Now blotches rankling, colored gay and grim, Now patches where some leanness of the soil's Broke into moss or substances like boils; Then came some palsied oak, a cleft in him Like a distorted mouth that splits its rim 155 Gaping at death, and dies while it recoils. And just as far as ever from the end! Naught in the distance but the evening, naught To point my footstep further! At the thought, A great black bird, Apollyon's bosom-friend, 160 Sailed past, nor beat his wide wing dragon-penned That brushed my cap--perchance the guide I sought. For, looking up, aware I somehow grew, 'Spite of the dusk, the plain had given place All round to mountains--with such name to grace 165 Mere 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. Yet half I seemed to recognize some trick Of mischief happened to me, God knows when-- 170 In a bad dream perhaps. Here ended, then, Progress this way. When, in the very nick Of giving up, one time more, came a click As when a trap shuts--you're inside the den! Burningly it came on me all at once, 175 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! 180 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 counterpart In the whole world. The tempest's mocking elf Points to the shipman thus the unseen shelf 185 He strikes on, only when the timbers start. Not see? because of night perhaps?--why, day Came back again for that! before it left, The dying sunset kindled through a cleft; The hills, like giants at a hunting, lay, 190 Chin upon hand, to see the game at bay-- "Now stab and end the creature--to the heft!" Not hear? when noise was everywhere! it tolled Increasing like a bell. Names in my ears Of all the lost adventurers my peers-- 195 How such a one was strong, and such was bold, And such was fortunate, yet each of old Lost, lost! one moment knelled the woe of years. There they stood, ranged along the hillsides, met To view the last of me, a living frame 200 For one more picture! in a sheet of flame I saw them and I knew them all. And yet Dauntless the slug-horn to my lips I set, And blew. "_Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came._" HOW IT STRIKES A CONTEMPORARY