THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE
Swift as a spirit hastening to his task
Of glory and of good, the Sun sprang forth
Rejoicing in his splendour, and the mask
Of darkness fell from the awakened Earth.
5The smokeless altars of the mountain snows
Flamed above crimson clouds, and at the birth
Of light, the Ocean’s orison arose
To which the birds tempered their matin lay.
All flowers in field or forest which unclose
10 Their trembling eyelids to the kiss of day,
Swinging their censers in the element,
With orient incense lit by the new ray
Burned slow and inconsumably, and sent
Their odorous sighs up to the smiling air,
Isle, Ocean, and all things that in them wear
The form and character of mortal mould
Rise as the Sun their father rose, to bear
Their portion of the toil which he of old
20 Took as his own and then imposed on them;
But I, whom thoughts which must remain untold
Had kept as wakeful as the stars that gem
The cone of night, now they were laid asleep,
Stretched my faint limbs beneath the hoary stem
25Which an old chestnut flung athwart the steep
Of a green Apennine: before me fled
The night; behind me rose the day; the Deep
Was at my feet, and Heaven above my head
When a strange trance over my fancy grew
30 Which was not slumber, for the shade it spread
Was so transparent that the scene came through
As clear as when a veil of light is drawn
O’er evening hills they glimmer; and I knew
That I had felt the freshness of that dawn,
35Bathed in the same cold dew my brow and hair
And sate as thus upon that slope of lawn
Under the self-same bough, and heard as there
The birds, the fountains and the Ocean hold
Sweet talk in music through the enamoured air.
40 And then a Vision on my brain was rolled …
As in that trance of wondrous thought I lay
This was the tenour of my waking dream:
Methought I sate beside a public way
Thick strewn with summer dust, and a great stream
45Of people there was hurrying to and fro
Numerous as gnats upon the evening gleam,
All hastening onward, yet none seemed to know
Whither he went, or whence he came, or why
He made one of the multitude, yet so
50 Was borne amid the crowd as through the sky
One of the million leaves of summer’s bier.—
Old age and youth, manhood and infancy,
Mixed in one mighty torrent did appear,
Some flying from the thing they feared and some
55Seeking the object of another’s fear,
And others as with steps towards the tomb
Pored on the trodden worms that crawled beneath,
And others mournfully within the gloom
Of their own shadow walked, and called it death …
60 And some fled from it as it were a ghost,
Half fainting in the affliction of vain breath.
But more with motions which each other crost
Pursued or shunned the shadows the clouds threw
Or birds within the noonday ether lost,
65Upon that path where flowers never grew;
And weary with vain toil and faint for thirst
Heard not the fountains whose melodious dew
Out of their mossy cells forever burst,
Nor felt the breeze which from the forest told
70 Of grassy paths, and wood lawns interspersed
With overarching elms and caverns cold
And violet banks where sweet dreams brood, but they
Pursued their serious folly as of old …
And as I gazed methought that in the way
75The throng grew wilder, as the woods of June
When the South wind shakes the extinguished day,
And a cold glare, intenser than the noon
But icy cold, obscured with [ ] light
The Sun as he the stars. Like the young moon
80 When on the sunlit limits of the night
Her white shell trembles amid crimson air
And whilst the sleeping tempest gathers might
Doth, as a herald of its coming, bear
The ghost of her dead mother, whose dim form
85Bends in dark ether from her infant’s chair,
So came a chariot on the silent storm
Of its own rushing splendour, and a Shape
So sate within as one whom years deform
Beneath a dusky hood and double cape
90 Crouching within the shadow of a tomb,
And o’er what seemed the head a cloud like crape
Was bent, a dun and faint aetherial gloom
Tempering the light; upon the chariot’s beam
A Janus-visaged Shadow did assume
95The guidance of that wonder-winged team.
The Shapes which drew it in thick lightnings
Were lost: I heard alone on the air’s soft stream
The music of their ever moving wings.
All the four faces of that charioteer
100 Had their eyes banded … little profit brings
Speed in the van and blindness in the rear,
Nor then avail the beams that quench the Sun
Or that their banded eyes could pierce the sphere
Of all that is, has been, or will be done—
105So ill was the car guided, but it past
With solemn speed majestically on …
The crowd gave way, and I arose aghast,
Or seemed to rise, so mighty was the trance,
And saw like clouds upon the thunder-blast
110 The million with fierce song and maniac dance
Raging around; such seemed the jubilee
As when to greet some conqueror’s advance
Imperial Rome poured forth her living sea
From senate-house and prison and theatre
115When Freedom left those who upon the free
Had bound a yoke which soon they stooped to bear.
