Teh Library of ~Z~

My Personal tribute to Stephen King’s book series known as The Dark Tower, I take no credit for the Artwork as i searched far and wide across the web to find offical Darktower artwork as well as some fan made artwork, all however is directly related to the darktower series, the music is by Demons & Wizards the song is titled “The Gunslinger” and all the lyrics are directly related to the Dark Tower, hence forth a perfect match, as time goes on and i become slowly more and more of “Dark Tower Junkie” i will be adding more things here so check back, but for now i hope you enjoy my first tribute.

Demons & Wizards “Terror Train” – A Familiar Face im sure , <-Blaine Is A Pain->

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Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came

By Robert Browning

Stanza I
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

Stanza 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,

Stanza III
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.

Stanza 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.

Stanza V
As when a sick man very near to death
Seems dead indeed, and feels bagin and end
The tears and takes the farewell of each friend,
And hears on bid the other go, draw breath
Freelier outside ( “since all is o’er,” he saith,
“And the blow fallen no grieving can amend.”),

Stanza 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.

Stanza 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?

Stanza 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 shone one grim
Red leer to see the plain catch its estray.

Stanza 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 around”
Nothing but plain to the horizon’s bound,
I might go on; naught else remained to do.

Stanza X
So, on I went, I think I never saw
Suck 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.

Stanza 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 Judgement’s fire must cure this place,
Calcine its clods and set my prisoners free.”

Stanza 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 baulk
All hope of greenness? ’tis a brute must walk
Pashing their life out, with a brute’s intents.

Stanza 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!

Stanza XIV
Alive? he might be dead for aught I know,
With that red gaunt and colloped 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.

Stanza XV
I shut my eyes and turned them on my heart.
As a man calls for wine before he fights,
I asked on 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.

Stanza 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.

Stanza XVII
Giles then, the soul of honour–there he stands
Frank as ten years ago when knighted first.
What honest men should dare (he said) he durst.
Good–but the scene shifts–faugh! what hangman hands
In to his breast a parchment? His own bands
Read it. Poor traitor, spit upon and curst!

Stanza XVIII
Better this present than a past like that;
Back therefore 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.

Stanza XIX
A sudden little river crossed my path
As unexpected 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.

Stanza XX
So petty yet so spiteful! All along
Low scrubby alders kneeled down over it;
Drenched willows flung them headlong in a fit
Of mute despair, a suicidal throng:
The river which had done them all the wrong,
Whate’er that was, rolled by, deterred no whit.

Stanza 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.

Stanza 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 a plash? Toads in a poisoned tank,
Or wild cats in a red-hot iron cage–

Stanza XXIII
The fight must so have seemed in that fell cirque,
What penned them there, with all the plain to choose?
No foot-print 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.

Stanza 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.

Stanza 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!) withing a rood–
Bog, clay and rubble, sand and stark black dearth.

Stanza XXVI
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.

Stanza XXVII
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.

Stanza XXVIII
For, looking up, aware I somehow grew,
‘Spite of the dusk, the plain had given place
All round the 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.

Stanza XXIX
Yet half I seemed to recognise 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!

Stanza 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!

Stanza 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 while world. The tempest’s mocking elf
Points to the shipman thus the unseen shelf
He strikes on, only when the timbers start.

Stanza 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!”

Stanza 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.

Stanza XXXIV
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, Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came!

Keyhole Of the Towers Door

By Ventras .K. Armani – aka KashmirZ

Stanza I

It was most indeed a hallow hole,and only to the martyrs it sang , for they had forgotten the face of their fathers.So misguided by the fools light they sang on into what they prayed the night.

Stanza II

Forthcoming i watch, as any man does as any man can, as that Solem stranger raises his guiding hand, .. oh to a fools paradise.

Stanza III

Truth of KA will be done , when the towers found and the beams undone, he sought this with ever passion but the rats below like rats in a sewer fleeing from a last final gush,worshiped him for a prophet and his blind mistress of lust.

