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.

25.

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.

26.

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.

27.

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, Sailed past, nor beat his wide wing dragon-penned That brushed my cap-perchance the guide I sought.

28.

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 stol'n in view. - solve it, you!

How thus they had surprised me,

How to get from them was no plainer case.

29.

Yet half I seemed to recognize some trick

Of mischief happened to me, God knows when-
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!

30.

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, Fool, to be dozing at the very nonce,

After a life spent training for the sight!

...

31.

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.

32.

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!"

33.

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 an one was strong, and such was bold,
And such was fortunate, yet each of old

Lost, lost! one moment knelled 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."

RESPECTABILITY.

1.

DEAR, had the world in its caprice

Deigned to proclaim "I know you both,
Have recognized your plighted troth,

Am sponsor for

you

live in peace!".

How many precious months and years

Of youth had passed, that speed so fast,
Before we found it out at last,

The world, and what it fears?

2.

How much of priceless life were spent
With men that every virtue decks,
And women models of their sex,

Society's true ornament,

Ere we dared wander, nights like this,

Thro' wind and rain, and watch the Seine,

And feel the Boulevart break again

To warmth and light and bliss?

3.

I know the world proscribes not love;
Allows my finger to caress

Your lip's contour and downiness,
Provided it supply a glove.

The world's good word!

the Institute !

Guizot receives Montalembert!

Eh? down the court three lampions flare · Put forward your best foot!