Nor wanted here the true similitude
Of a triumphal pageant, for where’er
The chariot rolled a captive multitude
120 Was driven; all those who had grown old in power
Or misery,—all who have their age subdued,
By action or by suffering, and whose hour
Was drained to its last sand in weal or woe,
So that the trunk survived both fruit and flower;
125All those whose fame or infamy must grow
Till the great winter lay the form and name
Of their green earth with them forever low;
All but the sacred few who could not tame
Their spirits to the Conqueror, but as soon
130 As they had touched the world with living flame
Fled back like eagles to their native noon,
Or those who put aside the diadem
Of earthly thrones or gems, till the last one
Were there; for they of Athens and Jerusalem
135Were neither mid the mighty captives seen
Nor mid the ribald crowd that followed them
Or fled before … Swift, fierce and obscene
The wild dance maddens in the van, and those
Who lead it, fleet as shadows on the green,
140 Outspeed the chariot and without repose
Mix with each other in tempestuous measure
To savage music … Wilder as it grows,
They, tortured by the agonizing pleasure,
Convulsed and on the rapid whirlwinds spun
145Of that fierce spirit, whose unholy leisure
Was soothed by mischief since the world begun,
Throw back their heads and loose their streaming hair,
And in their dance round her who dims the Sun
Maidens and youths fling their wild arms in air
150 As their feet twinkle; now recede, and now
Bending within each other’s atmosphere
Kindle invisibly; and as they glow
Like moths by light attracted and repelled,
Oft to new bright destruction come and go,
155Till like two clouds into one vale impelled
That shake the mountains when their lightnings mingle
And die in rain—the fiery band which held
Their natures, snaps … the shock still may tingle—
One falls and then another in the path
160 Senseless, nor is the desolation single,
Yet ere I can say where the chariot hath
Past over them; nor other trace I find
But as of foam after the Ocean’s wrath
Is spent upon the desert shore.—Behind,
165Old men and women foully disarrayed
Shake their grey hair in the insulting wind,
Grasp in the dance and strain with limbs decayed
To reach the car of light which leaves them still
Farther behind and deeper in the shade.
170 But not the less with impotence of will
They wheel, though ghastly shadows interpose
Round them and round each other, and fulfil
Their work and to the dust whence they arose
Sink, and corruption veils them as they lie
175And frost in these performs what fire in those.
Struck to the heart by this sad pageantry,
Half to myself I said, ‘And what is this?
Whose shape is that within the car? and why’—
I would have added—‘is all here amiss?’
180 But a voice answered … ‘Life’ … I turned and knew
(O Heaven have mercy on such wretchedness!)
That what I thought was an old root which grew
To strange distortion out of the hill side
Was indeed one of that deluded crew,
185And that the grass which methought hung so wide
And white, was but his thin discoloured hair,
And that the holes it vainly sought to hide
Were or had been eyes.—‘If thou canst forbear
To join the dance, which I had well forborne,’
190 Said the grim Feature, of my thought aware,
‘I will now tell that which to this deep scorn
Led me and my companions, and relate
The progress of the pageant since the morn.
‘If thirst of knowledge doth not thus abate,
195Follow it thou even to the night, but I
Am weary’ … Then like one who with the weight
Of his own words is staggered, wearily
He paused, and ere he could resume, I cried,
‘First who art thou?’ … ‘Before thy memory
200 ‘I feared, loved, hated, suffered, did, and died,
And if the spark with which Heaven lit my spirit
Earth had with purer nutriment supplied
‘Corruption would not now thus much inherit
Of what was once Rousseau—nor this disguise
205Stained that within which still disdains to wear it.—
‘If I have been extinguished, yet there rise
A thousand beacons from the spark I bore.’—
‘And who are those chained to the car?’ ‘The Wise,
‘The great, the unforgotten, they who wore
210 Mitres and helms and crowns, or wreathes of light,
Signs of thought’s empire over thought; their lore
‘Taught them not this—to know themselves; their might
Could not repress the mutiny within,
And for the morn of truth they feigned, deep night
215‘Caught them ere evening.’ ‘Who is he with chin
Upon his breast and hands crost on his chain?’
