Be room enough for this, and when a day

Suits best for carrying the corpse away,

With care about the banners, scarves and staves:

And still the man hears all, and only craves

He may not shame such tender love and stay.

Thus, I had so long suffered in this quest,

Heard failure prophesied so oft, been writ

So many times among “The Band” — 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?

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.

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

O’er the safe road, ’twas gone; gray plain all round:

Nothing but plain to the horizon’s bound.

I might go on; naught else remained to do.

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,

You’d think: a burr had been a treasure trove.

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 Judgment’s fire must cure this place,

Calcine its clods and set my prisoners free”.

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 balk

All hope of greenness? ’tis a brute must walk

Pashing their life out, with a brute’s intents.

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!

Alive? he might be dead for aught 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.

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 time sets all to rights.

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.

Giles then, the soul of honor — there he stands

Frank as ten years ago when knighted first.

What honest man should dare (he said) lie 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!

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.

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.

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,