The Ascent of Man

Mathilde Blind

The Ascent of Man

THE ASCENT OF MAN

PRELUDE

WINGSAscend, oh my Soul, with the wings of the lark ascend!Soaring away and away far into the blue.Or with the shrill seagull to the breakers bend,Or with the bee, where the grasses and field-flowers blend,Drink out of golden cups of the honey-dew.Ascend, oh my Soul, on the wings of the wind as it blows,Striking wild organ-blasts from the forest trees,Or on the zephyr bear love of the rose to the rose,Or with the hurricane sower cast seed as he goesLimitless ploughing the leagues of the sibilant seas.Ascend, oh my Soul, on the wings of the choral strain,Invisible tier above tier upbuilding sublime;Note as it scales after note in a rhythmical chainReaching from chaos and welter of struggle and pain,Far into vistas empyreal receding from time.Ascend! take wing on the thoughts of the Dead, my Soul,Breathing in colour and stone, flashing through epic and song:Thoughts that like avalanche snows gather force as they roll,Mighty to fashion and knead the phenomenal throngOf generations of men as they thunder along.

PART I

As compressed within the bounded shellBoundless Ocean seems to surge and swell,Haunting echoes of an infinite wholeMoan and murmur through Man's finite soul.

CHAUNTS OF LIFE

IStruck 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 twilightAuroral 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 rockyHeights of confederate mountains compelling the fugitive vapoursTo 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.IILo, moving o'er chaotic waters,Love dawned upon the seething waste,Transformed in ever new avatarsIt moved without or pause or haste:Like sap that moulds the leaves of MayIt wrought within the ductile clay.And vaguely in the pregnant deep,Clasped by the glowing arms of lightFrom an eternity of sleepWithin unfathomed gulfs of nightA pulse stirred in the plastic slimeResponsive to the rhythm of Time.Enkindled in the mystic darkLife built herself a myriad forms,And, flashing its electric sparkThrough 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 thingsLolled on the ooze in lazy motion,Armed with grim jaws or uncouth wings;Helpless to lift their cumbering bulkThey 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 lairBegan to swarm with beasts and birds,With floating fish and fleet-foot herds.The lust of life's delirious firesBurned 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 onIn wood or wild to court their mate,Proudly displaying in the sunWith antics strange and looks elate,The vigour of their mighty thewsOr charm of million-coloured hues.There crouching 'mid the scarlet bloom,Voluptuously the leopard lies,And through the tropic forest gloomThe flaming of his feline eyesStirs with intoxicating stressThe pulses of the leopardess.Or two swart bulls of self-same ageMeet furiously with thunderous roar,And lash together, blind with rage,And clanging horns that fain would goreTheir rival, and so win the prizeOf 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 dayLive but to love and pass away.And herds of horses scour the plains,The thickets scream with bird and beastThe love of life burns in their veins,And from the mightiest to the leastEach preys upon the other's lifeIn inextinguishable strife.War rages on the teeming earth;The hot and sanguinary fightBegins 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 lifeAnd step by panting step mounts higher,Apes lifting hairy arms now standAnd free the wonder-working hand.They raise a light, aërial houseOn shafts of widely branching trees,Where, harboured warily, each spouseMay feed her little ape in peace,Green cradled in his heaven-roofed bed,Leaves rustling lullabies o'erhead.And lo, 'mid reeking swarms of earthGrim 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 vainSharpens his senses, till withinThe twilight mazes of his brain,Like embryos within the womb,Thought pushes feelers through the gloom.And slowly in the fateful raceIt grows unconscious, till at lengthThe helpless savage dares to faceThe cave-bear in his grisly strength;For stronger than its bulky thewsHe 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 woeAnd, compassed round with danger, stillProlongs 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 dintOf effort – till one day there fliesA spark of fire from out the stone:Fire which shall make the world his own.IIIAnd from the clash of warring Nature's strifeMan 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 treesHe drifts adventurous on the unoared seas,And, as he tilts upon the rocking tide,Catches the glistening fish that flash and glideInnumerably through the waters wide.He'll fire the bush whose flames shall help him felThe trunks to prop his roof, where he may dwellBeside the bubbling of a crystal well,Sheltered from drenching rains or noxious glareWhen the sun holds the zenith. Delving there,His cumbered wife, whose