The Battle of Life | Page 3

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The Battle of Life by Charles Dickens Scanned and proofed by David Price email
[email protected]

The Battle of Life



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,
indiscriminately, 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