The Triumph of Life

Swift as a spirit hastening to his task
    Of glory & of good, the Sun sprang forth
    Rejoicing in his splendour, & the mask
    Of darkness fell from the awakened Earth.
    The smokeless altars of the mountain snows
    Flamed above crimson clouds, & 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 & inconsumably, & sent
  Their odorous sighs up to the smiling air,
  And in succession due, did Continent,
  Isle, Ocean, & all things that in them wear
  The form & 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 & 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, & 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 & hair
  And sate as thus upon that slope of lawn
  Under the self same bough, & heard as there
  The birds, the fountains & 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 tenour of my waking dream.
  Methought I sate beside a public way
  Thick strewn with summer dust, & a great stream
  Of people there was hurrying to & 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
  Was borne amid the crowd as through the sky
  One of the million leaves of summer's bier.--
  Old age & youth, manhood & infancy,
  Mixed in one mighty torrent did appear,
  Some flying from the thing they feared & some
  Seeking 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 ...
    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,
  Upon that path where flowers never grew;
  And weary with vain toil & 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, & wood lawns interspersed
  With overarching elms & 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
  But icy cold, obscured with [[blank]] light
  The Sun as he the stars. Like the young moon
  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
  Bends 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 & double cape
  Crouching within the shadow of a tomb,
  And o'er what seemed the head, a cloud like crape,
  Was bent a dun & faint etherial gloom
  Tempering the light; upon the chariot's beam
  A Janus-visaged Shadow did assume
  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 & b