Читать книгу The Ascent of Man - Blind Mathilde - Страница 5

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As compressed within the bounded shell

Boundless Ocean seems to surge and swell,

Haunting echoes of an infinite whole

Moan and murmur through Man's finite soul.

CHAUNTS OF LIFE.

I.

Struck out of dim fluctuant forces and shock of electrical vapour,

Repelled and attracted the atoms flashed mingling in union primeval,

And over the face of the waters far heaving in limitless twilight

Auroral pulsations thrilled faintly, and, striking the blank heaving surface,

The measureless speed of their motion now leaped into light on the waters.

And lo, from the womb of the waters, upheaved in volcanic convulsion,

Ribbed and ravaged and rent there rose bald peaks and the rocky

Heights of confederate mountains compelling the fugitive vapours

To take a form as they passed them and float as clouds through the azure.

Mountains, the broad-bosomed mothers of torrents and rivers perennial,

Feeding the rivers and plains with patient persistence, till slowly,

In the swift passage of æons recorded in stone by Time's graver,

There germ grey films of the lichen and mosses and palm-ferns gigantic,

And jungle of tropical forest fantastical branches entwining,

And limitless deserts of sand and wildernesses primeval.

II.

Lo, moving o'er chaotic waters,

Love dawned upon the seething waste,

Transformed in ever new avatars

It moved without or pause or haste:

Like sap that moulds the leaves of May

It wrought within the ductile clay.

And vaguely in the pregnant deep,

Clasped by the glowing arms of light

From an eternity of sleep

Within unfathomed gulfs of night

A pulse stirred in the plastic slime

Responsive to the rhythm of Time.

Enkindled in the mystic dark

Life built herself a myriad forms,

And, flashing its electric spark

Through films and cells and pulps and worms,

Flew shuttlewise above, beneath,

Weaving the web of life and death.

And multiplying in the ocean,

Amorphous, rude, colossal things

Lolled on the ooze in lazy motion,

Armed with grim jaws or uncouth wings;

Helpless to lift their cumbering bulk

They lurch like some dismasted hulk.

And virgin forest, verdant plain,

The briny sea, the balmy air,

Each blade of grass and globe of rain,

And glimmering cave and gloomy lair

Began to swarm with beasts and birds,

With floating fish and fleet-foot herds.

The lust of life's delirious fires

Burned like a fever in their blood,

Now pricked them on with fierce desires,

Now drove them famishing for food,

To seize coy females in the fray,

Or hotly hunted hunt for prey.

And amorously urged them on

In wood or wild to court their mate,

Proudly displaying in the sun

With antics strange and looks elate,

The vigour of their mighty thews

Or charm of million-coloured hues.

There crouching 'mid the scarlet bloom,

Voluptuously the leopard lies,

And through the tropic forest gloom

The flaming of his feline eyes

Stirs with intoxicating stress

The pulses of the leopardess.

Or two swart bulls of self-same age

Meet furiously with thunderous roar,

And lash together, blind with rage,

And clanging horns that fain would gore

Their rival, and so win the prize

Of those impassive female eyes.

Or in the nuptial days of spring,

When April kindles bush and brier,

Like rainbows that have taken wing,

Or palpitating gems of fire,

Bright butterflies in one brief day

Live but to love and pass away.

And herds of horses scour the plains,

The thickets scream with bird and beast

The love of life burns in their veins,

And from the mightiest to the least

Each preys upon the other's life

In inextinguishable strife.

War rages on the teeming earth;

The hot and sanguinary fight

Begins with each new creature's birth:

A dreadful war where might is right;

Where still the strongest slay and win,

Where weakness is the only sin.

There is no truce to this drawn battle,

Which ends but to begin again;

The drip of blood, the hoarse death-rattle,

The roar of rage, the shriek of pain,

Are rife in fairest grove and dell,

Turning earth's flowery haunts to hell.

A hell of hunger, hatred, lust,

Which goads all creatures here below,

Or blindworm wriggling in the dust,

Or penguin in the Polar snow:

A hell where there is none to save,

Where life is life's insatiate grave.

And in the long portentous strife,

Where types are tried even as by fire,

Where life is whetted upon life

And step by panting step mounts higher,

Apes lifting hairy arms now stand

And free the wonder-working hand.

They raise a light, aërial house

On shafts of widely branching trees,

Where, harboured warily, each spouse

May feed her little ape in peace,

Green cradled in his heaven-roofed bed,

Leaves rustling lullabies o'erhead.

