Mary's Christmas

My first thought was, he lied in every word,          That hoary cripple, with malicious eye         Askance to watch the working of his lie On mine, and mouth scarce able to afford Suppression of the glee, that pursed and scored          Its edge, at one more victim gained thereby. What else should he be set for, with his staff?          What, save to waylay with his lies, ensnare          All travellers who might find him posted there, And ask the road? I guessed what skull-like laugh Would break, what crutch 'gin write my epitaph          For pastime in the dusty thoroughfare, If at his counsel I should turn aside         Into that ominous tract which, all agree,         Hides the Dark Tower. Yet acquiescingly I did turn as he pointed: neither pride Nor hope rekindling at the end descried.         So much as gladness that some end might be. For, what with my whole world-wide wandering,          What, with my search drawn out thro' years, my hope          Dwindled into a ghost not fit to cope With that obstreperous joy success would bring,— I hardly tried now to rebuke the spring          My heart made, finding failure in its scope. As when a sick man very near to death         Seems dead indeed, and feels begin and end         The tears, and takes the farewell of each friend, And hears one bid the other go, draw breath Freelier outside, ("since all is o'er," he saith,         "And the blow fallen no grieving can amend;") While some discuss if near the other graves          Be room enough for this, and when a day         Suits best for carrying the corpse away, With care about the banners, scarves, and staves: And still the man hears all, and only craves          He may not shame such tender love and stay. Thus, I had so long suffered in this quest,         Heard failure prophesied so oft, been writ         So many times among "The Band"—to wit, The knights who to the Dark Tower's search addressed Their steps—that just to fail as they, seemed best,         And all the doubt was now—should I be fit? So, quiet as despair, I turned from him,         That hateful cripple, out of his highway         Into the path he pointed. All the day Had been a dreary one at best, and dim Was settling to its close, yet shot one grim         Red leer to see the plain catch its estray. For mark! no sooner was I fairly found         Pledged to the plain, after a pace or two,         Than, pausing to throw backward a last view O'er the safe road, 'twas gone; gray plain all round: Nothing but plain to the horizon's bound,         I might go on; naught else remained to do. So, on I went. I think I never saw         Such starved ignoble nature; nothing throve:         For flowers—as well expect a cedar grove! But cockle, spurge, according to their law Might propagate their kind, with none to awe,         You'd think; a burr had been a treasure trove. No! penury, inertness, and grimace,         In some strange sort, were the land's portion. "See         Or shut your eyes," said Nature peevishly, "It nothing skills: I cannot help my case: 'Tis the Last Judgment's fire must cure this place, Calcine its clods and set my prisonersº free." If there pushed any ragged thistle-stalk         Above its mates, the head was chopped; the bentsº         Were jealous else. What made those holes and rents In the dock's harsh swarth leaves, bruised as° to balk All hope of greenness? 'tis a brute must walk         Pashing their life out, with a brute's intents. As for the grass, it grew as scant as hair         In leprosy; thin dry blades pricked the mud         Which underneath looked kneaded up with blood. One stiff blind horse, his every bone a-stare, Stood stupefied, however he came there: Thrust out past service from the devil's stud! Alive? he might be dead for aught I know,         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. 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. Not it°! I fancied Cuthbert's reddening face         Beneath its garniture of curly gold,         Dear fellow, till I almost felt him fold An arm in mine to fix me to the place, That way he used. Alas, one night's disgrace!         Out went my heart's new fire and left it cold. Giles then, the soul of honour—there he stands         Frank as ten years ago when knighted first.         What honest man should dare (he said) he durst. Good—but the scene shifts—faugh! what hangman hands Pin to his breast a parchment? His own bands         Read it. Poor traitor, spit upon and curst! Better this present than a past like that;         Back therefore to my darkening path again!         No sound, no sight so far as eye could strain. Will the night send a howletº or a bat? I asked: when something on the dismal flat         Came to arrest my thoughts and change their train. A sudden little river crossed my path         As unexpected as a serpent comes.         No sluggish tide congenial to the glooms; This, as it frothed by, might have been a bath For the fiend's glowing hoof—to see the wrath         Of its black eddy bespateº with flakes and spumes. So petty, yet so spiteful! All along,         Low scrubby alders kneeled down over it;         Drenched willows flung them headlong in a fit Of mute despair, a suicidal throng: The river which had done them all the wrong,         Whate'er that was, rolled by, deterred no whit. Which, while I forded,—good saints, how I feared         To set my foot upon a dead man's cheek,         Each step, or feel the spear I thrust to seek For 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. 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 dank Soil to a plash? Toads in a poisoned tank,         Or wild cats in a red-hot iron cage— The fight must so have seemed in that fell cirque.         What penned them there, with all the plain, to choose?         No foot-print leading to that horrid mews, None out of it. Mad brewage set to work Their brains, no doubt, like galley-slaves the Turkº         Pits for his pastime, Christians against Jews. And more than that—a furlong on—why, there!         What bad use was that engineº for, that wheel,         Or brake, not wheel—that harrow fit to reel Men's bodies out like silk? with all the air Of Tophet'sº tool, on earth left unaware,         Or brought to sharpen its rusty teeth of steel. Then came a bit of stubbed ground, once a wood,         Next a marsh, it would seem, and now mere earth         Desperate and done with; (so a fool finds mirth, Makes a thing and then mars it, till his mood Changes, and off he goes!) within a rood—         Bog, clay, and rubble, sand, and stark black dearth. Now blotches rankling, coloured 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         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'sº bosom-friend, 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 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, Gods knows when—         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,          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! 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          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 thro' 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!" Not hear? when noise was everywhere! it tolled         Increasing like a bell. Names in my ears,         Of all the lost adventurers my peers,— 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         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."