“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.”

“I had two dreams about him after he died. I dont remember the first one all that well but it was about meetin him in town somewheres and he give me some money and I think I lost it. But the second one it was like we was both back in older times and I was on horseback goin through the mountains of a night. Goin through this pass in the mountains. It was cold and there was snow on the ground and he rode past me and kept on goin. Never said nothin. He just rode on past and he had this blanket wrapped around him and he had his head down and when he rode past I seen he was carryin fire in a horn the way people used to do and I could see the horn from the light inside of it. About the color of the moon. And in the dream I knew that he was goin on ahead and that he was fixin to make a fire somewhere out there in all that dark and all that cold and I knew that whenever I got there he would be there. And then I woke up.”

“Climbing hills was never one of my great ambitions. Perhaps I was just lazy, but I admit--now that I've been climbing a hill every other day--that it's very difficult to think about the stresses in your life while you're trying to avoid falling backwards when a goat with large horns is chasing you because you came too close to the little patch of grass he was planning to eat for breakfast.”

“The Magi in my life have always surprised me. They have often been people I initially felt I had nothing in common with. Sometimes I didn't even like them. But they came bearing gifts. Of wisdom, or acceptance. One or two came to give me a kick in the pants...and some left as suddenly as they came. They returned to their respective homelands or continued on their own journeys. I miss some of them... But we all have to find our way toward what ever miracle awaits us. And to perform miracles, when it is in our power to do so. Maybe the most important question is: how do I serve the Magi for others? How generously do I give my gifts - and not just to the obvious recipients in my life? How far out of my way do go to recognize and pay homage to miracles? Not very far some days. But on good days, just far enough. ”

“One summer day I lay upon the grass. I’d sinned, no matter how, and in sin’s wake there came a kind of drowsy peace so deep I hadn’t even will enough to loathe myself. I had no mind to pray. I scarcely had a mind at all, just eyes to see the greenwood overhead, just flesh to feel the sun. A light breeze blew from Wear that tossed the trees, and as I lay there watching them, they formed a face of shadows and of leaves. It was a man’s green, leafy face. He gazed at me from high above. And as the branches nodded in the air, he opened up his mouth to speak. No sound came from his lips, but by their shape I knew it was my name. His was the holiest face I ever saw. My very name turned holy on his tongue. If he had bade me rise and follow him to the end of time, I would have gone. If he had bade me die for him, I would have died. When I deserved it least, God gave me most. I think it was the Savior’s face itself I saw.”

“[Eddie] cried out but his cry was lost in the golden blast of some tremendous horn. It came from the top of the Tower, and seemed to fill the world. As that note of warning held and drew out over the field where he stood, blackness welled from the windows which girdled the Tower. It overspilled them and spread across the sky in flaggy streams which came together and formed a growing blotch of darkness. It did not look like a cloud; it looked like a tumor hanging over the earth. The sky was blotted out. And, he saw, it was not a cloud or a tumor but a shape, some tenebrous, cyclopean shape racing toward the place where he stood.”