The surviving manuscript of the first page
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 —
The smokeless altars of the mountain snows 5
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
Their trembling eyelids to the kiss of day, 10
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;
And, in succession due, did continent, 15
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
Took as his own, and then imposed on them: 20
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
Which an old chestnut flung athwart the steep 25
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
Which was not slumber, for the shade it spread 30
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
Bathe in the same cold dew my brow and hair, 35
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,
And then a vision on my train was rolled. 40
…
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
Of people there was hurrying to and fro, 45
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, and so
Was borne amid the crowd, as through the sky 50
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
Seeking the object of another’s fear; 55
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;
And some fled from it as it were a ghost, 60
Half fainting in the affliction of vain breath:
But more, with motions which each other crossed,
Pursued or shunned the shadows the clouds threw,
Or birds within the noonday aether lost,
Upon 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
Of grassy paths and wood-lawns interspersed 70
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
The throng grew wilder, as the woods of June 75
When the south wind shakes the extinguished day,
And a cold glare, intenser than the noon,
But icy cold, obscured with blinding light
The sun, as he the stars. Like the young moon —
When on the sunlit limits of the night 80
Her white shell trembles amid crimson air,
And whilst the sleeping tempest gathers might —
Doth, as the herald of its coming, bear
The ghost of its dead mother, whose dim form
Bends in dark aether from her infant’s chair, — 85
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,
Crouching within the shadow of a tomb; 90
And o’er what seemed the head a cloud-like crape
Was bent, a dun and faint aethereal gloom
Tempering the light. Upon the chariot-beam
A Janus-visaged Shadow did assume
The guidance of that wonder-winged team; 95
The shapes which drew it in thick lightenings
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
Had their eyes banded; little profit brings 100
Speed in the van and blindness in the rear,
Nor then avail the beams that quench the sun, —
Or that with banded eyes could pierce the sphere
Of all that is, has been or will be done;
So ill was the car guided — but it passed 105
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,
The million with fierce song and maniac dance 110
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 forum, and theatre,
When … upon the free 115
Had bound a yoke, which soon they stooped to bear.
Nor wanted here the just similitude
Of a triumphal pageant, for where’er
The chariot rolled, a captive multitude
Was driven; — all those who had grown old in power 120
Or misery, — all who had 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; —
All those whose fame or infamy must grow 125
Till the great winter lay the form and name
Of this green earth with them for ever low; —
All but the sacred few who could not tame
Their spirits to the conquerors — but as soon
As they had touched the world with living flame, 130
Fled back like eagles to their native noon,
Or those who put aside the diadem
Of earthly thrones or gems…
Were there, of Athens or Jerusalem.
Were neither mid the mighty captives seen, 135
Nor mid the ribald crowd that followed them,
Nor those who went before fierce and obscene.
The wild dance maddens in the van, and those
Who lead it — fleet as shadows on the green,
Outspeed the chariot, and without repose 140
Mix with each other in tempe
stuous measure
To savage music, wilder as it grows,
They, tortured by their agonizing pleasure,
Convulsed and on the rapid whirlwinds spun
Of that fierce Spirit, whose unholy leisure 145
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
As their feet twinkle; they recede, and now 150
Bending within each other’s atmosphere,
Kindle invisibly — and as they glow,
Like moths by light attracted and repelled,
Oft to their bright destruction come and go,
Till like two clouds into one vale impelled, 155
That shake the mountains when their lightnings mingle
And die in rain — the fiery band which held
Their natures, snaps — while the shock still may tingle
One falls and then another in the path
Senseless — nor is the desolation single, 160
Yet ere I can say WHERE — the chariot hath
Passed over them — nor other trace I find
But as of foam after the ocean’s wrath
Is spent upon the desert shore; — behind,
Old men and women foully disarrayed, 165
Shake their gray hairs in the insulting wind,
And follow in the dance, with limbs decayed,
Seeking to reach the light which leaves them still
Farther behind and deeper in the shade.
