Newsgroup: it.fan.stephen-king
Titolo: Childe Roland To The Dark Tower Came

Ecco il poema che pare abbia dato a Stephen King l'idea per la serie
della "Torre nera":
                "Childe Roland To The Dark Tower Came"
                        -Robert Browning
 
        I
 
        My first thought was, he lied in every word,
                That hoary cripple, with the malicious eye
                Askance to watch the working of his lie
        On mine, and mouth scarce able to afford 
        Suprpression of the glee, that pursed and scored
                Its edge, at one more victim gained thereby.
        II
        What else should he be set for, with his staff?
                What, save to waylay with his lies, ensnare
                All travelers who might find him posted there,
        And ask the road? I guessed what skull-like laugh
        Would break, what crutch 'gin write my epitaph
                For pastime in the dusty thoroughfare,
        III
        If at his counsel I should turn aside
                Into that ominous tract which, all agree,
                Hides the Dark Tower.  Yet acquiesingly
        I did turn as he pointed: neither pride
        Nor hope rekindling at the end described,
                So much as gladness that some end might be.
        IV
        For, what with my whole world-wide wandering,
                What with my search drawn out through years, my hope
                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.
        V
        As when a sick man very near to death
                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";)
        VI
        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
                He may not shame such tender love and stay.
        VII
        Thus, I had so long suffered 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 addressed
        Their steps- that just to fail as they, seemed best,
                And all the doubt was now- should I be fit?
        VIII
        So, quiet as despair, I turned from him,
                That hateful cripple, out of his highway
                Into the path he pointed.  All the day
        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.
        IX
        For mark! no sooner was I fairly found
                Pledged to the plain, after a pace or two,
                Than, pausing to throw backward a last view
        O'er the safe road, 'twas gone; gray plain all round:
        Nothing but plain to the horizon's bound.
                I might go on; naught else remained to do.
        X
        So, on I went. I think I never saw
                Such starved 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.
        XI
        No! penury, inertness and grimace,
                In some strange sort, were the land's portion. "See
                Or shut your eyes," said Nature peevishly,
        "It nothing skills: I cannot help my case:
        'Tis the Last Judgment's fire must cure this place,
                Calcine its clods and set my prisoners free."
 
        XII
        If there pushed any ragged thistle-stalk
                Above its mates, the head was chopped; the bents
                Were jealous else. What made those holes and rents
        In the dock's harsh swarth leaves, bruised as to balk
        All hope of greenness? 'tis a brute must walk
                Pashing their life out, with a brute's intents.
        XIII
        As for the grass, it grew as scant as hair
                In leprosy; thin dry blades pricked the mud
                Which underneath looked kneaded up with blood.
        One stiff blind horse, his every bone a-stare,
        Stood stupefied, however he came there:
                Thrust out past service from the devil's stud!
        XIV
        Alive? he might be dead for aught I know,
                With that red gaunt and collapsed neck a-strain,
                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.
        XV
        I shut my eyes and turned them on my heart.
                As a man calls for wine before he fights,
                I asked 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.
        XVI
        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 used. Alas, one night's disgrace!
                Out went my heart's new fire and left it cold.
        XVII
        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
        Pin to his breast a parchment?  His own hands
                Read it. Poor traitor, spit upon and curst!
        XVIII
        Better this present than a past like that;
                Back to my darkening path again!
                No sound, no sight as far as eye could strain.
        Will the night send a howlet or a bat?
        I asked: when something on the dismal flat
                Came to arrest my thoughts and change their train.
        XIX
        A sudden little river crossed my path
                As unexpexted as a serpent comes.
                No sluggish tide congenial to the glooms;
        This, as it frothed 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.
        XX
        So petty yet so spiteful! All along,
                Low scrubby alders kneeled down over it;
                Drenched willows flung themselves headlong in a fit
        Of mute despair, a suicidal throng:
        The river which had done them all wrong,
                Whate'er that was, rolled by, deterred no whit.
        XXI
        Which, while I forded,- good saints, how I feared
                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 speared,
                But, ugh! it sounded like a baby's shriek.
 
        XXII
        Glad was I when I reached the other bank.
                Now for a better country. Vain presage!
                Who were the strugglers, what war did they wage,
        Whose savage trample thus could pad the dank
        Soil to a plash? Toads in a poisoned tank,
                Or wild cats in a red-hot iron cage-
 
        XXIII
        The fight must so have seemed in that fell cirque.
                What penned them there, with all the plain to choose?
                No footprint leading to that horrid mews,
        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.
        XXIV
        And more than that- a furlong on- why, there!
                What bad use was that engine for, that wheel,
                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.
        XXV
        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.
        XXVI
        Now blotches rankling, colored gay and grim,
                Now patches where some leanness of the soil's
                Broke into moss or substance like boils;
        Then came some palsied oak, a cleft in him
        Like a disturbed mouth that splits its rim 
                Gaping at death, and dies while it recoils.
        XXVII
        And just as far as ever from the end!
                Naught in the distance but the evening, naught
                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.
        XXVIII
        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 stolen in view.
        How thus they had surprised me,- solve it, you!
                How to get from them was no clearer case.
 
        XXIX
 
        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 more time, came a click
                As when a trap shuts- you're inside the den!
        XXX
        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!
        XXXI
        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 self
                He strikes on, only when the timbers start.
        XXXII
        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!"
 
        XXXIII
        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.
        XXXIV
 
        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 set,
                And blew. "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came."
-- 
"Siamo amici da quando dormivamo entrambi nella culla
e continueremo ad essere amici finche' uno dei due non lascera'
il sentiero per entrare nella radura" - Cuthbert Allgood

Grande fede!!!!! E' una vita che lo cercavo!!!!!!!!!!!

                        -Robert Browning
Ciao Fede,
scusa tanto la mia ignoranza, ma io e le lingue straniere non andiamo molto
d'accordo (non abbastanza da tradurmi un poema...), quindi ti chiedo un
favore, se puoi e se vuoi:
non potresti postarne una versione in italiano, se ne sei in possesso??
Te ne sarei infinitamente grato, perche' mi interessa molto la storia di
Roland, anche quella "apocrifa"....
Ti ringrazio anticipatamente
Ciao da Alex

 non potresti postarne una versione in italiano, se ne sei in possesso??
Purtroppo non ce l'ho la versione tradotta, ma forse se vai in libreria
e chiedi un qualche testo sui poemi di Robert Browning non e' escluso
che ci trovi anche questo.
Ciao, Federica


                        -Robert Browning
Molto interessante... Se solo sapessi l'inglese :-(
C'e' qualche anima pia che lo potrebbe tradurre?
Grazie.
--
Bye.    _____
          |     /\   | /
          |    /__\  |\
          |   /    \ | \
   Tak ah lah. Mi him en tow
Per 
rispondermi:ma...@pinet.it

C'e' qualche anima pia che lo potrebbe tradurre?
Se mi fai avere il testo ce posso provà!.....
SALUTI