What happened when he blew his horn? Did the awful mountains in the
blood-red sunset dissolve as the walls of Jericho fell to a similar
sound? Did the round, squat Tower vanish like a dream-phantom? Or
was the sound of the horn the last breath of the hero? If we believe
the former, then Childe Roland is telling his experience to a
listener; it is the song of the man "who came whither he went." If
the latter, which seems to me more dramatic, and more like Browning,
then the monologue is murmured by the solitary knight as he advances
on his darkening path.
Three entirely different interpretations may be made of the poem.
First, the Tower is the quest, and Success is found only in the
moment of Failure. Second, the Tower is the quest, and when found is
worth nothing: the hero has spent his life searching something that
in the end is seen to be only a round, squat, blind turret--for such
things do men throw away their lives! Third, the Tower is not the
quest at all--it is damnation, and when the knight turns _aside_
from the true road to seek the Tower, he is a lost soul steadily
slipping through increasing darkness to hell.
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