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

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.

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.

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
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,

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.

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,
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 recognise some trick

Of mischief happened to me, God knows whenIn 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!

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,
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

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.”

END OF VOL. III.