The
Battle of Life
Charles Dickens
CHAPTER I
Part The First
Once upon a time, it matters little when, and in
stalwart England, it matters little where, a fierce
battle was fought. It was fought upon a long summer
day when the waving grass was green. Many a wild
flower formed by the Almighty Hand to be a perfumed
goblet for
the dew, felt its enamelled cup filled high with
blood that day, and shrinking dropped. Many an insect
deriving its delicate colour from harmless leaves
and herbs, was stained anew that day by dying men,
and marked its frightened way with an unnatural
track. The painted butterfly took blood into the
air upon the edges of its wings. The stream ran
red. The trodden ground became a quagmire, whence,
from sullen pools collected in the prints of human
feet and
horses' hoofs, the one prevailing hue still lowered
and glimmered at the sun.
Heaven keep us from a knowledge of the sights the
moon beheld upon that field, when, coming up above
the black line of distant rising ground, softened
and blurred at the edge by trees, she rose into
the sky and looked upon the plain, strewn with upturned
faces that
had once at mothers' breasts sought mothers' eyes,
or slumbered happily. Heaven keep us from a knowledge
of the secrets whispered afterwards upon the tainted
wind that blew across the scene of that day's work
and that night's death and suffering! Many a lonely
moon was bright upon the battle-ground, and many
a star kept mournful watch upon it, and many a wind
from every quarter of the earth blew over it, before
the traces of the fight were worn away.
They lurked and lingered for a long time, but survived
in little things; for, Nature, far above the evil
passions of men, soon recovered Her serenity, and
smiled upon the guilty battle-ground as she had
done before, when it was innocent. The larks sang
high above it; the swallows skimmed and dipped and
flitted to and fro; the shadows of the flying clouds
pursued each other swiftly, over grass and corn
and turnip-field and wood, and over roof and church
spire in the nestling town among the trees, away
into the bright distance on the borders of the sky
and earth, where the red sunsets faded. Crops were
sown, and grew up, and were gathered in; the stream
that had been crimsoned, turned a watermill; men
whistled at
the plough; gleaners and haymakers were seen in
quiet groups at work; sheep and oxen pastured; boys
whooped and called, in fields, to scare away the
birds; smoke rose from cottage chimneys; sabbath
bells rang peacefully; old people lived and died;
the timid
creatures of the field, the simple flowers of the
bush and garden, grew and withered in their destined
terms: and all upon the fierce and bloody battle-ground,
where thousands upon thousands had been killed in
the great fight. But, there were deep green patches
in
the growing corn at first, that people looked at
awfully. Year after year they re-appeared; and it
was known that underneath those fertile spots, heaps
of men and horses lay buried, ndiscriminately, enriching
the ground. The husbandmen who ploughed those places,
shrunk from the great worms abounding there; and
the sheaves they yielded, were, for many a long
year, called the Battle Sheaves, and set apart;
and no one ever knew a Battle
Sheaf to be among the last load at a Harvest Home.
For a long time, every furrow that was turned, revealed
some fragments of the fight. For a long time, there
were wounded trees upon the battle ground; and scraps
of hacked and broken fence and wall, where deadly
struggles had been made; and trampled parts where
not a leaf or blade would grow. For a long time,
no village girl would dress her hair or bosom with
the sweetest flower from that field of
death: and after many a year had come and gone,
the berries growing there, were still believed to
leave too deep a stain upon the hand that plucked
them.
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