And lo, 'mid reeking swarms of earth

Grim struggling in the primal wood,

A new strange creature hath its birth:

Wild—stammering—nameless—shameless—nude;

Spurred on by want, held in by fear,

He hides his head in caverns drear.

Most unprotected of earth's kin,

His fight for life that seems so vain

Sharpens his senses, till within

The twilight mazes of his brain,

Like embryos within the womb,

Thought pushes feelers through the gloom.

And slowly in the fateful race

It grows unconscious, till at length

The helpless savage dares to face

The cave-bear in his grisly strength;

For stronger than its bulky thews

He feels a force that grows with use.

From age to dumb unnumbered age,

By dim gradations long and slow,

He reaches on from stage to stage,

Through fear and famine, weal and woe

And, compassed round with danger, still

Prolongs his life by craft and skill.

With cunning hand he shapes the flint,

He carves the horn with strange device,

He splits the rebel block by dint

Of effort—till one day there flies

A spark of fire from out the stone:

Fire which shall make the world his own.

III.

And from the clash of warring Nature's strife

Man day by day wins his imperilled life;

For, goaded on by want, he hunts the roe,

Chases the deer, and lays the wild boar low.

In his rude boat made of the hollow trees

He drifts adventurous on the unoared seas,

And, as he tilts upon the rocking tide,

Catches the glistening fish that flash and glide

Innumerably through the waters wide.

He'll fire the bush whose flames shall help him fel

The trunks to prop his roof, where he may dwell

Beside the bubbling of a crystal well,

Sheltered from drenching rains or noxious glare

When the sun holds the zenith. Delving there,

His cumbered wife, whose multifarious toil

Seems never done, breaks the rich virgin soil,

And in the ashes casts the casual seeds

Of feathered grass and efflorescent weeds;

When, as with thanks, the bounteous earth one morn

Returns lush blades of life-sustaining corn.

And while the woman digs and plants, and twines

To precious use long reeds and pliant bines,

He—having hit the brown bird on the wing,

And slain the roe—returns at evening,

And gives his spoil unto her, to prepare

The succulent, wildwood scented, simmering fare,

While with impatient sniffs and eager-eyed

His bronze-limbed children gather to his side.

And, when the feast is done, all take their ease,

Lulled by the sing-song of the evening breeze

And murmuring undertones of many-foliaged trees;

While here and there through rifts of green the sky

Casts its blue glance like an all-seeing eye.

But though by stress of want and poignant need

Man tames the wolf-sprung hound and rearing steed,

Pens up the ram, and yokes the deep-horned ox,

And through wide pastures shepherds woolly flocks;

Though age by age, through discipline of toil,

Man wring a richer harvest from the soil,

And in the grim and still renewing fight

Slays loathly worms and beasts of gruesome might

By the close-knitted bondage of the clan,

Which adding up the puny strength of man

Makes thousands move with one electric thrill

Of simultaneous, energetic will;

Yet still behind the narrow borderland

Where in security he seems to stand,

His apprehensive life is compassed round

By baffling mysteries he cannot sound,

Where, big with terrors and calamities,

The future like a foe in ambush lies:

A muffled foe, that seems to watch and wait

With the Medusa eyes of stony fate.—

Great floods o'erwhelm and ruin his ripening grain,

His boat is shattered by the hurricane,

From the rent cloud the tameless lightning springs—

Heaven's flame-mouthed dragon with a roar of wings—

And fires his hut and simple household things;

Until before his horror-stricken eyes

The stored-up produce of long labour lies,

A heap of ashes smoking 'neath the skies.—

Or now the pastures where his flocks did graze,

Parched, withered, shrivelled by the imminent blaze

Of the great ball of fire that glares above,

Glow dry like iron heated in a stove;

Turning upon themselves, the tortured sheep,

With blackening tongues, drop heap on gasping heap,

Their rotting flesh sickens the wind that moans

And whistles poisoned through their chattering bones;

While the thin shepherd, staring sick and gaunt,

Will search the thorns for berries, or yet haunt

The stony channels of some river-bed

Where filtering fresh perchance a liquid thread

Of water may run clear.—Now dark o'erhead,

Thickening with storm, the wintry clouds will loom,

And wrap the land in weeds of mournful gloom;

Shrouding the sun and every lesser light

Till earth with all her aging woods grows white,

And hurrying streams stop fettered in their flight.

Then famished beasts freeze by the frozen lakes,

And thick as leaves dead birds bestrew the brakes;

And, cowering blankly by the flickering flame,

Man feels a presence without form or name,

When by the bodies of his speechless dead

In barbarous woe he bows his stricken head.

