Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came

"Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came" is a narrative poem by English author Robert Browning, written on 2 January 1852,[1] and first published in 1855 in the collection titled Men and Women.

[3] The poem opens with Roland's suspicion about the truthfulness of a "hoary" crippled man with "malicious eye", whose advice he nevertheless follows by choosing to turn off the thoroughfare into an 'ominous tract' that leads to the Dark Tower.

The gloomy, cynical Roland describes how he had been searching for the tower for so long that he could barely feel any joy at finally finding the pathway to it, just a grim hope "that some end might be".

Reaching the other bank, Roland is disturbed once more by the apocalyptic landscape, envisioning some dreadful battle that must have happened to create the scene of devastation he observes.

The title, "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came", which forms the last words of the poem, is a line from William Shakespeare's play King Lear (ca.

In the play, Gloucester's son, Edgar, lends credence to his disguise as Tom o' Bedlam by talking nonsense, of which this is a part: Childe Rowland to the dark tower came.

Many complex visual motifs are woven throughout the poem, including images of disease and deformity, as well as fire (connected with redness and death), eyes (both seeing and blinded), the idea of being suddenly trapped, and destroyed plant life.

[8] Despite having a clear narrative structure, the precise point at which a given scene shifts to another is made unclear throughout much of the poem, creating a sense of "esthetic inevitability" in the reader.

For Margaret Atwood, Childe Roland is Browning himself, his quest is to write this poem, and the Dark Tower contains that which Roland/Browning fears most: Roland/Browning "in his poem-writing aspect".

[12] A footnote in the Penguin Classics edition (Robert Browning Selected Poems) advises against allegorical interpretation, saying "readers who wish to try their hand should be warned that the enterprise strongly resembles carving a statue out of fog.