THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE. SWIFT as a spirit hastening to his task Of darkness fell from the awakened EarthThe 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. Their trembling eyelids to the kiss of day, Burned slow and inconsumably, and sent Isle, ocean, and all things that in them wear Their portion of the toil, which he of old Had kept as wakeful as the stars that gem Which an old chesnut flung athwart the steep The night; behind me rose the day; the deep Was at my feet, and Heaven above my head, Was so transparent that the scene came through That I had felt the freshness of that dawn Under the self-same bough, and heard as there As in that trance of wondrous thought I lay, Thick strewn with summer dust, and a great stream All hastening onward, yet none seemed to know Was borne amid the crowd, as through the sky Mixed in one mighty torrent did appear: Some flying from the thing they feared, and some Seeking the object of another's fear; And others as with steps towards the tomb, Of their own shadow walked and called it death; But more, with motions which each other crost, Upon that path where flowers never grew,- Out of their mossy cells for ever burst; With over-arching 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 When the south wind shakes the extinguished day, And a cold glare intenser than the noon, When on the sunlit limits of the night Her white shell trembles amid crimson air, Doth, as the herald of its coming, bear So came a chariot on the silent storm Beneath a dusky hood and double cape, Was bent, a dun and faint ethereal gloom The 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 Had their eyes banded; little profit brings Speed in the van and blindness in the rear, Of all that is, has been, or will be done; The crowd gave way, and I arose aghast, The million with fierce song and maniac dance Imperial Rome poured forth her living sea ] upon the free 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 Or misery, all who had their age subdued By action or by suffering, and whose hour So that the trunk survived both fruit and flower; All those whose fame or infamy must grow |