Stanza IV

Overseeing the times was all but a riddle, as it changed and bent to the will of those who created it, for all but one , this strangers anti… his own KA, the man that would see the end and touch the rose, even if all before was to die and close.

Stanza V

Closing off the minds of all that came before, cleansing the land of the outrageous unpure, surly this is more than one man can bare? yet he does, this torturous torment of the mind is enough to give a man on the edge of sanity a drive to push through and rest in clarity.

Stanza VI

Oh Childe Roland would you be so bold? you’ve come so far, so long and so very old, would you dare to look at it? would you dare to speak! surly turn your eyes to the teachings of the meek.

Stanza VII

Over the hills and far away lies a land long gone from that burning day, but how many more would drift apart if not for this man and his vital part.Would time stand still for him? or had it already.

Stanza VIII

On we go to the distant spot, the fires in the east for that lot-ten lot, fate has spiraled and twisted and been misused like any other most truly abused, in pain for all it has seen and what it would know, the questions on the tip of every tongue but the answer cannot be known.

Stanza IX

Would you fight for what it could be, would you see it through to the end, even if that same damned fate is to reoccur again.The truth, oh the truth so sweet and sour i can taste it if only in my dreams would you be the light so close.

Stanza X

The warmth i follow the light of the day, the dark of the night all from the beam in center and heart, for what could be said of the man this fine day who’s traveled a dozen lifetimes in what seems like a day.Every second that falls through that hourglass is as thick as the one that came before it, watch as the hand falls, watch and wait for the ever eternal fate.

Stanza XI

Crys of those loved of those loved and lost and Friends so far below, in a instant its flashed and all is silent, but the memories of those live on, what corruption here what disused emotions, why now the silence after all this commotion.

Stanza XII

Timeless as the twelve and to join their ranks you know, the road stretched out infront of it and in depths of the eyes mind you urn, every fleeting glance, every star filled day, the rising of the demon moon to setting of the huntresses flame.Its all for nothing,and its all so short if the truth is not done then everything is for nought.

Stanza XIII

Friends of flesh, friends of feather, fur and scale between, looking onward although divining could not stop this mans need, for the weight of the world did the turtle’s hands hold the heavens from the earth, but the weight of destiny the weight of KA! is strapped to this mans girth.

Stanza IV

In a night he might have seen it once,if only to the side of his mind, but the pieces all fit and soon the time will be right, for so many that have come and moved on and all he has loved betrayed,insane but not yet crazy he fights to save the day.

Stanza XV

It could be no other, no other man so pure who could sense the beams embrace, who could be so sure, not even that decrepit man , not even that crimson king, all of them yet not yet knowing served that now crooked beam.For all there hate and discontent for him and the world that was now rapidly moving but in the wrong direction prove yet another testament to this gunslingers hand and heart.

Stanza XVI

Ka would be so free, not a force not a guidance and stronger than truth, this tower in the center of existence was guided by it to, but to rise through what is known and to set foot infront of those doors, Was to bring about something beautifull like a mid day summers rose, much like the three and the song that would sing, it was open for one, one timeless being, but not the demon of the flagg, not the puppet dressed in black, for the single purest truth that held within this man.

Stanza XVII

Onwards forever the sire Roland would come, and when he did most certainly Ka would indeed be done, All times all places at the center of all, what a sight to see and a eternity in awe.To climb that stairway to heaven and peek through the keyhole of eternity, this man would pass through the guardians and the followers and see himself true purity.Not a whisper of what could be, or done with such a light, what would you see through that keyhole on a dark and well lit night.

Stanza XVIII

Thankee Sai, your ways are true, now kiss the flower of existence and use the sacred key,its always known who you are, one and the same truth and destiny. Now at peace together at last.Now at peace it once again moves on.Now at peace Sai Roland of Gilead KA is finally done.

Stanza XIX

Such a unimaginable truth, yet it lies in the depths of us all the whispers of eternity at the Keyhole of the Towers Door.