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.”

* * * * *

AN EPISTLE

CONTAINING THE STRANGE MEDICAL EXPERIENCE OF
KARSHISH, THE ARAB PHYSICIAN

Karshish, the picker up of learning’s crumbs,
The not incurious in God’s handiwork
(This man’s flesh he hath admirably made,
Blown like a bubble, kneaded like a paste,
To coop up and keep down on earth a space
That puff of vapour from his mouth, man’s soul)
—­To Abib, all sagacious in our art,
Breeder in me of what poor skill I boast,
Like me inquisitive how pricks and cracks
Befall the flesh through too much stress and strain, 10
Whereby the wily vapour fain would slip
Back and rejoin its source before the term,—­
And aptest in contrivance (under God)
To baffle it by deftly stopping such deg.—­ deg.14
The vagrant Scholar to his Sage deg. at home deg.15
Sends greeting (health and knowledge, fame with peace)
Three samples of true snake-stone deg.—­rarer still, deg.17
One of the other sort, the melon-shaped,
(But fitter, pounded fine, for charms deg. than drugs) deg.19
And writeth now the twenty-second time. 20