Childe Roland
Phthonos
>
>The Piper wrote:
>>
>> Does anybody have access to the original Poem
>>
>> Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came ?
>>
>> If so PLEASE post it to the group or email it to me!!!!! I have been
>> wanting to read it...in my mind that poem holds to solution to the
>> overall point of the Dark Tower series.. please someone provide me
>> access to this poem by Robert Browning. Thanks!
>
>Your library will undoubtedly have a ton of books of poetry by
>Browning. I bet you find at least half a dozen with the poem. I
>have at least two books with the poem, but since it's pretty
>long and I'm a lousy typist (the ol' three-finger method), I'm
>not about to re-type it.
>
>Bob
It ain't so easy. I had to dig through the entire musty old books of the
Washington and Lee University library, four floors of basement, and on the
bottom floor on a bottom shelf i found a row of browning books, only one of
which contained Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came. It was stunning how
few Browning Anthologies contained the poem . . . it seems to almost have
vanished from the records. it's a beautiful, terrifying poem, though --
the line about the blasted tree's face is *shuddering*.
jim
Bob
Al Powers
thep...@one.net (The Piper) wrote:
>Does anybody have access to the original Poem
>
>Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came ?
>
>If so PLEASE post it to the group or email it to me!!!!! I have been
>wanting to read it...in my mind that poem holds to solution to the
>overall point of the Dark Tower series.. please someone provide me
>access to this poem by Robert Browning. Thanks!
]
The poem is on-line, at: http://www.darktower.com/poem.html
Al
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Father forgive us for what we must do.
You forgive use, and we'll forgive you.
We'll forgive each other 'til we both turn blue,
Then we'll whistle and go fishin' in Heaven.
-- John Prine -
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to email, change .not to .net
Steve Wright
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here ya go
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Steve Wright
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doh! that didn't work did it?
*picks up cinderblock and whacks the comp*
hmmmmm....that adjustment should do it
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Steve Wright
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guess this is what i get for making fun of ol' billy gates, i had a
feeling this place was bugged
*pulls a hot soldering out of the coals and waves it menacingly near the
monitor*
okay i think i've got this infernal machine frightened enough to do my
bidding
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ROBERT BROWNING (1812-1889)
"CHILDE ROLAND TO THE DARK TOWER CAME"
Original Text: Robert Browning, Men and Women, 2 vols. (1855.) Rev. 1863.
First Publication Date: 1855.
Representative Poetry On-line: Editor, I. Lancashire; Publisher, Web Development Group, Inf. Tech. Services, Univ. of Toronto Lib.
Edition: 3RP 3.146. © F. E. L. Priestley and I. Lancashire, Dept. of English (Univ. of Toronto), and Univ. of Toronto Press 1997.
In-text Notes are keyed to line numbers.
(See Edgar's song in Shakespeare's King Lear.)
1 My first thought was, he lied in every word,
2 That hoary cripple, with malicious eye
3 Askance to watch the working of his lie
4 On mine, and mouth scarce able to afford
5 Suppression of the glee that pursed and scored
6 Its edge, at one more victim gained thereby.
7 What else should he be set for, with his staff?
8 What, save to waylay with his lies, ensnare
9 All travellers who might find him posted there,
10 And ask the road? I guessed what skull-like laugh
11 Would break, what crutch 'gin write my epitaph
12 For pastime in the dusty thoroughfare,
13 If at his counsel I should turn aside
14 Into that ominous tract which, all agree,
15 Hides the Dark Tower. Yet acquiescingly
16 I did turn as he pointed: neither pride
17 Nor hope rekindling at the end descried,
18 So much as gladness that some end might be.
19 For, what with my whole world-wide wandering,
20 What with my search drawn out thro' years, my hope
21 Dwindled into a ghost not fit to cope
22 With that obstreperous joy success would bring,
23 I hardly tried now to rebuke the spring
24 My heart made, finding failure in its scope.
25 As when a sick man very near to death
26 Seems dead indeed, and feels begin and end
27 The tears and takes the farewell of each friend,
28 And hears one bid the other go, draw breath
29 Freelier outside ("since all is o'er," he saith,
30 "And the blow fallen no grieving can amend";)
