Swift 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 Earth. The 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 chesnut 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 Bathe in the same cold dew my brow and hair, And sate as thus upon that slope of lawn
Under the self-same 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.
Such is the exordium of the poem. It will be noticed that at this point one series of the interwoven triplets is concluded. The _Triumph of Life_ itself begins with a new series of rhymes, describing the vision for which preparation has been made in the preceding prelude. It is not without perplexity that an ear unaccustomed to the windings of the _terza rima_, feels its way among them. Entangled and impeded by the labyrinthine sounds, the reader might be compared to one who, swimming in his dreams, is carried down the course of a swift river clogged with clinging and retarding water-weeds. He moves; but not without labour: yet after a while the very obstacles add fascination to his movement.