multifarious toilSeems never done, breaks the rich virgin soil,And in the ashes casts the casual seedsOf feathered grass and efflorescent weeds;When, as with thanks, the bounteous earth one mornReturns lush blades of life-sustaining corn.And while the woman digs and plants, and twinesTo 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 prepareThe succulent, wildwood scented, simmering fare,While with impatient sniffs and eager-eyedHis 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 breezeAnd murmuring undertones of many-foliaged trees;While here and there through rifts of green the skyCasts its blue glance like an all-seeing eye.But though by stress of want and poignant needMan 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 fightSlays loathly worms and beasts of gruesome mightBy the close-knitted bondage of the clan,Which adding up the puny strength of manMakes thousands move with one electric thrillOf simultaneous, energetic will;Yet still behind the narrow borderlandWhere in security he seems to stand,His apprehensive life is compassed roundBy 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 waitWith 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 eyesThe 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 blazeOf 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 moansAnd whistles poisoned through their chattering bones;While the thin shepherd, staring sick and gaunt,Will search the thorns for berries, or yet hauntThe stony channels of some river-bedWhere filtering fresh perchance a liquid threadOf 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 lightTill 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 deadIn barbarous woe he bows his stricken head.Then in the hunger of his piteous loveHe 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 lightOf moonbeams moving o'er the glimmering floorThat come unbidden through the bolted door, —The lonely sleeper sees the lost one standLike 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 shoreOf 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 allThe 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 formsHe 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 packOf shadowy hounds fierce yelping in the trackOf wolves and bears as shadowy as the hostsWho lead once more as unsubstantial ghostsTheir lives of old as restlessly they flyAcross the wildernesses of the sky.When the wild hunt is done, shall they not restTheir heads upon some swan-white maiden's breast,And quaff their honeyed mead with godlike zestIn golden-gated Halls whence they may seeThe earth and marvellous secrets of the SeaWhereon 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 powerThose spirits rule the sunshine and the shower!How shall he win their favour; yea, how moveTo pity the unpitying gods above,The Dæmon rulers of life's fitful dream,Who sway men's destinies, and still would seemTo 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 rodsAre 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 pathAnd, changing with the gazer, borrow lightFrom 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 skiesWith 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 eyesNature, 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 nightWith inklings of things vast and infinite.All shows of heaven and earth that move and passTake form within his brain as in a glass.The tidal thunder of the sea now roarsAnd breaks symphonious on a hundred shores;The fitful flutings of the vagrant breezeStrike gusts of sound from virgin forest trees;White leaping waters of wild cataracts fallFrom crag and jag in lapses musical,And streams meandering amid daisied leasThrob 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 flowersLaugh in his path like sun-dyed April showers.The moving clouds in calm or thunderstorm,All shows of things in colour, sound, or formMoulded mysteriously, are freshly wroughtWithin the fiery furnace of his thought.IVNo longer Nature's thrall,Man builds the city wallThat shall withstand her league of levelling storms;He builds tremendous tombsWhere, 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 belowAnd manifold Man's woe;Though he can stay the flood and bind the waters,His hand he shall not stayThat bids him sack and slayAnd 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 skiesThe monumental clouds lift flashing towersWith turrets, spires, and barsLit by confederate starsTill the bright rack dissolves in flying showers:Kingdoms on kingdoms have their fleeting day,Dazzle the conquered world, and pass away.In golden Morning landsThe blazing crowns change hands,From mystic Ind to fleshly Babylon,Assyria, PalestineArmed with her book divine,Dread Persia whose fleet chariots charged and wonPale Continents where prostrate monarchs kneelBefore the flash of her resistless steel.As one by one they startWith proudly beating heartFast in the furious, fierce-contested