“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. ”

“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.”

“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.”

“While I was looking into Olivia's mad eyes and dreaming, my son left his game and his place by the fire. I didn't even notice as he went toward what I had thought was a bundle of rags. I didn't notice as he turned it over and drew back the blanket, lifted it carefully in his small arms.I only noticed when he spoke."Look, Daddy!"Then, too late, I turned around. I did not know what I was seeing, but even then I felt a sudden lurch of shock and dread. I felt as if I had looked away at a crucial moment and my child had fallen into the fire and been burned horribly.I saw my son, my Alan, my darling boy, and in his arms a creature with staring, terrible black eyes. Something that had not stirred or cried out even when Olivia threw it on the floor."Daddy," Alan said, glowing. "It's a baby.”

“We ran back, he first and I following him, between the beds and downstairs, and we picked up an armful of wood from the pile by the wall and the knife for whittling and ran up again, we couldn’t be quick enough. He knelt down in front of the stove, and it wasn’t long before he had done the trick again. Outside the window it was night now, and the wind blew vaporous white milk against the panes, milk over the forest and the fjord, but in here there were just the two of us and the stoves and the sound of wood burning behind the black iron and sending waves of heat out into the rooms and into the walls and timbers that sucked it in. I smelt the scent of wood growing warm, and it made me as white in my head as the whirling night outside, and hungry. We stood in the kitchen with our coats on eating the contents of two tins with one spoon we took it in turns to use, and we laughed, I didn’t even notice what I was eating. Soon it was warm enough for us to take off some clothes, his overcoat and my coat, and while he hung his on a hook, I let mine fall to the floor. I took off the sweater I wore underneath and dropped that on the floor too, I unbuttoned my blouse and still felt the cold against my neck. But the heat rose to the ceiling and up to the first floor and there was another stove there. Then I calmly walked across the room and upstairs with his eyes on my back, and at first he stood still, and then he followed, and when he got to the top my blouse was off and my stockings on the floor. I slowly turned round and stood there, me inside my skin, while he was fully clothed, and I cleared my head of every thought I had ever had and let them sink out into my skin till it was painfully taut and shinning all over my body, and he saw it and did not know what it was he saw. I put my arms round my back and unfastened my bra and slid the straps over my shoulders, and I thought he might be going to weep, but his voice sounded hoarse as he whispered:“You’re lovely,” and I answered “Yes”, and didn’t know if that was true. But it did not matter, for I knew what I wanted and what to say, and his hands were as I’d thought they would be, his skins as soft and his body as hard, and it was so warm around us, and the whole time I smelt the dampness of the bedclothes like the ones at Vrangbæk, and then I just shut my eyes and floated away.”

“I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.”

“From his soft fur, golden and brown, Goes out so sweet a scent, one night I might have been embalmed in it By giving him one little pet. He is my household's guardian soul; He judges, he presides, inspires All matters in his royal realm; Might he be fairy? or a god? When my eyes, to this cat I love Drawn as by a magnet's force, Turn tamely back upon that appeal, And when I look within myself, I notice with astonishment The fire of his opal eyes, Clear beacons glowing, living jewels, Taking my measure, steadily.”