Because It’s So Good, and I Can

...

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
Its edge at one more victim gained thereby.

…

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.

…

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.

…

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.

…

There they stood, ranged along the hillsides, 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, “Child Roland to the Dark Tower came.”

- Robert Browning, inspired from a line from King Lear