitor, spit upon and curst!

   XVIII

   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.

   XIX

   A sudden little river crossed my path

           As unexpected as a serpent comes.                     110

           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.

   XX

   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.       120

   XXI

   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.

   XXII

   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                  130

   Soil to a plash? Toads in a poisoned tank,

           Or wild cats in a red-hot iron cage—

   XXIII

   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.

   XXIV

   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.

   XXV

   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.    150

   XXVI

   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.

   XXVII

   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

   Sailed past, nor beat his wide wing dragon-penned

           That brushed my cap—perchance the guide I sought.

   XXVIII

   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.

   XXIX

   Yet half I seemed to recognize some trick

           Of mischief happened to me, God knows when—          170

           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!

   XXX

   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!            180

   XXXI

   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.

   XXXII

   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!"

   XXXIII

   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.

   XXXIV

   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."

   NOTES:

   "Childe Roland" symbolizes the conquest of despair by fealty

   to the ideal. Browning emphatically disclaimed any precise

   allegorical intention in this poem.  He acknowledged

   only an ideal purport in which the significance of the

   whole, as suggesting a vision of life and the saving power

   of constancy, had its due place.  Certain picturesque

   materials which had made their impressions on the poet's

   mind contributed towards the building up of this realistic

   fantasy:  a tower he saw in the Carrara Mountains; a

   painting which caught his eye later in Paris; the figure of

   a horse in the tapestry in his own drawing-room—welded

   together with the remembrance of the line cited from

   King Lear, iii. 4, 187, which last, it should be remembered,

   has a background of ballads and legend cycles

   of which a man like Browning was not unaware.  For

   allegorical schemes of the Poem see Nettleship's "Essays

   and Thoughts," and The Critic, Apr. 24, 1886; for an

   antidote to these, The Critic, May 8, 1886; an orthodox

   view, Poet-lore, Nov. 1890: for interpretations touching

   on the ballad sources, London Browning Society Papers,

   part iii. p. 21, and Poet-lore, Aug.-Sept. 1892.