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,

fat his counsel I should turn aside Into that ominous tract which, all agree,

Hides the Dark Tower. Yet acquiescingly

did turn as he pointed: neither pride for hope rekindling at the end descried, So much as gladness that some end might be.

or, what with my whole world-wide wandering,

What with my search drawn out through years, my hope Dwindled into a ghost not fit to cope

L

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 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!"

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: 66 · Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came."

FRA LIPPO LIPPI

1855.

Х

I AM poor brother Lippo, by your leave! You need not clap your torches to my face.