The Dark Tower

The fight must so have seemed in that fell cirque,What penned them there, with all the plain to choose?No footprint 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.

XXIV

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.

XXV

Then came a bit of stubbed ground, once a wood,Next a marsh it would seem, and now mere earthDesperate and done with; (so a fool finds mirth,Makes a thing and then mars it, till his moodChanges and off he goes!) within a rood—Bog, clay and rubble, sand, and stark black dearth.

XXVI

Now blotches rankling, coloured gay and grim,Now patches where some leanness of the soil’sBroke into moss, or substances like boils;Then came some palsied oak, a cleft in him

Like a distorted mouth that splits its rimGaping at death, and dies while it recoils.

XXVII

And just as far as ever from the end!Naught in the distance but the evening, naughtTo point my footstep further! At the thought,A great black bird, Apollyon’s bosom friend,Sailed past, not best his wide wing dragon-pennedThat 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 graceMere 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 recognise some trickOf mischief happened to me, God knows when—In a bad dream perhaps. Here ended, thenProgress this way. When, in the very nickOf giving up, one time more, came a clickAs 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!

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

XXXII