‘The Child of a fierce hour; He sought to win
‘The world, and lost all it did contain
Of greatness, in its hope destroyed; and more
220 Of fame and peace than Virtue’s self can gain
‘Without the opportunity which bore
Him on its eagle’s pinion to the peak
From which a thousand climbers have before
‘Fall’n as Napoleon fell.’—I felt my cheek
225Alter to see the great form pass away
Whose grasp had left the giant world so weak
That every pigmy kicked it as it lay—
And much I grieved to think how power and will
In opposition rule our mortal day—
230 And why God made irreconcilable
Good and the means of good; and for despair
I half disdained mine eye’s desire to fill
With the spent vision of the times that were
And scarce have ceased to be … ‘Dost thou behold,’
235Said then my guide, ‘those spoilers spoiled, Voltaire,
‘Frederic and Kant, Catharine, and Leopold,
Chained hoary anarch, demagogue and sage
Whose name the fresh world thinks already old—
‘For in the battle Life and they did wage
240 She remained conqueror—I was overcome
By my own heart alone; which neither age
‘Nor tears nor infamy nor now the tomb
Could temper to its object.’ ‘Let them pass’—
I cried—‘the world and its mysterious doom
245‘Is not so much more glorious than it was
That I desire to worship those who drew
New figures on its false and fragile glass
‘As the old faded.’—‘Figures ever new
Rise on the bubble, paint them how you may;
250 We have but thrown, as those before us threw,
‘Our shadows on it as it past away.
But mark how chained to the triumphal chair
The mighty phantoms of an elder day—
‘All that is mortal of great Plato there
255Expiates the joy and woe his master knew not;
That star that ruled his doom was far too fair—
‘And Life, where long that flower of Heaven grew not,
Conquered the heart by love which gold or pain
Or age or sloth or slavery could subdue not.—
260 ‘And near walk the [ ] twain,
The tutor and his pupil, whom Dominion
Followed as tame as vulture in a chain.—
‘The world was darkened beneath either pinion
Of him whom from the flock of conquerors
265Fame singled as her thunder-bearing minion;
‘The other long outlived both woes and wars
Throned in new thoughts of men, and still had kept
The jealous keys of truth’s eternal doors
‘If Bacon’s spirit [ ] had not leapt
270 Like lightning out of darkness; he compelled
The Proteus shape of Nature’s as it slept
‘To wake and to unbar the caves that held
The treasure of the secrets of its reign.—
See the great bards of old who inly quelled
275‘The passions which they sung, as by their strain
May well be known: their living melody
Tempers its own contagion to the vein
‘Of those who are infected with it—I
Have suffered what I wrote, or viler pain!—
280 ‘And so my words were seeds of misery—
Even as the deeds of others.’—‘Not as theirs,’
I said—he pointed to a company
In which I recognized amid the heirs
Of Caesar’s crime, from him to Constantine
285The Anarchs old whose force and murderous snares
Had founded many a sceptre-bearing line
And spread the plague of blood and gold abroad,
And Gregory and John and men divine
Who rose like shadows between Man and god
290 Till that eclipse, still hanging under Heaven,
Was worshipped by the world o’er which they strode
For the true Sun it quenched.—‘Their power was given
But to destroy,’ replied the leader—‘I
Am one of those who have created, even
295‘If it be but a world of agony.’—
‘Whence camest thou and whither goest thou?
How did thy course begin,’ I said, ‘and why?
‘Mine eyes are sick of this perpetual flow
Of people, and my heart of one sad thought.—
300 Speak.’— ‘Whence I came, partly I seem to know,
‘And how and by what paths I have been brought
To this dread pass, methinks even thou mayst guess;
Why this should be my mind can compass not—
‘Whither the conqueror hurries me still less.
