{"id":29886,"date":"2016-11-18T12:36:52","date_gmt":"2016-11-18T12:36:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.stephenking.nl\/skfnieuw\/?page_id=29886"},"modified":"2017-04-23T13:11:20","modified_gmt":"2017-04-23T13:11:20","slug":"childe-roland-to-the-dark-tower-came-robert-browning","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.stephenking.nl\/skfnieuw\/specials\/de-donkere-toren\/childe-roland-to-the-dark-tower-came-robert-browning\/","title":{"rendered":"Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came – Robert Browning"},"content":{"rendered":"

Introductie tot de DT cyclus<\/a> | Lees een hoofdstuk <\/a>|\u00a0Verbanden tussen boeken<\/a>
\nComics <\/a>| Film(s) <\/a>| Diverse<\/a> | FAQ’s <\/a>|\u00a0 Wallpapers<\/a> | Artwork
\n<\/a> 1. Scherpschutter<\/a> | 2. Teken van drie<\/a> | 3. Verloren Rijk <\/a>| 4. Tovenaarsglas<\/a> | 5. Wolven van de Calla<\/a>
\n6. Lied van Susannah<\/a> | 7. De Donkere Toren <\/a>| 8 (4\/5) Wind door het Sleutelgat<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Thomas Moran\u2019s\u00a0 schilderij uit 1859 van dit gedicht<\/p>\n

My first thought was, he lied in every word,
\nThat hoary cripple, with malicious eye
\nAskance to watch the working of his lie
\nOn mine, and mouth scarce able to afford
\nSuppression of the glee, that pursed and scored
\nIts edge, at one more victim gained thereby<\/p>\n

What else should he be set for, with his staff?
\nWhat, save to waylay with his lies, ensnare
\nAll travelers who might find him posted there,
\nAnd ask the road? I guessed what skull-like laugh
\nWould break, what crutch ‘gin write my epitaph
\nFor pastime in the dusty thoroughfare,<\/p>\n

If at his counsel I should turn aside
\nInto that ominous tract which, all agree,
\nHides the Dark Tower, Yet acquiescingly
\nI did turn as he pointed: neither pride
\nNor hope rekindling at the end descried,
\nSo much as gladness that some end might be.<\/p>\n

For, what with my whole world-wide wandering,
\nWhat with my search drawn out through years, my hope
\nDwindled into a ghost not fit to cope
\nWith that obstreperous joy success would bring,
\nI hardly tried now to rebuke the spring
\nMy heart made, finding failure in its scope.<\/p>\n

As when a sick man very near to death
\nSeems dead indeed, and feels bagin and end
\nThe tears and takes the farewell of each friend,
\nAnd hears on bid the other go, draw breath
\nFreelier outside ( “since all is o’er,” he saith,
\n“And the blow fallen no grieving can amend.”),<\/p>\n

While some discuss if near the other graves
\nBe room enough for this, and when a day
\nSuits best for carrying the corpse away,
\nWith care about the banners, scarves and staves:
\nAnd still the man hears all, and only craves
\nHe may not shame such tender love and stay.<\/p>\n

Thus, I had so long suffered in this quest,
\nHeard failure prophesied so oft, been writ
\nSo many times among “The Band”-to wit,
\nThe knights who to the Dark Tower’s search addressed
\nTheir steps-that just to fail as they, seemed best,
\nAnd all the doubt was now-should I be fit?<\/p>\n

So, quiet as despair, I turned from him,
\nThat hateful cripple, out of his highway
\nInto the path he pointed. All the day
\nHad been a dreary one at best, and dim
\nWas settling to its close, yet shone one grim
\nRed leer to see the plain catch its estray.<\/p>\n

For mark! no sooner was I fairly found
\nPledged to the plain, after a pace or two,
\nThan, pausing to throw backward a last view
\nO’er the safe road, ’twas gone; gray plain all around”
\nNothing but plain to the horizon’s bound,
\nI might go on; naught else remained to do.<\/p>\n

So, on I went, I think I never saw
\nSuck starved ignoble nature; nothing throve:
\nFor flowers-as well expect a cedar grove!
\nBut cockle, spurge, according to their law
\nMight propagate their kind, with none to awe,
\nYou’d think; a burr had been a treasure trove.<\/p>\n

