The Triumph of Life

WIFT 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 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. All flowers in field or forest which unclose

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;
And, in succession due, did continent,

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: 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
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

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, Bathed in the same cold dew my brow and hair,

And sate as thus upon that slope of lawn

Under the selfsame 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 brain was rolled.

As in that trance of wondrous thought I lay, This was the tenor 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, 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 One of the million leaves of summer's bier; age and youth, manhood and infancy

Old

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, Pored on the trodden worms that crawled be

neath,

And others mournfully within the gloom