Selected Poems (Penguin Classics) (11 page)

Heard failure prophesied so oft, been writ

So many times among ‘The Band’ – to wit,

[40] 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

[50] Pledged to the plain, after a pace or two,

Than, pausing to throw backward 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,

[60] 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

[70] In the dock’s harsh swarth leaves, bruised as to balk

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,

[80] 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.

XV

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:

[90] One taste of the old time sets all to rights.

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.

[100] 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

[110] 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,

[120] 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 stragglers, what war did they wage,

[130] 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!

[140] 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

[150] 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!

Naught in the distance but the evening, naught

To point my footstep further! At the thought,

[160] 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 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

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,

[180] 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:

[190] 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

[200] 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
.’

The Statue and the Bust

There’s a palace in Florence, the world knows well,

And a statue watches it from the square,

And this story of both do our townsmen tell.

Ages ago, a lady there,

At the farthest window facing the East

Asked, ‘Who rides by with the royal air?’

The bridesmaids’ prattle around her ceased;

She leaned forth, one on either hand;

They saw how the blush of the bride increased –

[10] They felt by its beats her heart expand –

As one at each ear and both in a breath

Whispered, ‘The Great-Duke Ferdinand.’

That self-same instant, underneath,

The Duke rode past in his idle way,

Empty and fine like a swordless sheath.

Gay he rode, with a friend as gay,

Till he threw his head back – ‘Who is she?’

– ‘A bride the Riccardi brings home today.’

Hair in heaps lay heavily

[20] Over a pale brow spirit-pure –

Carved like the heart of the coal-black tree,

Crisped like a war-steed’s encolure –

And vainly sought to dissemble her eyes

Of the blackest black our eyes endure.

And lo, a blade for a knight’s emprise

Filled the fine empty sheath of a man, –

The Duke grew straightway brave and wise.

He looked at her, as a lover can;

She looked at him, as one who awakes:

[30] The past was a sleep, and her life began.

Now, love so ordered for both their sakes,

A feast was held that selfsame night

In the pile which the mighty shadow makes.

(For Via Larga is three-parts light,

But the palace overshadows one,

Because of a crime which may God requite!

To Florence and God the wrong was done,

Through the first republic’s murder there

By Cosimo and his cursèd son.)

[40] The Duke (with the statue’s face in the square)

Turned in the midst of his multitude

At the bright approach of the bridal pair.

Face to face the lovers stood

A single minute and no more,

While the bridegroom bent as a man subdued –

Bowed till his bonnet brushed the floor –

For the Duke on the lady a kiss conferred,

As the courtly custom was of yore.

In a minute can lovers exchange a word?

[50] If a word did pass, which I do not think,

Only one out of the thousand heard.

That was the bridegroom. At day’s brink

He and his bride were alone at last

In a bedchamber by a taper’s blink.

Calmly he said that her lot was cast,

That the door she had passed was shut on her

Till the final catafalque repassed.

The world meanwhile, its noise and stir,

Through a certain window facing the East,

[60] She could watch like a convent’s chronicler.

Since passing the door might lead to a feast,

And a feast might lead to so much beside,

He, of many evils, chose the least.

‘Freely I choose too,’ said the bride –

‘Your window and its world suffice,’

Replied the tongue, while the heart replied –

‘If I spend the night with that devil twice,

May his window serve as my loop of hell