305But follow thou, and from spectator turn
Actor or victim in this wretchedness
‘And what thou wouldst be taught I then may learn
From thee.—Now listen … In the April prime
When all the forest tops began to burn
310 ‘With kindling green, touched by the azure clime
Of the young year, I found myself asleep
Under a mountain which from unknown time
‘Had yawned into a cavern high and deep,
And from it came a gentle rivulet
315Whose water like clear air in its calm sweep
‘Bent the soft grass and kept for ever wet
The stems of the sweet flowers, and filled the grove
With sound which all who hear must needs forget
‘All pleasure and all pain, all hate and love,
320 Which they had known before that hour of rest:
A sleeping mother then would dream not of
‘The only child who died upon her breast
At eventide, a king would mourn no more
The crown of which his brow was dispossest
325‘When the sun lingered o’er the Ocean floor
To gild his rival’s new prosperity.—
Thou wouldst forget thus vainly to deplore
‘Ills, which if ills, can find no cure from thee,
The thought of which no other sleep will quell
330 Nor other music blot from memory—
‘So sweet and deep is the oblivious spell.—
Whether my life had been before that sleep
The Heaven which I imagine, or a Hell
‘Like this harsh world in which I wake to weep,
335I know not. I arose and for a space
The scene of woods and waters seemed to keep,
‘Though it was now broad day, a gentle trace
Of light diviner than the common Sun
Sheds on the common Earth, but all the place
340 ‘Was filled with many sounds woven into one
Oblivious melody, confusing sense
Amid the gliding waves and shadows dun;
‘And as I looked the bright omnipresence
Of morning through the orient cavern flowed,
345And the Sun’s image radiantly intense
‘Burned on the waters of the well that glowed
Like gold, and threaded all the forest maze
With winding paths of emerald fire—there stood
‘Amid the sun, as he amid the blaze
350 Of his own glory, on the vibrating
Floor of the fountain, paved with flashing rays,
‘A shape all light, which with one hand did fling
Dew on the earth, as if she were the Dawn
Whose invisible rain forever seemed to sing
355‘A silver music on the mossy lawn,
And still before her on the dusky grass
Iris her many-coloured scarf had drawn.—
‘In her right hand she bore a chrystal glass
Mantling with bright Nepenthe;—the fierce splendour
360 Fell from her as she moved under the mass
‘Of the deep cavern, and with palms so tender
Their tread broke not the mirror of its billow,
Glided along the river, and did bend her
‘Head under the dark boughs, till like a willow
365Her fair hair swept the bosom of the stream
That whispered with delight to be their pillow.—
‘As one enamoured is upborne in dream
O’er lily-paven lakes mid silver mist
To wondrous music, so this shape might seem
370 ‘Partly to tread the waves with feet which kist
The dancing foam, partly to glide along
The airs that roughened the moist amethyst,
‘Or the slant morning beams that fell among
The trees, or the soft shadows of the trees;
375And her feet ever to the ceaseless song
‘Of leaves and winds and waves and birds and bees
And falling drops moved in a measure new
Yet sweet, as on the summer evening breeze
‘Up from the lake a shape of golden dew
380 Between two rocks, athwart the rising moon,
Dances i’ the wind where eagle never flew.—
‘And still her feet, no less than the sweet tune
To which they moved, seemed as they moved, to blot
The thoughts of him who gazed on them, and soon
385‘All that was seemed as if it had been not—
As if the gazer’s mind was strewn beneath
Her feet like embers, and she, thought by thought,
‘Trampled its fires into the dust of death,
As Day upon the threshold of the east
390 Treads out the lamps of night, until the breath
‘Of darkness reillumine even the least
Of Heaven’s living eyes—like day she came,
Making the night a dream; and ere she ceased
‘To move, as one between desire and shame
395Suspended, I said—“If, as it doth seem,
Thou comest from the realm without a name,
‘“Into this valley of perpetual dream,
Shew whence I came, and where I am, and why—
Pass not away upon the passing stream.”
400 ‘“Arise and quench thy thirst”, was her reply.
And as a shut lily, stricken by the wand
Of dewy morning’s vital alchemy,
‘I rose; and, bending at her sweet command,
Touched with faint lips the cup she raised,
405And suddenly my brain became as sand
‘Where the first wave had more than half erased
The track of deer on desert Labrador,
Whilst the empty wolf from which they fled amazed
‘Leaves his stamp visibly upon the shore
410 Until the second bursts—so on my sight
Burst a new Vision never seen before.—
‘And the fair shape waned in the coming light
As veil by veil the silent splendour drops
From Lucifer, amid the chrysolite
415‘Of sunrise ere it strike the mountain tops—
And as the presence of that fairest planet,
Although unseen, is felt by one who hopes
‘That his day’s path may end as he began it
In that star’s smile, whose light is like the scent
420 Of a jonquil when evening breezes fan it,
‘Or the soft note in which his dear lament
The Brescian shepherd breathes, or the caress
That turned his weary slumber to content—
‘So knew I in that light’s severe excess
425The presence of that shape which on the stream
Moved, as I moved along the wilderness,
