7.

Thus, I had so long suffered in this quest,
Heard failure prophesied so oft, been writ

So many times

"The Band" among

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.

8.

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.

9.

For mark! no sooner was I fairly found
Pledged to the plain, after a pace or two,
Than pausing to throw backward a last view
To the safe road, 'twas gone! gray plain all round!
Nothing but plain to the horizon's bound.
I might go on; nought else remained to do.

10.

So on I went. I think I never saw

Such starved ignoble nature; nothing throve:

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.

11.

No! penury, inertness, and grimace,

In some strange sort, were the land's portion.

دو

Or shut your eyes said Nature peevishly —
"It nothing skills: I cannot help my case:
The Judgment's fire alone can cure this place,
Calcine its clods and set my prisoners free."

"See

12.

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.

13.

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!

14.

Alive? he might be dead for all 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

He must be wicked to deserve such pain.

15.

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 times sets all to rights!

16.

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.

17.

Giles, then, the soul of honour - there he stands Frank as ten years ago when knighted first.

What honest men should dare (he said) he durst. - faugh! what hangman's

Good but the scene shifts

Pin to his breast a parchment? his own hands

Read it. Poor traitor, spit upon and curst!

[hands

18.

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.

19.

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.

20.

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.

21.

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.

22.

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 redhot iron cage

23.

The fight must so have seemed in that fell cirque. What kept 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.

24.

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