No! penury, inertness and grimace,
\nIn some strange sort, were the land’s portion. “See
\nOr shut your eyes,” said Nature peevishly,
\n“It nothing skills: I cannot help my case;
\n‘Tis the Last Judgement’s fire must cure this place,
\nCalcine its clods and set my prisoners free.”<\/p>\n

If there pushed any ragged thistle-stalk
\nAbove its mates, the head was chopped; the bents
\nWere jealous else. What made those holes and rents
\nIn the dock’s harsh swarth leaves, bruised as to baulk
\nAll hope of greenness? ’tis a brute must walk
\nPashing their life out, with a brute’s intents.<\/p>\n

As for the grass, it grew as scant as hair
\nIn leprosy: thin dry blades pricked the mud
\nWhich underneath looked kneaded up with blood.
\nOne stiff blind horse, his every bone a-stare,
\nStood stupefied, however he came there:
\nThrust out past service from the devil’s stud!<\/p>\n

Alive? he might be dead for aught I know,
\nWith that red gaunt and colloped neck a-strain,
\nAnd shut eyes underneath the rusty mane;
\nSeldom went such grotesqueness with such woe;
\nI never saw a brute I hated so;
\nHe must be wicked to deserve such pain.<\/p>\n

I shut my eyes and turned them on my heart.
\nAs a man calls for wine before he fights,
\nI asked on draught of earlier, happier sights,
\nEre fitly I could hope to play my part.
\nThink first, fight afterwards–the soldier’s art:
\nOne taste of the old time sets all to rights.<\/p>\n

Not it! I fancied Cuthbert’s reddening face
\nBeneath its garniture of curly gold,
\nDear fellow, till I almost felt him fold
\nAn arm in mine to fix me to the place
\nThat way he used. Alas, one night’s disgrace!
\nOut went my heart’s new fire and left it cold.<\/p>\n

Giles then, the soul of honour–there he stands
\nFrank as ten years ago when knighted first.
\nWhat honest men should dare (he said) he durst.
\nGood–but the scene shifts–faugh! what hangman hands
\nIn to his breast a parchment? His own bands
\nRead it. Poor traitor, spit upon and curst!<\/p>\n

Better this present than a past like that;
\nBack therefore to my darkening path again!
\nNo sound no sight as far as eye could strain.
\nWill the night send a howlet or a bat?
\nI asked: when something on the dismal flat
\nCame to arrest my thoughts and change their train.<\/p>\n

A sudden little river crossed my path
\nAs unexpected as a serpent comes.
\nNo sluggish tide congenial to the glooms;
\nThis, as it frothed by, might have been a bath
\nFor the fiend’s glowing hoof–to see the wrath
\nOf its black eddy bespate with flakes and spumes.<\/p>\n

So petty yet so spiteful! All along
\nLow scrubby alders kneeled down over it;
\nDrenched willows flung them headlong in a fit
\nOf mute despair, a suicidal throng:
\nThe river which had done them all the wrong,
\nWhate’er that was, rolled by, deterred no whit.<\/p>\n

Which, while I forded,–good saints, how I feared
\nTo set my foot upon a dead man’s cheek,
\nEach step, or feel the spear I thrust to seek
\nFor hollows, tangled in his hair or beard!
\n–It may have been a water-rat I speared,
\nBut, ugh! it sounded like a baby’s shriek.<\/p>\n

Glad was I when I reached the other bank.
\nNow for a better country. Vain presage!
\nWho were the strugglers, what war did they wage,
\nWhose savage trample thus could pad the dank
\nSoil to a a plash? Toads in a poisoned tank,
\nOr wild cats in a red-hot iron cage–<\/p>\n

The fight must so have seemed in that fell cirque,
\nWhat penned them there, with all the plain to choose?
\nNo foot-print leading to that horrid mews,
\nNone out of it. Mad brewage set to work
\nTheir brains, no doubt, like galley-slaves the Turk
\nPits for his pastime, Christians against Jews.<\/p>\n