But not the less with impotence of will 170
They wheel, though ghastly shadows interpose
Round them and round each other, and fulfil
Their work, and in the dust from whence they rose
Sink, and corruption veils them as they lie,
And past in these performs what … in those. 175
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?—’
But a voice answered—’Life!’ — I turned, and knew 180
(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 those deluded crew,
And that the grass, which methought hung so wide 185
And white, was but his thin discoloured hair,
And that the holes he vainly sought to hide,
Were or had been eyes:—’If thou canst forbear
To join the dance, which I had well forborne,’
Said the grim Feature, of my thought aware, 190
‘I will unfold 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 shall not then abate,
Follow it thou even to the night, but I 195
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,
‘I feared, loved, hated, suffered, did and died, 200
And if the spark with which Heaven lit my spirit
Had been with purer nutriment supplied,
‘Corruption would not now thus much inherit
Of what was once Rousseau, — nor this disguise
Stain that which ought to have disdained to wear it; 205
‘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
Mitres and helms and crowns, or wreaths of light, 210
Signs of thought’s empire over thought — their lore
‘Taught them not this, to know themselves; their might
Could not repress the mystery within,
And for the morn of truth they feigned, deep night
‘Caught them ere evening.’—’Who is he with chin 215
Upon his breast, and hands crossed on his chain?’ —
‘The child of a fierce hour; he sought to win
‘The world, and lost all that it did contain
Of greatness, in its hope destroyed; and more
Of fame and peace than virtue’s self can gain 220
‘Without the opportunity which bore
Him on its eagle pinions to the peak
From which a thousand climbers have before
‘Fallen, as Napoleon fell.’ — I felt my cheek
Alter, to see the shadow pass away, 225
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,
And why God made irreconcilable 230
Good and the means of good; and for despair
I half disdained mine eyes’ desire to fill
With the spent vision of the times that were
And scarce have ceased to be.—’Dost thou behold,’
Said my guide, ‘those spoilers spoiled, Voltaire, 235
‘Frederick, and Paul, Catherine, and Leopold, And hoary anarchs, demagogues, and sage — names which the world thinks always old,
‘For in the battle Life and they did wage,
She remained conqueror. I was overcome 240
‘Nor tears, nor infamy, nor now the tomb
Could temper to its object.’—’Let them pass,’
I cried, ‘the world and its mysterious doom
‘Is not so much more glorious than it was, 245
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 as you may;
We have but thrown, as those before us threw, 250
‘Our shadows on it as it passed away.
But mark how chained to the triumphal chair
The mighty phantoms of an elder day;
‘All that is mortal of great Plato there
Expiates the joy and woe his master knew not; 255
The star that ruled his doom was far too fair.
‘And life, where long that flower of Heaven grew not,
Conquered that heart by love, which gold, or pain,
Or age, or sloth, or slavery could subdue not.
‘And near him walk the … twain, 260
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
Fame singled out for her thunder-bearing minion; 265
‘The other long outlived both woes and wars,
Throned in the thoughts of men, and still had kept
The jealous key of Truth’s eternal doors,
‘If Bacon’s eagle spirit had not lept
Like lightning out of darkness — he compelled 270
The Proteus shape of Nature, as it slept
‘To wake, and lead him to the caves that held
The treasure of the secrets of its reign.
See the great bards of elder time, who quelled
‘The passions which they sung, as by their strain 275
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!
And so my words have seeds of misery — 180
‘Even as the deeds of others, not as theirs.’
And then he pointed to a company,
‘Midst whom I quickly recognized the heirs
Of Caesar’s crime, from him to Constantine;
The anarch chiefs, whose force and murderous snares 285
Had founded many a sceptre-bearing line,
And spread the plague of gold and blood abroad:
And Gregory and John, and men divine,
Who rose like shadows between man and God;
Till that eclipse, still hanging over heaven, 290
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
‘If it be but a world of agony.’ — 295
‘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 sick of one sad thought —
Speak!’—’Whence I am, I partly seem to know, 300
‘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; —
But follow thou, and from spectator turn 305
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-tips began to burn
‘With kindling green, touched by the azure clime 310
Of the young season, I was laid asleep
Under a mountain, which from unknown time
‘Had yawned into a cavern, high and deep;
And from it came a gentle rivulet,
Whose water, like clear air, in its calm sweep 315
‘Bent the soft grass, and kept for ever wet
The stems of the sweet flowers, and filled the grove
With sounds, which whoso hears must needs forget
‘All pleasure and all pain, all hate and love,