Childe Roland's Pilgrimage

The Cripple
Roland is journeying along a 'dusty thoroughfare', which is nonetheless 'safe'. He encounters an old cripple and, by inference, 'ask[s him] the road'. Though the text is ambiguous, it is possible that Roland also lies to him, giving a false answer when asked whither he wishes to get to. Roland claims, we can guess, to be on the same worldwide quest that he has been on for years, but in reality he now no longer either expects or hopes to achieve his goal. When the cripple answers and indicates that to continue his quest he must leave the road that he is currently on, Roland seems to take it for granted that the cripple is lying, and that he has detected Roland's own lie. This is because the way the cripple points is 'Into that ominous tract which, all agree, / Hides the Dark Tower.' Roland knows that by leaving the road he will not achieve his original quest and will be counted a failure. (Implicitly, when he gets to the Dark Tower either he will die or be taken prisoner and remain there for the rest of his days.) And so, presuming that the cripple knows that this is where his true heart lies, Roland pretends to believe him, and does turn in the direction he indicated, feeling sure at the same time that the cripple is now laughing at him behind his back and gloating over his fate. Roland judges that the cripple's purpose in being there (whether his own or some other's) is to misdirect travellers in their quests.

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 purs’d and scor’d	5
Its edge, at one more victim gain’d 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 guess’d what skull-like laugh	10
Would break, what crutch ’gin write my epitaph
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	15
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	25
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	35
He may not shame such tender love and stay.
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	40
Their steps—that just to fail as they, seem’d best.
And all the doubt was now—should I be fit?
So, quiet as despair, I turn’d from him,
That hateful cripple, out of his highway
Into the path he pointed.

The Grey Plain
As he abandons the safe road though, Roland turns to find it (and the cripple?) have disappeared. He is trapped in a pathless 'grey plain'. It is not clear in which direction Roland is headed, and whether he turned back to look towards the setting sun or away from it. (Is he travelling eastwards or westwards? In Thomas Moran's famous painting it would appear that the Dark Tower lies in the west.)

All the day	45
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.
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, ’t was gone; gray plain all round:
Nothing but plain to the horizon’s bound.
I might go on; nought else remain’d to do.
So, on I went. I think I never saw	55
Such starv’d 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 the strange sort, were the land’s portion. “See
Or shut your eyes,” said Nature peevishly,
“It nothing skills: I cannot help my case:
’T is the Last Judgment’s fire must cure this place,	65
Calcine its clods and set my prisoners free.”
If there push’d any ragged thistle=stalk
Above its mates, the head was chopp’d; the bents
Were jealous else. What made those holes and rents
In the dock’s harsh swarth leaves, bruis’d as to baulk	70
All hope of greenness? ’T is 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 prick’d the mud
Which underneath look’d kneaded up with blood.	75

The Horse
Just as the sunset failed to inspire any sense of beauty, and just as the cripple inspired antipathy, so a blind lame horse inspires hatred.

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 collop’d 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.

Cuthbert and Giles

Roland recalls Cuthbert and Giles, the one disgraced, the other hanged for treason. (Were they other failures?)

I shut my eyes and turn’d them on my heart.	85
As a man calls for wine before he fights,
I ask’d 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
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 us’d. Alas, one night’s disgrace!	95
Out went my heart’s new fire and left it cold.
Giles then, the soul of honor—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!

The River
Roland crosses a 'sudden little river'.

No sound, no sight as far as eye could strain.	105
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.
A sudden little river cross’d my path
As unexpected as a serpent comes.	110
No sluggish tide congenial to the glooms;
This, as it froth’d 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.
So petty yet so spiteful All along,	115
Low scrubby alders kneel’d down over it;
Drench’d 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, roll’d by, deterr’d no whit.	120
Which, while I forded,—good saints, how I fear’d
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 spear’d,	125
But, ugh! it sounded like a baby’s shriek.
Glad was I when I reach’d the other bank.

A Muddy Area
He imagines that a battle must have been fought there.

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 poison’d tank,
Or wild cats in a red-hot iron cage—
The fight must so have seem’d in that fell cirque.
What penn’d them there, with all the plain to choose?
No foot-print leading to that horrid mews,	135
None out of it. Mad brewage set to work
Their brains, no doubt, like galley-slaves the Turk
Pits for his pastime, Christians against Jews.

The Harrow
A furlong on he finds an "engine", "wheel", "brake" (not wheel) or "harrow"

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,
Or brought to sharpen its rusty teeth of steel.

The Stubbed Ground
It was once a wood next to a marsh.

Then came a bit of stubb’d ground, once a wood,	145
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, color’d gay and grim,
Now patches where some leanness of the soil’s
Broke into moss or substances like thus;

The Palsied Oak
It has a cleft in it.

Then came some palsied oak, a cleft in him
Like a distorted mouth that splits its rim	155
Gaping at death, and dies while it recoils.

The Blackbird
Apart from the Cripple and the Horse, this is the only other living thing Roland encounters.

And just as far as ever from the end,
Nought in the distance but the evening, nought
To point my footstep further! At the thought,
A great black bird, Apollyon’s bosom-friend,	160
Sail’d past, nor beat his wide wing dragon-penn’d
That brush’d my cap—perchance the guide I sought.

The Mountains... and the Dark Tower
Roland suddenly finds himself in a mountainous area, with a mountain on his left, two hills on his right, and in between the tower itself.

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	165
Mere ugly heights and heaps now stolen in view.
How thus they had surpris’d me,—solve it, you!
How to get from them was no clearer case.
Yet half I seem’d to recognize some trick
Of mischief happen’d to me, God knows when—	170
In a bad 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,	175
This was the place! those two hills on the right,
Couch’d like two bulls lock’d horn in horn in fight,
While, to the left, a tall scalp’d 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 counter-part
In the whole world. The tempest’s mocking elf
Points to the shipman thus the unseen shelf	185
He strikes on, only when the timbers start.

New Dawn and a New Sunset

The sun rises and then sets again. It seems possible that Roland is now facing southwards, with the sun sinking down the cleft between the two hills on his right.

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,	190
Chin upon hand, to see the game at bay,—
“Now stab and end the creature—to the heft!”

The Other Knights of the Band
It is possible, though it is not made clear either implicitly or implicitly by the text, that Roland enters the tower and climbs to its summit, before looking out again. The other knights who have ended up at the Dark Tower - or, by inference, their ghosts, since Roland's own life is now, by implication, almost over - appear in the hills. He hears their names in his ears, getting louder and louder 'like a bell', and as the sun sets again he sees them 'in a sheet of flame'.

Not hear? when noise was everywhere! it toll’d
Increasing like a bell. Names in my ears
Of all the lost adventurers my peers,—	195
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.
There they stood, ranged along the hill-sides, 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.

The Slughorn
Unbroken and unbowed, Roland winds a horn, announcing that though he has failed in his quest he has at least reached its end.

And yet
Dauntless the slug-horn to my lips I set,
And blew “Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came.”