race,Where neck to neck they strainDeliriously to gainThe winning post of power, the meed of praise;Some drop behind, fall, or are trampled downWhile the proud victor grasps the laurel crown.Not only great campaignsShall glorify their reigns,But high-towered cities wondrous to behold,With gardens poised in airLike bowers of Eden fair,With brazen gates and shrines of beaten gold,And Palace courts whose constellated lightsShine on black slaves and cringing satellites.Eclipsing with her fateEach power and rival stateWith her unnumbered stretch of generations,A sand-surrounded isleFed 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 hallsWith strangely scriptured wallsAnd long perspectives of memorial places,Where the hushed daylight glowsOn mute colossal rowsOf clawed wild beasts featured with female faces,And realmless kings inane whose stony eyesHave watched the hour-glass of the centuries.There in the rainless sandsThe toil of captive hands,That aye must do as their taskmaster bids,Through years of dusty daysBrick by slow brick shall raiseThe incarnate pride of kings – the Pyramids —Linked with some name synonymous with slaughterTime 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-fieldsWith 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 fallBefore the arms of iron-soldered legions;As Capitolian RomeAcross the salt sea foamOrders her Cæsars to remotest regions:From silver Spain and Albion's clouded seasTo the fair shrines and marble mines of Greece.Pallas unmatched in war,To her triumphal carRome chains fallen despots and discrownèd queensWith many a rampant beast,Birds from the gorgeous East,And wool-haired Nubians torn from tropic scenes;There huge barbarians from Druidic woodsTower ominous o'er the humming multitudes;For still untamed and freeIn loathed captivity,Their spirits bend not to the conqueror's yoke,Though for a Roman sightThey must in mimic fightGive wounds in play and deal Death's mortal stroke,While round the arena rings the fierce applauseVoluptuous, as their bubbling life-blood flowsIn streams of purple rainFrom hecatombs of slainSaluting Cæsar still with failing breath,But in their dying soulsUndying hate, which rollsFrom 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 plainsStorm-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 waitsAs, surging through its gates,Break the fierce Goths with trumpet-blasts of doom;And many a glorious shrineBegins to flare and shine,And many a palace flames up through the gloom,Kindled like torches by relentless wrathTo light the Spoiler on destruction's path.Yea, with Rome's ravished walls,The old world tottering fallsAnd crumbles into ruin wide and vast;The Empire seems to rockAs 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.V"Peace on earth and good will unto Men!"Came the tidings borne o'er wide dominions;The glad tidings thrilled the world as whenSpring comes fluttering on the west wind's pinions,When her voice is heardWarbling through each bird,And a new-born hopeThrobs through all things infinite in scope."Peace on earth and good will!" came the wordOf the Son of Man, the Man of Sorrow —But the peace turned to a flaming sword,Turned to woe and wailing on the morrowWhen with gibes and scorns,Crowned with barren thorns,Gashed and crucified,On the Cross the tortured Jesus died.And the world, once full of flower-hung shrines,Now forsakes old altars for the new,Zeus grows faint and Venus' star declinesAs Jehovah glorifies the Jew,He whom – lit with awe —God-led Moses saw,Graving with firm handIn his people's heart his Lord's command.Holding Hells and Heavens in either handComes the priest and comes the wild-eyed prophet,Tells the people of some happier land,Terrifies them with a burning Tophet;Gives them creeds for breadAnd warm roof o'erhead,Gives for life's delightPassports to the kingdom, spirit-bright.And the people groaning everywhereHearken gladly to the wondrous story,How beyond this life of toil and careThey shall lead a life of endless glory:Where beyond the dimEarth-mists Seraphim,Love-illumined, wait —Hierarchies of angels at heaven's gate.Let them suffer while they live below,Bear in silence weariness and pain;For the heavier is their earthly woe,Verily the heavenlier is their gainIn the mansions whereSorrow and despair,Yea, all moan shall ceaseWith the moan of immemorial seas.And to save their threatened souls from sin,Save them from the world, the flesh, the devil,Men and Women break from bonds of kinAnd in cloistered cell draw bar on evil,Worship on their kneesSacred Images,And all Saints above,The Madonna, mystic Rose of love.Mystic Rose of Maiden Motherhood,Moon of Hearts immaculately mild,Beaming o'er the turbulent times and rudeWith the promise of her blessèd Child:Whom pale Monks adore,Pining evermoreFor the heaven of loveWhich their homesick lives are dying of.But the flame of mystical desiresTurns to fury fiercer than a leopard's,Holy fagots blaze