“Thou thoughtest that I was altogether such
an one as thyself.”
[’Will sprawl, now that the heat of day is best,
Flat on his belly in the pit’s much mire,
With elbows wide, fists clenched to prop his chin,
And, while he kicks both feet in the cool slush,
And feels about his spine small eft-things course,
Run in and out each arm, and make him laugh:
And while above his head a pompion-plant,
Coating the cave-top as a brow its eye,
Creeps down to touch and tickle hair and beard,
And now a flower drops with a bee inside,
10
And now a fruit to snap at, catch and crunch,—
He looks out o’er yon sea which sunbeams cross
And recross till they weave a spider-web,
(Meshes of fire, some great fish breaks at times)
And talks, to his own self, howe’er he please,
Touching that other, whom his dam called God.
Because to talk about Him, vexes—ha,
Could He but know! and time to vex is now,
When talk is safer than in winter-time.
Moreover Prosper and Miranda sleep
20
In confidence, he drudges at their task,
And it is good to cheat the pair, and gibe,
Letting the rank tongue blossom into speech.]
Setebos, Setebos, and Setebos!
‘Thinketh, He dwelleth i’ the cold o’
the moon.
’Thinketh He made it, with the sun to match,
But not the stars; the stars came otherwise;
Only made clouds, winds, meteors, such as that:
Also this isle, what lives and grows thereon,
And snaky sea which rounds and ends the same.
30
’Thinketh, it came of being ill at ease:
He hated that He cannot change His cold,
Nor cure its ache. ’Hath spied an icy fish
That longed to ’scape the rock-stream where
she lived,
And thaw herself within the lukewarm brine
O’ the lazy sea her stream thrusts far amid,
A crystal spike ’twixt two warm walls of wave;
Only, she ever sickened, found repulse
At the other kind of water, not her life,
(Green-dense and dim-delicious, bred o’ the
sun) 40
Flounced back from bliss she was not born to breathe,
And in her old bounds buried her despair,
Hating and loving warmth alike: so He.
’Thinketh, He made thereat the sun, this isle,
Trees and the fowls here, beast and creeping thing.
Yon otter, sleek-wet, black, lithe as a leech;
Yon auk, one fire-eye in a ball of foam,
That floats and feeds; a certain badger brown,
He hath watched hunt with that slant white-wedge eye
By moonlight; and the pie with the long tongue
50
That pricks deep into oakwarts for a worm,
And says a plain word when she finds her prize,
But will not eat the ants; the ants themselves
That build a wall of seeds and settled stalks
About their hole—He made all these and
more,
Made all we see, and us, in spite: how else?
He could not, Himself, make a second self
To be His mate: as well have made Himself:
He would not make what He mislikes or slights,
An eyesore to Him, or not worth His pains;
60
But did, in envy, listlessness, or sport,
Make what Himself would fain, in a manner, be—
Weaker in most points, stronger in a few,
Worthy, and yet mere playthings all the while,
Things He admires and mocks too,—that is
it!
Because, so brave, so better tho’ they be,
It nothing skills if He begin to plague.
Look now, I melt a gourd-fruit into mash,
Add honeycomb and pods, I have perceived,
Which bite like finches when they bill and kiss,—
70
Then, when froth rises bladdery, drink up all,
Quick, quick, till maggots scamper thro’ my
brain;
Last, throw me on my back i’ the seeded thyme.
And wanton, wishing I were born a bird.
Put case, unable to be what I wish,
I yet could make a live bird out of clay:
Would not I take clay, pinch my Caliban
Able to fly?—for there, see, he hath wings,
And great comb like the hoopoe’s to admire,
And there, a sting to do his foes offence,
80
There, and I will that he begin to live,
Fly to yon rock-top, nip me off the horns
Of grigs high up that make the merry din,
Saucy thro’ their veined wings, and mind me
not.
In which feat, if his leg snapped, brittle clay,
And he lay stupid-like,—why, I should laugh;
And if he, spying me, should fall to weep,
Beseech me to be good, repair his wrong,
Bid his poor leg smart less or grow again,—
Well, as the chance were, this might take or else
90
Not take my fancy: I might hear his cry,
And give the mankin three sound legs for one,
Or pluck the other off, leave him like an egg,
And lessoned he was mine and merely clay.
Were this no pleasure, lying in the thyme,
Drinking the mash, with brain become alive,
Making and marring clay at will? So He.
’Thinketh such shows nor right nor wrong in
Him,
Nor kind, nor cruel: He is strong and Lord.
’Am strong myself compared to yonder crabs
100
That march now from the mountain to the sea;
’Let twenty pass, and stone the twenty-first,
Loving not, hating not, just choosing so.
’Say, the first straggler that boasts purple
spots
Shall join the file, one pincer twisted off;
’Say, this bruised fellow shall receive a worm.