Then in the hunger of his piteous love

He sends his thought, winged like a carrier dove—

Through the unanswering silence void and vast,

Whence from dim hollows blows an icy blast—

To bring some sign, some little sign at last,

From his lost chiefs—the beautiful, the brave—

Vanished like bubbles on a breaking wave,

Lost in the unfathomed darkness of the grave.

When, lo, behold beside him in the night—

Softly beside him, like the noiseless light

Of moonbeams moving o'er the glimmering floor

That come unbidden through the bolted door—

The lonely sleeper sees the lost one stand

Like one returned from some dim, distant land,

Bending towards him with his outstretched hand.

But when he fain would grasp it in his own,

He melts into thin moonshine and is gone—

A spirit now, who on the other shore

Of death hunts happily for evermore.—

A Son of Life, but dogged, while he draws breath,

By her inseparable shadow—death,

Man, feeble Man, whom unknown Fates appal,

With prayer and praise seeks to propitiate all

The spirits, who, for good or evil plight,

Bless him in victory or in sickness smite.

Those are his Dead who, wrapped in grisly shrouds,

Now ride phantasmal on the rushing clouds,

Souls of departed chiefs whose livid forms

He sees careering on the reinless storms,

Wild, spectral huntsmen who tumultuously,

With loud halloo and shrilly echoing cry,

Follow the furious chase, with the whole pack

Of shadowy hounds fierce yelping in the track

Of wolves and bears as shadowy as the hosts

Who lead once more as unsubstantial ghosts

Their lives of old as restlessly they fly

Across the wildernesses of the sky.

When the wild hunt is done, shall they not rest

Their heads upon some swan-white maiden's breast,

And quaff their honeyed mead with godlike zest

In golden-gated Halls whence they may see

The earth and marvellous secrets of the Sea

Whereon the clouds will lie with grey wings furled,

And in whose depths, voluminously curled,

The serpent looms whose girth engirds the world?

Far, far above now in supernal power

Those spirits rule the sunshine and the shower!

How shall he win their favour; yea, how move

To pity the unpitying gods above,

The Dæmon rulers of life's fitful dream,

Who sway men's destinies, and still would seem

To treat them lightly as a game of chance,

The sport of whim and blindfold circumstance—

The irresponsible, capricious gods,

So quick to please or anger; whose sharp rods

Are storms and lightnings launched from cloven skies;

Who feast upon the shuddering victim's cries,

The smell of blood, and human sacrifice.

But ever as Man grows they grow with him;

Terrific, cruel, gentle, bright, or dim,

With eyes of dove-like mercy, hands of wrath,

Procession-like, they hover o'er his path

And, changing with the gazer, borrow light

From their rapt devotee's adoring sight.

And Ormuzd, Ashtaroth, Osiris, Baal—

Love spending gods and gods of blood and wail—

Look down upon their suppliant from the skies

With his own magnified, responsive eyes.

For Man, from want and pressing hunger freed,

Begins to feel another kind of need,

And in his shaping brain and through his eyes

Nature, awakening, sees her blue-arched skies;

The Sun, his life-begetter, isled in space;

The Moon, the Measurer of his span of days;

The immemorial stars who pierce his night

With inklings of things vast and infinite.

All shows of heaven and earth that move and pass

Take form within his brain as in a glass.

The tidal thunder of the sea now roars

And breaks symphonious on a hundred shores;

The fitful flutings of the vagrant breeze

Strike gusts of sound from virgin forest trees;

White leaping waters of wild cataracts fall

From crag and jag in lapses musical,

And streams meandering amid daisied leas

Throb with the pulses of tumultuous seas.

From hills and valleys smoking mists arise,

Steeped in pale gold and amethystine dyes.

The land takes colour from him, and the flowers

Laugh in his path like sun-dyed April showers.

The moving clouds in calm or thunderstorm,

All shows of things in colour, sound, or form

Moulded mysteriously, are freshly wrought

Within the fiery furnace of his thought.

IV.

No longer Nature's thrall,

Man builds the city wall

That shall withstand her league of levelling storms;

He builds tremendous tombs

Where, hid in hoarded glooms,

His dead defy corruption with her worms:

High towers he rears and bulks of glowing stone,

Where the king rules upon a golden throne.

Creature of hopes and fears,

Of mirth and many tears,

He makes himself a thousand costly altars,

Whence smoke of sacrifice,

Fragrant with myrrh and spice,

Ascends to heaven as the flame leaps and falters;

Where, like a king above the Cloud control,

God sits enthroned and rules Man's subject soul.

