Rising after a while, the ascent began. 
  Broken and bare the soil was; and thin grass,
  Dry and scarce green, was scattered here and there
  In tufts:  and, toiling up, my knees almost
  Reaching my chin, one hand upon my knee,
  Or grasping sometimes at the earth, I went,
  With eyes fixed on the next step to be taken,
  Not glancing right or left; till, at the end,
  I stood straight up, and the tower stood straight up
  Before my face.  One tower, and nothing more;
  For all the rest has gone this way and that,
  And is not anywhere, saving a few
  Fragments that lie about, some on the top,
  Some fallen half down on either side the hill,
  Uncared for, well nigh grown into the ground. 
  The tower is grey, and brown, and black, with green
  Patches of mildew and of ivy woven
  Over the sightless loopholes and the sides: 
  And from the ivy deaf-coiled spiders dangle,
  Or scurry to catch food; and their fine webs
  Touch at your face wherever you may pass. 
  The sun’s light scorched upon it; and a fry
  Of insects in one spot quivered for ever,
  Out and in, in and out, with glancing wings
  That caught the light, and buzzings here and there;
  That little life which swarms about large death;
  No one too many or too few, but each
  Ordained, and being each in its own place. 
  The ancient door, cut deep into the wall,
  And cramped with iron rusty now and rotten,
  Was open half:  and, when I strove to move it
  That I might have free passage inwards, stood
  Unmoved and creaking with old uselessness: 
  So, pushing it, I entered, while the dust
  Was shaken down upon me from all sides. 
  The narrow stairs, lighted by scanty streaks
  That poured in thro’ the loopholes pierced high up,
  Wound with the winding tower, until I gained,
  Delivered from the closeness and the damp
  And the dim air, the outer battlements.

  There opposite, the tower’s black turret-girth
  Suppressed the multiplied steep chasm of fathoms,
  So that immediately the fields far down
  Lay to their heaving distance for the eyes,
  Satisfied with one gaze unconsciously,
  To pass to glory of heaven, and to know light. 
  Here was no need of thinking:—­merely sense
  Was found sufficient:  the wind made me free,
  Breathed, and returned by me in a hard breath: 
  And what at first seemed silence, being roused
  By callings of the cuckoo from far off,
  Resolved itself into a sound of trees
  That swayed, and into chirps reciprocal
  On each side, and revolving drone of flies.

  Then, stepping to the brink, and looking sheer
  To where the slope ceased in the level stretch
  Of country, I sat down to lay my head
  Backwards into a single ivy-bush
  Complex of leaf.  I lay there till the wind
  Blew to me, from a church seen miles away,
  Half the hour’s chimes.