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 Daemon 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.