Yet grievous here below

And manifold Man's woe;

Though he can stay the flood and bind the waters,

His hand he shall not stay

That bids him sack and slay

And turn the waving fields to fields of slaughters;

And, as he reaps War's harvest grim and gory,

Commits a thousand crimes and calls it glory.

Vast empires fall and rise,

As when in sunset skies

The monumental clouds lift flashing towers

With turrets, spires, and bars

Lit by confederate stars

Till the bright rack dissolves in flying showers:

Kingdoms on kingdoms have their fleeting day,

Dazzle the conquered world, and pass away.

In golden Morning lands

The blazing crowns change hands,

From mystic Ind to fleshly Babylon,

Assyria, Palestine

Armed with her book divine,

Dread Persia whose fleet chariots charged and won

Pale Continents where prostrate monarchs kneel

Before the flash of her resistless steel.

As one by one they start

With proudly beating heart

Fast in the furious, fierce-contested race,

Where neck to neck they strain

Deliriously to gain

The winning post of power, the meed of praise;

Some drop behind, fall, or are trampled down

While the proud victor grasps the laurel crown.

Not only great campaigns

Shall glorify their reigns,

But high-towered cities wondrous to behold,

With gardens poised in air

Like bowers of Eden fair,

With brazen gates and shrines of beaten gold,

And Palace courts whose constellated lights

Shine on black slaves and cringing satellites.

Eclipsing with her fate

Each power and rival state

With her unnumbered stretch of generations,

A sand-surrounded isle

Fed by the bounteous Nile,

Egypt confronts Sahara—sphinx of nations;

Taught by the floods that make or mar her shore,

She scans the stars and hoards mysterious lore.

Hers are imperial halls

With strangely scriptured walls

And long perspectives of memorial places,

Where the hushed daylight glows

On mute colossal rows

Of clawed wild beasts featured with female faces,

And realmless kings inane whose stony eyes

Have watched the hour-glass of the centuries.

There in the rainless sands

The toil of captive hands,

That aye must do as their taskmaster bids,

Through years of dusty days

Brick by slow brick shall raise

The incarnate pride of kings—the Pyramids—

Linked with some name synonymous with slaughter

Time has effaced like a name writ in water.

For ever with fateful shocks,

Roar as of hurtling rocks,

Start fresh embattled hosts with flags unfurled,

To meet on battle-fields

With clash of spears and shields,

Widowing the world of men to win the world:

The hissing air grows dark with iron rain,

And groans the earth beneath her sheaves of slain.

Triumphant o'er them all,

See crowns and sceptres fall

Before the arms of iron-soldered legions;

As Capitolian Rome

Across the salt sea foam

Orders her Cæsars to remotest regions:

From silver Spain and Albion's clouded seas

To the fair shrines and marble mines of Greece.

Pallas unmatched in war,

To her triumphal car

Rome chains fallen despots and discrownèd queens

With many a rampant beast,

Birds from the gorgeous East,

And wool-haired Nubians torn from tropic scenes;

There huge barbarians from Druidic woods

Tower ominous o'er the humming multitudes;

For still untamed and free

In loathed captivity,

Their spirits bend not to the conqueror's yoke,

Though for a Roman sight

They must in mimic fight

Give wounds in play and deal Death's mortal stroke,

While round the arena rings the fierce applause

Voluptuous, as their bubbling life-blood flows

In streams of purple rain

From hecatombs of slain

Saluting Cæsar still with failing breath,

But in their dying souls

Undying hate, which rolls

From land to land the avalanche of Death,

That, gathering volume as it sweeps along,

Pours down the Alps throng on unnumbered throng.

From northern hills and plains

Storm-lashed by driving rains,

From moorland wastes and depths of desolate wood,

From many an icebound shore,

The human torrents pour,

Horde following upon horde as flood on flood,

Avengers of the slain they come, they come,

And break in thunder on the walls of Rome.

A trembling people waits

As, surging through its gates,

Break the fierce Goths with trumpet-blasts of doom;

And many a glorious shrine

Begins to flare and shine,

And many a palace flames up through the gloom,

Kindled like torches by relentless wrath

To light the Spoiler on destruction's path.

Yea, with Rome's ravished walls,

The old world tottering falls

And crumbles into ruin wide and vast;

The Empire seems to rock

As with an earthquake's shock,

And vassal provinces look on aghast;

As realms are split and nation rent from nation,

The globe seems drifting to annihilation.