And more than that–a furlong on–why, there!
\nWHat bad use was that engine for, that wheel,
\nOr brake. not wheel–that harrow fit to reel
\nMen’s bodies out like silk? with all the air
\nOf Tophet’s tool, on earth left unaware,
\nOr brought to sharpen its rusty teeth of steel.<\/p>\n

Then came a bit of stubbed ground, once a wood,
\nNext a marsh, it would seem, and now mere earth
\nDesperate and done with; (so a fool finds mirth,
\nMakes a thing and then mars it, till his mood
\nChanges and off he goes!) withing a rood–
\nBog, clay and rubble, sand and stark black dearth.<\/p>\n

Now blotches rankling, coloured gay and grim,
\nNow patches where some leanness of the soil’s
\nBroke into moss or substances like boils;
\nThen came some palsied oak, a cleft in him
\nLike a distorted mouth that splits its rim
\nGaping at death, and dies while it recoils.<\/p>\n

And just as far as ever from the end!
\nNought in the distance but the evening, nought
\nTo point my footstep further! At the thought,
\nA great black bird, Apollyon’s bosom-friend,
\nSailed past, nor beat his wide wing dragon-penned
\nThat brushed my cap–perchance the guide i sought.<\/p>\n

For, looking up, aware I somehow grew,
\n‘Spite of the dusk, the plain had given place
\nAll round the mountains–with such name to grace
\nMere ugly heights and heaps now stolen in view.
\nHow thus they had surprised me,–solve it, you!
\nHow to get from them was no clearer case.<\/p>\n

Yet half I seemed to recognise some trick
\nOf mischief happened to me, God knows when–
\nIn a bad dream perhaps. Here ended, then
\nProgress this way. When, in the very nick
\nOf giving up, one time more, came a click
\nAs when a trap shuts– you’re inside the den!<\/p>\n

Burningly it came on me all at once,
\nThis was the place! those two hills on the right,
\nCrouched like two bulls locked horn in horn in fight;
\nWHile to the left, a tall scalped mountain…Dunce,
\nDotard, a-dozing at the very nonce,
\nAfter a life spent training for the sight!<\/p>\n

What in the midst lay but the Tower itself?
\nThe round squat turret, blind as the fool’s heart
\nBuilt of brown stone, without a counterpart
\nIn the while world. The tempest’s mocking elf
\nPoints to the shipman thus the unseen shelf
\nHe strikes on, only when the timbers start.<\/p>\n

Not see? because of night perhaps?–why, day
\nCame back again for that! before it left,
\nThe dying sunset kindled through a cleft:
\nThe hills, like giants at a hunting, lay
\nChin upon hand, to see the game at bay,–
\n“Now stab and end the creature–to the heft!”<\/p>\n

Not hear? when noise was everywhere! it tolled
\nIncreasing like a bell. Names in my ears
\nOf all the lost adventurers my peers,–
\nHow such a one was strong and such was bold,
\nAnd such was fortunate, yet each of old
\nLost, lost! one moment knelled the woe of years.<\/p>\n

There they stood, ranged along the hillsides, met
\nTo view the last of me, a living frame
\nFor one more picture! in a sheet of flame
\nI saw them and I knew them all. And yet
\nDauntless the slug-horn to my lips I set,
\nAnd blew.<\/p>\n

Robert Browning<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Introductie tot de DT cyclus | Lees een hoofdstuk |\u00a0Verbanden tussen boeken Comics | Film(s) | Diverse | FAQ’s |\u00a0 Wallpapers | Artwork 1. Scherpschutter | 2. Teken van drie | 3. Verloren Rijk | 4. Tovenaarsglas | 5. Wolven<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":4769,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-29886","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stephenking.nl\/skfnieuw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/29886","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stephenking.nl\/skfnieuw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stephenking.nl\/skfnieuw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stephenking.nl\/skfnieuw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stephenking.nl\/skfnieuw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29886"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.stephenking.nl\/skfnieuw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/29886\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34408,"href":"https:\/\/www.stephenking.nl\/skfnieuw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/29886\/revisions\/34408"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stephenking.nl\/skfnieuw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4769"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stephenking.nl\/skfnieuw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29886"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}