Complete Map

In 'Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came' the poem (and Roland’s journey) ends at the mountains and, with reference to 'the Tower', back where it began. Structural repetition is registered by underlying spatial form.  As we could also ask of 'The Ancient Marinere': does the poem actually go anywhere? The toporefs of the plain, where the bulk of the poem occurs, suggest emptiness and stasis. The descriptive adjectives – 'dismal', 'stubbed' and 'mere' depict a place where growth and action are stunted; a vast, featureless blank. Each topos is full of self-references and reiterations that question whether there is a world outside the speaker’s perception. This registers the poem’s form: as a dramatic monologue it is self-orientated. The 'fell cirque' and 'horrid mews', symbols of confinement and hostility, are only mentally present, a spatialisation of the speaker’s inner landscape.