‘More dimly than a day-appearing dream,
The ghost of a forgotten form of sleep,
A light from Heaven whose half-extinguished beam
430 ‘Through the sick day in which we wake to weep
Glimmers, forever sought, forever lost.—
So did that shape its obscure tenour keep
‘Beside my path as silent as a ghost;
But the new Vision, and its cold bright car,
435With savage music, stunning music, crost
‘The forest, and as if from some dread war
Triumphantly returning, the loud million
Fiercely extolled the fortune of her star.—
‘A moving arch of victory, the vermilion
440 And green and azure plumes of Iris had
Built high over her wind-winged pavilion,
‘And underneath aetherial glory clad
The wilderness, and far before her flew
The tempest of the splendour which forbade
445‘Shadow to fall from leaf or stone;—the crew
Seemed in that light like atomies that dance
Within a sunbeam;—some upon the new
‘Embroidery of flowers that did enhance
The grassy vesture of the desert, played,
450 Forgetful of the chariot’s swift advance;
‘Others stood gazing till within the shade
Of the great mountain its light left them dim.—
Others outspeeded it, and others made
‘Circles around it like the clouds that swim
455Round the high moon in a bright sea of air,
And more did follow, with exulting hymn,
‘The chariot and the captives fettered there,
But all like bubbles on an eddying flood
Fell into the same track at last and were
460 ‘Borne onward.—I among the multitude
Was swept; me sweetest flowers delayed not long,
Me not the shadow nor the solitude,
‘Me not the falling stream’s Lethean song,
Me, not the phantom of that early form
465Which moved upon its motion,—but among
‘The thickest billows of the living storm
I plunged, and bared my bosom to the clime
Of that cold light, whose airs too soon deform.—
‘Before the chariot had begun to climb
470 The opposing steep of that mysterious dell,
Behold a wonder worthy of the rhyme
‘Of him who from the lowest depths of Hell
Through every Paradise and through all glory
Love led serene, and who returned to tell
475‘In words of hate and awe the wondrous story
How all things are transfigured, except Love;
For deaf as is a sea which wrath makes hoary
‘The world can hear not the sweet notes that move
The sphere whose light is melody to lovers—
480 A wonder worthy of his rhyme—the grove
‘Grew dense with shadows to its inmost covers,
The earth was grey with phantoms, and the air
Was peopled with dim forms, as when there hovers
‘A flock of vampire-bats before the glare
485Of the tropic sun, bringing ere evening
Strange night upon some Indian isle,—thus were
‘Phantoms diffused around, and some did fling
Shadows of shadows, yet unlike themselves,
Behind them, some like eaglets on the wing
490 ‘Were lost in the white blaze, others like elves
Danced in a thousand unimagined shapes
Upon the sunny streams and grassy shelves;
‘And others sate chattering like restless apes
On vulgar hands, and over shoulders leapt.
495Some made a cradle of the ermined capes
‘Of kingly mantles, some upon the tiar
Of pontiffs sate like vultures, others played
Within the crown which girt with empire
‘A baby’s or an idiot’s brow, and made
500 Their nests in it; the old anatomies
Sate hatching their base brood under the shade
‘Of demon wings, and laughed from their dead eyes
To reassume the delegated power
Arrayed in which these worms did monarchize
505‘Who make this earth their charnel.—Others more
Humble, like falcons sate upon the fist
Of common men, and round their heads did soar,
‘Or like small gnats and flies as thick as mist
On evening marshes, thronged about the brow
510 Of lawyer, statesman, priest and theorist,
‘And others like discoloured flakes of snow
On fairest bosoms, and the sunniest hair
Fell, and were melted by the youthful glow
‘Which they extinguished; for like tears, they were
515A veil to those from whose faint lids they rained
In drops of sorrow.—I became aware
‘Of whence those forms proceeded which thus stained
The track in which we moved; after brief space
From every form the beauty slowly waned,
520 ‘From every firmest limb and fairest face
The strength and freshness fell like dust, and left
The action and the shape without the grace
‘Of life; the marble brow of youth was cleft
With care, and in the eyes where once hope shone
525Desire like a lioness bereft
‘Of its last cub, glared ere it died; each one
Of that great crowd sent forth incessantly
These shadows, numerous as the dead leaves blown
‘In Autumn evenings from a poplar tree—
530 Each, like himself and like each other were,
At first, but soon distorted, seemed to be
‘Obscure clouds moulded by the casual air;
And of this stuff the car’s creative ray
Wrought all the busy phantoms that were there
535‘As the sun shapes the clouds—thus, on the way
Mask after mask fell from the countenance
And form of all, and long before the day
‘Was old, the joy which waked like Heaven’s glance
The sleepers in the oblivious valley, died,
540 And some grew weary of the ghastly dance
‘And fell, as I have fallen by the way side,
Those soonest, from whose forms most shadows past
And least of strength and beauty did abide.’—
‘Then, what is Life?’ I said … the cripple cast
545His eye upon the car which now had rolled
Onward, as if that look must be the last,
And answered … ‘Happy those for whom the fold