with kindling firesAs the priests, the people's careful shepherds,In Heaven's awful name,Set the pile on flameWhere, for Conscience' sake,Heretics burn chaunting at the stake.Subterranean secrets of the prison,Throbs of anguish in the crushing cell,Torture-chambers of the InquisitionAre the Church's antidotes to Hell.Better rack them here,Mutilate and sear,Than their souls should goTo the place of everlasting woe.And a lurid universal night,Lit by quenchless fires for unquenched sages,Thick with spectral broods that shun the light,Looms impervious o'er the stifled agesWhere the blameless wiseFall a sacrifice,Fall as fell of oldThe unspotted firstlings of the fold.And the violent feud of clashing creedsShatters empires and breaks realms asunder;Cities tremble, sceptres shake like reedsAt the swift bolts of the Papal thunder;Yea, the bravest quail,Cast from out the paleOf all ChristendomBy the dread anathemas of Rome.And like one misled by marish gleamsWhen he hears the shrill cock's note of warning,Europe, starting from its trance of dreams,Sees the first streak of the clear-eyed morningAs it broadening standsOver ravaged landsWhere mad nations areLocked in grip of fratricidal war.Castles burn upon the vine-clad knolls,Huts glow smouldering in the trampled meadows;And a hecatomb of martyred soulsFills a queenly town with wail of widowsIn those branded hoursWhen red-guttering showersSplash by courts and stewsTo the Bells of Saint Bartholomew's.Seed that's sown upon the wanton windShall be harvested in whirlwind rages,For revenge and hate bring forth their kind,And black crime must ever be the wagesOf a nation's crimeTime transmits to time,Till the score of yearsIs wiped out in floods of staunchless tears.Yea, the anguish in a people's lifeMay have eaten out its heart of pity,Bred in scenes of scarlet sin and strife,Heartless splendours of a haughty city;Dark with lowering fate,At the massive gateOf its kings it mayStand and knock with tragic hand one day.For the living tomb gives up its dead,Bastilles yawn, and chains are rent asunder,Little children now and hoary head,Man and maiden, meet in joy and wonder;Throng on radiant throng,Brave and blithe and strong,Gay with pine and palm,Fill fair France with freedom's thunder-psalm.Free and equal – rid of king and priest —The rapt nation bids each neighbour nationTo partake the sacramental feastAnd communion of the Federation:And electrifiedMasses, far and wide,Thrill to hope and startVibrating as with one common heart.From the perfumed South of amorous FranceWith her wreath of orange bloom and myrtle,From old wizard woods of lost RomanceSoft with wail of wind and voice of turtle,From the roaring seaOf grey Normandy,And the rich champaignsWhere the vine gads o'er Burgundian plains;From the banks of the blue arrowy Rhone,And from many a Western promontory,From volcanic crags of cloven stoneCrowned with castles ivy-green in story;From gay Gascon coastsMarch fraternal hosts,Equal hosts and free,Pilgrims to the shrine of liberty.But king calls on king in wild alarms,Troops march threatening through the vales and passes,Barefoot Faubourgs at the cry to armsOn the frontier hurl their desperate masses:The deep tocsin's boomFills the streets with gloom,And with iron handThe red Terror guillotines the land.For the Furies of the sanguine pastChase fair Freedom, struggling torn and baffled,Till infuriate – turned to bay at last —Rolled promiscuous on the common scaffold,Vengeful she shall smiteA Queen's head bleached white,And a courtesan'sWhose light hands once held the reins of France.She shall smite and spare not – yea, her own,Her fair sons so pure from all pollution,With their guiltless life-blood must atoneTo the goddess of the Revolution;Dying with a songOn their lips, her youngArdent children end,Meeting death even as one meets a friend.And her daughter, in heroic shame,Turned to Freedom's Moloch statue, crying:"Liberty, what crimes done in thy name!"Spake, and with her Freedom's self seemed dyingAs she bleeding lay'Neath Napoleon's sway:Europe heard her knellWhen on Waterloo the Empire fell.VIWoe, woe to Man and all his hapless brood!No rest for him, no peace is to be found;He may have tamed wild beasts and made the groundYield corn and wine and every kind of food;He may have turned the ocean to his steed,Tutored the lightning's elemental speedTo flash his thought from Ætna to Atlantic;He may have weighed the stars and spanned the stream,And trained the fiery force of panting steamTo whirl him o'er vast steppes, and heights gigantic:But the storm-lashed world of feeling —Love, the fount of tears unsealing,Choruses of passion pealing —Lust, ambition, hatred, awe,Clashing loudly with the law,But the phantasms of the mindWho shall master, yea, who bind!What help is there without, what hope withinOf rescue from the immemorial strife?What will redeem him from the spasm of life,With all its devious ways of shame and sin?