“how sad and bad and mad it was - but then, how it was sweet”

“I know what I want and what I might gain, and yet, how profitless to know.”

“What a name! Was it love or praise?Speech half-asleep or song half-awake?I must learn Spanish, one of these days,Only for that slow sweet name's sake.”

“How well I know what I mean to doWhen the long dark Autumn evenings come,And where, my soul, is thy pleasant hue?With the music of all thy voices, dumbIn life’s November too!I shall be found by the fire, suppose,O’er a great wise book as beseemeth age,While the shutters flap as the cross-wind blows,And I turn the page, and I turn the page,Not verse now, only prose!”

“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 reelMen's bodies out like silk? With all the airOf Tophet's tool, on earth left unawareOr 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 earthDesperate and done with; (so a fool finds mirth,Makes a thing and then mars it, till his moodChanges 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'sBroke into moss, or substances like boils;Then came some palsied oak, a cleft in himLike a distorted mouth that splits its rimGaping at death, and dies while it recoils.XXVII.And just as far as ever from the end!Naught in the distance but the evening, naughtTo point my footstep further! At the thought,A great black bird, Apollyon's bosom friend,Sailed past, not best his wide wing dragon-pennedThat brushed my cap - perchance the guide I sought.XXVIII.For, looking up, aware I somehow grew,Spite of the dusk, the plain had given placeAll round to mountains - with such name to graceMere 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 trickOf mischief happened to me, God knows when -In a bad dream perhaps. Here ended, thenProgress this way. When, in the very nickOf giving up, one time more, came a clickAs 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 counterpartIn the whole world. The tempest's mocking elfPoints to the shipman thus the unseen shelfHe strikes on, only when the timbers start.XXXII.Not see? because of night perhaps? - why dayCame back again for that! before it leftThe 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 tolledIncreasing like a bell. Names in my earsOf all the lost adventurers, my peers -How such a one was strong, and such was bold,And such was fortunate, yet each of oldLost, lost! one moment knelled the woe of years.XXXIV.There they stood, ranged along the hillsides, metTo view the last of me, a living frameFor one more picture! In a sheet of flameI saw them and I knew them all. And yetDauntless the slug-horn to my lips I set,And blew. 'Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came.”

“... Such a scribe you pay and praise for putting life in stones,Fire into fog, making the past your world.There's plenty of 'How did you contrive to graspThe thread which led you through this labyrinth?How build such solid fabric out of air?How on so slight foundation found this tale,Biography, narrative?' or, in other words,How many lies did it require to makeThe portly truth you here present us with?”

“XII.If there pushed any ragged thistle-stalkAbove its mates, the head was chopped, the bentsWere jealous else. What made those holes and rentsIn the dock's harsh swarth leaves, bruised as to baulkAll hope of greenness? Tis a brute must walkPashing their life out, with a brute's intents.XIII.As for the grass, it grew as scant as hairIn leprosy; thin dry blades pricked the mudWhich underneath looked kneaded up with blood.One stiff blind horse, his every bone a-stare,Stood stupified, however he came there:Thrust out past service from the devil's stud!XIV.Alive? he might be dead for aught I knew,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:One taste of the old time sets all to rights.XVI.Not it! I fancied Cuthbert's reddening faceBeneath its garniture of curly gold,Dear fellow, till I almost felt him foldAn arm to mine to fix me to the place,The 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 standsFrank as ten years ago when knighted first,What honest man should dare (he said) he durst.Good - but the scene shifts - faugh! what hangman handsPin to his breast a parchment? His own bandsRead 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 flatCame to arrest my thoughts and change their train.XIX.A sudden little river crossed my pathAs unexpected as a serpent comes.No sluggish tide congenial to the glooms;This, as it frothed by, might have been a bathFor the fiend's glowing hoof - to see the wrathOf 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 fitOf 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 fearedTo set my foot upon a dead man's cheek,Each step, of feel the spear I thrust to seekFor 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 danksoil to a plash? Toads in a poisoned tankOr 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 footprint leading to that horrid mews,None out of it. Mad brewage set to workTheir brains, no doubt, like galley-slaves the TurkPits for his pastime, Christians against Jews. ”