And two worms he whose nippers end in red:
As it likes me each time, I do: so He.
Well then, ‘supposeth He is good i’ the
main,
Placable if His mind and ways were guessed,
110
But rougher than His handiwork, be sure!
Oh, He hath made things worthier than Himself,
And envieth that, so helped, such things do more
Than He who made them! What consoles but this?
That they, unless thro’ Him, do naught at all,
And must submit: what other use in things?
’Hath cut a pipe of pithless elder-joint
That, blown through, gives exact the scream o’
the jay
When from her wing you twitch the feathers blue;
Sound this, and little birds that hate the jay
120
Flock within stone’s throw, glad their foe is
hurt:
Put case such pipe could prattle and boast forsooth
“I catch the birds, I am the crafty thing,
I make the cry my maker cannot make
With his great round mouth; he must blow thro’
mine!”
Would not I smash it with my foot? So He.
But wherefore rough, why cold and ill at ease?
Aha, that is a question! Ask, for that,
What knows,—the something over Setebos
That made Him, or He, may be, found and fought,
130
Worsted, drove off and did to nothing, perchance.
There may be something quiet o’er His head,
Out of His reach, that feels nor joy nor grief,
Since both derive from weakness in some way.
I joy because the quails come; would not joy
Could I bring quails here when I have a mind:
This Quiet, all it hath a mind to, doth.
’Esteemeth stars the outposts of its couch,
But never spends much thought nor care that way.
It may look up, work up,—the worse for
those 140
It works on! ’Careth but for Setebos
The many-handed as a cuttle-fish,
Who, making Himself feared thro’ what He does,
Looks up, first, and perceives he cannot soar
To what is quiet and hath happy life;
Next looks down here, and out of very spite
Makes this a bauble-world to ape yon real,
These good things to match those as hips do grapes.
’Tis solace making baubles, ay, and sport.
Himself peeped late, eyed Prosper at his books
150
Careless and lofty, lord now of the isle:
Vexed, ’stitched a book of broad leaves, arrow-shaped,
Wrote thereon, he knows what, prodigious words;
Has peeled a wand and called it by a name;
Weareth at whiles for an enchanter’s robe
The eyed skin of a supple oncelot;
And hath an ounce sleeker than youngling mole,
A four-legged serpent he makes cower and couch,
Now snarl, now hold its breath and mind his eye,
And saith she is Miranda and my wife:
160
’Keeps for his Ariel a tall pouch-bill crane
He bids go wade for fish and straight disgorge;
Also a sea-beast, lumpish, which he snared,
Blinded the eyes of, and brought somewhat tame,
And split its toe-webs, and now pens the drudge
In a hole o’ the rock, and calls him Caliban;
A bitter heart that bides its time and bites.
’Plays thus at being Prosper in a way,
Taketh his mirth with make-believes: so He.
His dam held that the Quiet made all things
170
Which Setebos vexed only: ’holds not so.
Who made them weak, meant weakness He might vex.
Had He meant other, while His hand was in,
Why not make horny eyes no thorn could prick,
Or plate my scalp with bone against the snow,
Or overscale my flesh ’neath joint and joint,
Like an orc’s armour? Ay,—so
spoil His sport!
He is the One now: only He doth all.
’Saith, He may like, perchance, what profits
Him.
Ay, himself loves what does him good; but why?
180
’Gets good no otherwise. This blinded beast
Loves whoso places flesh-meat on his nose.
But, had he eyes, would want no help, but hate
Or love, just as it liked him: He hath eyes.
Also it pleaseth Setebos to work,
Use all His hands, and exercise much craft,
By no means for the love of what is worked.
‘Tasteth, himself, no finer good i’ the
world
When all goes right, in this safe summer-time,
And he wants little, hungers, aches not much,
190
Than trying what to do with wit and strength.
’Falls to make something; ’piled yon pile
of turfs,
And squared and stuck there squares of soft white
chalk,
And, with a fish-tooth, scratched a moon on each,
And set up endwise certain spikes of tree,
And crowned the whole with a sloth’s skull a-top,
Found dead i’ the woods, too hard for one to
kill.
No use at all i’ the work, for work’s
sole sake;
’Shall some day knock it down again: so
He.
’Saith He is terrible: watch His feats
in proof! 200
One hurricane will spoil six good months’ hope.
He hath a spite against me, that I know.
Just as He favours Prosper, who knows why?
So it is, all the same, as well I find.
’Wove wattles half the winter, fenced them firm
With stone and stake to stop she-tortoises
Crawling to lay their eggs here: well, one wave,
Feeling the foot of Him upon its neck,
Gaped as a snake does, lolled out its large tongue,
And licked the whole labour flat; so much for spite!
210
’Saw a ball flame down late (yonder it lies)
Where, half an hour before, I slept i’ the shade:
Often they scatter sparkles: there is force!
