Dark Tower

When I was at University I studied the Victorian Poets, one night I arrived back at the flat and announced 'I'm in love!" my flatmates were all agog and wanted to know all the details; who, when, where, what?. With great passion I said "Robert Browning", two of my flatmate didn't get the reference, but the other did. I then told them that I had just completed two hours of reading, studying and coming to terms with "Childe Roland To The Dark Tower Came" and with the idea of being as good as those who had failed before you. At that time in my life that was a powerful message for me. Many years later this poem still has the ability to enthrall me, to the degree that I created the following art pieces.

Image: The Dark Tower

Childe Roland To The Dark Tower Came

Robert Browning (1812–89)

7

-"Thus, I had so long suffer’d, 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 address’d

Their steps—that just to fail as they, seem’d best.

And all the doubt was now—should I be fit?"

18

"Better this present than a past like that;

Back therefore to my darkening path again!

No sound, no sight as far as eye could strain.

Will the night send a howlet of a bat?

I asked: when something on the dismal flat

Came to arrest my thoughts and change their train."

33

"Not hear? when noise was everywhere! it toll’d

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 knell’d the woe of years"

34

"There they stood, ranged along the hill-sides, 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.”

Image: The Dark Tower - Accepting Failure

Image: The Dark Tower - Childe Roland