“What if all's appearance? Is not outside seeming real as substance inside? Both are facts, so leave me dreaming.”

“ Life In LoveEscape me?Never---Beloved!While I am I, and you are you,So long as the world contains us both,Me the loving and you the lothWhile the one eludes, must the other pursue.My life is a fault at last, I fear:It seems too much like a fate, indeed!Though I do my best I shall scarce succeed.But what if I fail of my purpose here?It is but to keep the nerves at strain,To dry one's eyes and laugh at a fall,And, baffled, get up and begin again,---So the chace takes up one's life ' that's all.While, look but once from your farthest boundAt me so deep in the dust and dark,No sooner the old hope goes to groundThan a new one, straight to the self-same mark,I shape me---EverRemoved!”

“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.”

“All June, I bound the rose in sheaves.Now, rose by rose, I strip the leaves,And strew them where Pauline may pass.She will not turn aside? Alas!Let them lie. Suppose they die?The chance was they might take her eye.How many a month I strove to suitThese stubborn fingers to the lute!To-day I venture all I know.She will not hear my music? So!Break the string -- fold music's wing.Suppose Pauline had bade me sing!My whole life long I learned to love. This hour my utmost art I prove And speak my passion. -- Heaven or hell? She will not give me heaven? 'Tis well! Lose who may -- I still can say, Those who win heaven, blest are they.”

“As is your sort of mind,So is your sort of search:You will find what you desire.”

“Out of your whole life give but a moment!All of your life that has gone before,All to come after it, -so you ignore,So you make perfect the present, condense,In a rapture of rage, for perfection's endowment,Thought and feeling and soul and sense. ”

“I.My first thought was, he lied in every word,That hoary cripple, with malicious eyeAskance to watch the workings of his lieOn mine, and mouth scarce able to affordSuppression of the glee, that pursed and scoredIts edge, at one more victim gained thereby.II.What else should he be set for, with his staff?What, save to waylay with his lies, ensnareAll travellers who might find him posted there,And ask the road? I guessed what skull-like laughWould break, what crutch 'gin write my epitaphFor pastime in the dusty thoroughfare.III.If at his counsel I should turn asideInto that ominous tract which, all agree,Hides the Dark Tower. Yet acquiescinglyI did turn as he pointed, neither prideNow hope rekindling at the end descried,So much as gladness that some end might be.IV.For, what with my whole world-wide wandering,What with my search drawn out through years, my hopeDwindled into a ghost not fit to copeWith that obstreperous joy success would bring,I hardly tried now to rebuke the springMy heart made, finding failure in its scope.V.As when a sick man very near to deathSeems dead indeed, and feels begin and endThe tears and takes the farewell of each friend,And hears one bit the other go, draw breathFreelier outside, ('since all is o'er,' he saithAnd the blow fallen no grieving can amend;')VI.When some discuss if near the other gravesbe room enough for this, and when a daySuits best for carrying the corpse away,With care about the banners, scarves and stavesAnd still the man hears all, and only cravesHe may not shame such tender love and stay.VII.Thus, I had so long suffered in this quest,Heard failure prophesied so oft, been writSo many times among 'The Band' to wit,The knights who to the Dark Tower's search addressedTheir 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 highwayInto the path he pointed. All the dayHad been a dreary one at best, and dimWas settling to its close, yet shot one grimRed leer to see the plain catch its estray.IX.For mark! No sooner was I fairly foundPledged to the plain, after a pace or two,Than, pausing to throw backwards a last viewO'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 sawSuch starved ignoble nature; nothing throve:For flowers - as well expect a cedar grove!But cockle, spurge, according to their lawMight propagate their kind with none to awe,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. 'SeeOr shut your eyes,' said Nature peevishly,It nothing skills: I cannot help my case:Tis the Last Judgement's fire must cure this placeCalcine its clods and set my prisoners free.”