’Dug up a newt He may have envied once
And turned to stone, shut up inside a stone.
Please Him and hinder this?—What Prosper
does?
Aha, if he would tell me how! Not he!
There is the sport: discover how or die!
All need not die, for of the things o’ the isle
Some flee afar, some dive, some run up trees;
220
Those at His mercy,—why, they please Him
most
When … when … well, never try the same way twice!
Repeat what act has pleased, He may grow wroth.
You must not know His ways, and play Him off,
Sure of the issue. ’Doth the like himself:
’Spareth a squirrel that it nothing fears
But steals the nut from underneath my thumb,
And when I threat, bites stoutly in defence:
’Spareth an urchin that contrariwise,
Curls up into a ball, pretending death
230
For fright at my approach: the two ways please.
But what would move my choler more than this,
That either creature counted on its life
To-morrow, next day and all days to come,
Saying forsooth in the inmost of its heart,
“Because he did so yesterday with me,
And otherwise with such another brute,
So must he do henceforth and always.” Ay?
’Would teach the reasoning couple what “must”
means!
’Doth as he likes, or wherefore Lord? So
He. 240
’Conceiveth all things will continue thus,
And we shall have to live in fear of Him
So long as He lives, keeps His strength: no change,
If He have done His best, make no new world
To please Him more, so leave off watching this,—
If He surprise not even the Quiet’s self
Some strange day,—or, suppose, grow into
it
As grubs grow butterflies: else, here are we,
And there is He, and nowhere help at all.
’Believeth with the life the pain shall stop.
250
His dam held different, that after death
He both plagued enemies and feasted friends:
Idly! He doth His worst in this our life,
Giving just respite lest we die thro’ pain,
Saving last pain for worst,—with which,
an end.
Meanwhile, the best way to escape His Ire
Is, not to seem too happy. ’Sees, himself,
Yonder two flies, with purple films and pink,
Bask on the pompion-bell above: kills both.
’Sees two black painful beetles roll their ball
260
On head and tail as if to save their lives:
’Moves them the stick away they strive to clear.
Even so, ’would have him misconceive, suppose
This Caliban strives hard and ails no less,
And always, above all else, envies Him;
Wherefore he mainly dances on dark nights,
Moans in the sun, gets under holes to laugh,
And never speaks his mind save housed as now:
Outside, ’groans, curses. If He caught
me here,
O’erheard this speech, and asked “What
chucklest at?” 270
’Would to appease Him, cut a finger off,
Or of my three kid yearlings burn the best,
Or let the toothsome apples rot on tree,
Or push my tame beast for the orc to taste:
While myself lit a fire, and made a song
And sung it, “What I hate, be consecrate
To celebrate Thee and Thy state, no mate
For Thee; what see for envy in poor me?”
Hoping the while, since evils sometimes mend,
Warts rub away and sores are cured with slime,
280
That some strange day, will either the Quiet catch
And conquer Setebos, or likelier He
Decrepit may doze, doze, as good as die.
[What, what? A curtain o’er the world at
once!
Crickets stop hissing; not a bird—or, yes,
There scuds His raven, that hath told Him all!
It was fool’s play, this prattling! Ha!
The wind
Shoulders the pillared dust, death’s house o’
the move,
And fast invading fires begin! White blaze—
A tree’s head snaps—and there, there,
there, there, there, 290
His thunder follows! Fool to gibe at Him!
So! ’Lieth flat and loveth Setebos!
‘Maketh his teeth meet thro’ his upper
lip,
Will let those quails fly, will not eat this month
One little mess of whelks, so he may ’scape!]
* * * *
“CHILDE ROLAND TO THE DARK TOWER CAME”
(See Edgar’s song in “Lear.”)
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
°5
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
10
Would break, what crutch ’gin write° my epitaph
°11
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 20
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;”) 30
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
40
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.°
°48
For mark! no sooner was I fairly found
Pledged to the plain, after a pace or
two, 50
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. 60
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 prisoners°
free.” °66
If there pushed any ragged thistle-stalk
Above its mates, the head was chopped;
the bents° °68
Were jealous else. What made those
holes and rents
In the dock’s harsh swarth leaves, bruised as°
to balk 70
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, 80
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. 90
Not it°! I fancied Cuthbert’s reddening
face °91
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 100
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 howlet° or a bat?
°106
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.
110
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 bespate° with flakes
and spumes. °114
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. 120
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
130
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.°
°133
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 Turk°
°137
Pits for his pastime, Christians against
Jews.
And more than that—a furlong on—why,
there!
What bad use was that engine° for, that
wheel, °140
Or brake, not wheel—that harrow
fit to reel
Men’s bodies out like silk? with all the air
Of Tophet’s° tool, on earth left unaware,
°143
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. 150
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’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
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— 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,
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
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,
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,—
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.”
* * *
*
