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;
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;
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 spurned the shadows the clouds threw, Or birds within the noon-day ether 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 for ever burst;
Nor felt the breeze which from the forest told
Of grassy paths and wood, lawn-interspersed,
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,
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
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 frown
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 and double cape,
Crouching within the shadow of a tomb,
And o'er what seemed the head a cloud-like crape
Was bent, a dun and faint etherial gloom
Tempering the light upon the chariot beam;
A Janus-visaged shadow did assume
The guidance of that wonder-winged team;
The shapes which drew 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,
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 past
With solemn speed majestically on.
The crowd gave way, and I arose aghast,
Or seemed to rise, so mighty was the trance,
like clouds upon the thunders blast,
The million with fierce song and maniac dance
Raging around-such seemed the jubilee
As when to meet some conqueror's advance
Imperial Rome poured forth her living sea From senate house, and forum, and theatre, ] 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
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
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,
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,
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
Mix with each other in tempestuous 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
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
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
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
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
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