The following is from Auden’s “The Third Temptation,” part of “The Quest.”
He watched with all his organs of concern
How princes walk, what wives and children say,
Re-opened old graves in his heart to learn
What laws the dead had died to disobey,
And came reluctantly to his conclusion:
“All the arm-chair philosophies are false;
To love another adds to the confusion;
The song of mercy is the Devil’s Waltz.”
And the quote below is from Stephen King’s “The Gunslinger.”
“The Quest” actually contains a bunch of key images reminiscent of King’s series. We can easily conclude that these are coincidental, as they serve different thematic purposes. But it’s still fun to spot the common images.
You can find the entirety of “The Quest” right here:
Eric Robert Nolan, Author 