The Norton Anthology of English literature. Volume 2

4. A bitter-juiced weed. "Cockle": a weed that 6. Turn to powder by heat. bears burrs. 7. Coarse stiff grasses. 5. I.e., it is no use.

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"CHILDE ROLAND TO THE DARK TOWER CAME" / 126 9

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.

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Giles then, the soul of honor�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 cursed!

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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? mvl I asked: when something on the dismal flat Came to arrest my thoughts and change their train.

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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 bespate0 with flakes and spumes. bespattered

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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.

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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.

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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, puddle Or wild cats in a red-hot iron cage�

23 The fight must so have seemed in that fell cirque.0 dreadful arena What penned them there, with all the plain to choose?

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1270 / ROBERT BROWNING

135 No footprint leading to that horrid mews,8 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.

M And more than that�a furlong on�why, there! 140 What bad use was that engine for, that wheel, Or brake,9 not wheel�that harrow fit to reel Men's bodies out like silk? with all the air Of Tophet's0 tool, on earth left unaware, hell's Or brought to sharpen its rusty teeth of steel.

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145 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 rood1 150 Bog, clay and rubble, sand and stark black dearth.

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Now blotches rankling, colored 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 155 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! Naught in the distance but the evening, naught To point my footstep further! At the thought,

160 A great black bird, Apollyon's2 bosom friend, Sailed past, nor beat his wide wing dragon-penned3 That brushed my cap�perchance the guide I sought.

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For, looking up, aware I somehow grew, 'Spite of the dusk, the plain had given place

165 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.

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Yet half I seemed to recognize some trick 170 Of mischief happened to me, God knows when� In a bad dream perhaps. Here ended, then, Progress this way. When, in the very nick

8. Enclosed stable yard. 2. In Revelation 9.11 Apollyon is "the angel of the 9. A toothed machine used for separating the bottomless pit." In Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress fibers of flax or hemp; here an instrument of tor-(1678) he is a hideous "monster"; "he had wings ture. like a dragon." 1. I.e., a short distance (6�8 yards). 3. With wings or pinions like those of a dragon.

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FRA LIPPO LIPPI / 1271

Of giving up, one time more, came a click As when a trap shuts�you're inside the den!

3� 175 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,0 moment iso After a life spent training for the sight!

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What in the midst lay but the Tower itself? The round squat turret, blind as the fool's heart,"1 Built of brown stone, without a counterpart

In the whole world. The tempest's mocking elf 185 Points to the shipman thus the unseen shelf He strikes on, only when the timbers start.0 separate; come loose

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