The Dark Tower

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;’)

VI

When 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

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,

Than, pausing to throw backwards 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, naught 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.

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 Judgement’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

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.

And shut eyes underneath the rusty mane;

Seldom went such grotesqueness with such woe;

I never saw a brute I hated so;