31 While some discuss if near the other graves
32 Be room enough for this, and when a day
33 Suits best for carrying the corpse away,
34 With care about the banners, scarves and staves:
35 And still the man hears all, and only craves
36 He may not shame such tender love and stay.
37 Thus, I had so long suffered in this quest,
38 Heard failure prophesied so oft, been writ
39 So many times among "The Band"--to wit,
40 The knights who to the Dark Tower's search addressed
41 Their steps--that just to fail as they, seemed best,
42 And all the doubt was now--should I be fit?
43 So, quiet as despair, I turned from him,
44 That hateful cripple, out of his highway
45 Into the path he pointed. All the day
46 Had been a dreary one at best, and dim
47 Was settling to its close, yet shot one grim
48 Red leer to see the plain catch its estray.
49 For mark! no sooner was I fairly found
50 Pledged to the plain, after a pace or two,
51 Than, pausing to throw backward a last view
52 O'er the safe road, 'twas gone; grey plain all round:
53 Nothing but plain to the horizon's bound.
54 I might go on; nought else remained to do.
55 So, on I went. I think I never saw
56 Such starved ignoble nature; nothing throve:
57 For flowers--as well expect a cedar grove!
58 But cockle, spurge, according to their law
59 Might propagate their kind, with none to awe,
60 You'd think; a burr had been a treasure-trove.
61 No! penury, inertness and grimace,
62 In some strange sort, were the land's portion. "See
63 Or shut your eyes," said Nature peevishly,
64 "It nothing skills: I cannot help my case:
65 'Tis the Last Judgment's fire must cure this place,
66 Calcine its clods and set my prisoners free."
67 If there pushed any ragged thistle-stalk
68 Above its mates, the head was chopped; the bents
69 Were jealous else. What made those holes and rents
70 In the dock's harsh swarth leaves, bruised as to baulk
71 All hope of greenness? 'tis a brute must walk
72 Pashing their life out, with a brute's intents.
73 As for the grass, it grew as scant as hair
74 In leprosy; thin dry blades pricked the mud
75 Which underneath looked kneaded up with blood.
76 One stiff blind horse, his every bone a-stare,
77 Stood stupefied, however he came there:
78 Thrust out past service from the devil's stud!
79 Alive? he might be dead for aught I know,
80 With that red gaunt and colloped neck a-strain,
81 And shut eyes underneath the rusty mane;
82 Seldom went such grotesqueness with such woe;
83 I never saw a brute I hated so;
84 He must be wicked to deserve such pain.
85 I shut my eyes and turned them on my heart.
86 As a man calls for wine before he fights,
87 I asked one draught of earlier, happier sights,
88 Ere fitly I could hope to play my part.
89 Think first, fight afterwards--the soldier's art:
90 One taste of the old time sets all to rights.
91 Not it! I fancied Cuthbert's reddening face
92 Beneath its garniture of curly gold,
93 Dear fellow, till I almost felt him fold
94 An arm in mine to fix me to the place
95 That way he used. Alas, one night's disgrace!
96 Out went my heart's new fire and left it cold.
97 Giles then, the soul of honour--there he stands
98 Frank as ten years ago when knighted first.
99 What honest men should dare (he said) he durst.
100 Good--but the scene shifts--faugh! what hangman hands
101 In to his breast a parchment? His own bands
102 Read it. Poor traitor, spit upon and curst!
103 Better this present than a past like that;
104 Back therefore to my darkening path again!
105 No sound, no sight as far as eye could strain.
106 Will the night send a howlet or a bat?
107 I asked: when something on the dismal flat
108 Came to arrest my thoughts and change their train.
109 A sudden little river crossed my path
110 As unexpected as a serpent comes.
111 No sluggish tide congenial to the glooms;
112 This, as it frothed by, might have been a bath
113 For the fiend's glowing hoof--to see the wrath
114 Of its black eddy bespate with flakes and spumes.
115 So petty yet so spiteful! All along
116 Low scrubby alders kneeled down over it;
117 Drenched willows flung them headlong in a fit
118 Of mute despair, a suicidal throng:
119 The river which had done them all the wrong,
120 Whate'er that was, rolled by, deterred no whit.
121 Which, while I forded,--good saints, how I feared
122 To set my foot upon a dead man's cheek,
123 Each step, or feel the spear I thrust to seek
124 For hollows, tangled in his hair or beard!
125 --It may have been a water-rat I speared,
126 But, ugh! it sounded like a baby's shriek.
127 Glad was I when I reached the other bank.
128 Now for a better country. Vain presage!
129 Who were the strugglers, what war did they wage,
130 Whose savage trample thus could pad the dank
131 Soil to a plash? Toads in a poisoned tank,
132 Or wild cats in a red-hot iron cage--
133 The fight must so have seemed in that fell cirque.
134 What penned them there, with all the plain to choose?
135 No foot-print leading to that horrid mews,
136 None out of it. Mad brewage set to work
137 Their brains, no doubt, like galley-slaves the Turk
138 Pits for his pastime, Christians against Jews.
139 And more than that--a furlong on--why, there!
140 What bad use was that engine for, that wheel,
141 Or brake, not wheel--that harrow fit to reel
142 Men's bodies out like silk? with all the air
143 Of Tophet's tool, on earth left unaware,
144 Or brought to sharpen its rusty teeth of steel.
145 Then came a bit of stubbed ground, once a wood,
146 Next a marsh, it would seem, and now mere earth
147 Desperate and done with; (so a fool finds mirth,
148 Makes a thing and then mars it, till his mood
149 Changes and off he goes!) within a rood--
150 Bog, clay and rubble, sand and stark black dearth.
151 Now blotches rankling, coloured gay and grim,
152 Now patches where some leanness of the soil's
153 Broke into moss or substances like boils;
154 Then came some palsied oak, a cleft in him
155 Like a distorted mouth that splits its rim
156 Gaping at death, and dies while it recoils.
157 And just as far as ever from the end!
158 Nought in the distance but the evening, nought
159 To point my footstep further! At the thought,
160 A great black bird, Apollyon's bosom-friend,
161 Sailed past, nor beat his wide wing dragon-penned
162 That brushed my cap--perchance the guide I sought.
163 For, looking up, aware I somehow grew,
164 'Spite of the dusk, the plain had given place
165 All round to mountains--with such name to grace
166 Mere ugly heights and heaps now stolen in view.
167 How thus they had surprised me,--solve it, you!
168 How to get from them was no clearer case.
169 Yet half I seemed to recognise some trick
170 Of mischief happened to me, God knows when--
171 In a bad dream perhaps. Here ended, then,
172 Progress this way. When, in the very nick
173 Of giving up, one time more, came a click
174 As when a trap shuts--you're inside the den!
175 Burningly it came on me all at once,
176 This was the place! those two hills on the right,
177 Crouched like two bulls locked horn in horn in fight;
178 While to the left, a tall scalped mountain . . . Dunce,
179 Dotard, a-dozing at the very nonce,
180 After a life spent training for the sight!
181 What in the midst lay but the Tower itself?
182 The round squat turret, blind as the fool's heart
183 Built of brown stone, without a counterpart
184 In the whole world. The tempest's mocking elf
185 Points to the shipman thus the unseen shelf
186 He strikes on, only when the timbers start.
187 Not see? because of night perhaps?--why, day
188 Came back again for that! before it left,
189 The dying sunset kindled through a cleft:
190 The hills, like giants at a hunting, lay
191 Chin upon hand, to see the game at bay,--
192 "Now stab and end the creature--to the heft!"
193 Not hear? when noise was everywhere! it tolled
194 Increasing like a bell. Names in my ears
195 Of all the lost adventurers my peers,--
196 How such a one was strong, and such was bold,
197 And such was fortunate, yet each of old
198 Lost, lost! one moment knelled the woe of years.
199 There they stood, ranged along the hillsides, met
200 To view the last of me, a living frame
201 For one more picture! in a sheet of flame
202 I saw them and I knew them all. And yet
203 Dauntless the slug-horn to my lips I set,
204 And blew. "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came."
Credits and Copyright
Together with the editors, the Department of English (University of Toronto), and the University of Toronto Press, the
following individuals share copyright for the work that went into this edition:
Screen Design (Electronic Edition):
Sian Meikle (University of Toronto Library)
Scanning:
Sharine Leung (Centre for Computing in the Humanities)
NOTES
Other poems by Browning ...
The poet's life and works ...
Form:
abbaab
Composition Date:
Jan. 1852
1. The title of the poem, and in Browning's own account the source of the theme, is spoken as a line of nonsense by the
disguised Edgar in King Lear (at the end of III, iv).
"Childe" indicates a candidate for knighthood, the medieval sense being "a well-born youth."
48. estray: a tame beast found wandering or without an owner.
66. calcine: made friable by means of heat.
68. bents: blades of stiff grass.
70. as to: as if to.
72. Pashing: smashing.
80. colloped: ridged with lumps like collops of meat.
161. dragon-penned: winged like a dragon.
179. nonce: occasion.
182. the fool's heart. "The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God" (Psalm 14:1).
203. slug-horn: usually explained as a corruption of slogan, used here by Browning in the mistaken idea that it means a horn.
Chatterton made this mistake in his Battle of Hastings, II, 10: "Some caught a slughorne and an onset wound." But
there is the hyphenated word slug-horn, meaning a short and ill-formed horn of some animal of the ox kind. It is
possible that Browning used the word in this sense. To have a misshapen horn hanging at the gate would be in keeping
with the other features of the poem.
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