The Dream Of Ambition. From Proverbial Philosophy

I LEFT the happy fields that smile around the village of Content,
And sought with wayward feet the torrid desert of Ambition.
Long time, parched and weary, I travelled that burning sand,
And the hooded basilisk and adder were strewed in my way for palms;
Black scorpions thronged me round, with sharp uplifted stings.
Seeming to mock me as I ran; (then I guessed it was a dream, —
But life is oft so like a dream, we know not where we are.)
So I toiled on, doubting in myself, up a steep gravel cliff.
Whose yellow summit shot up far into the brazen sky;
And quickly, I was wafted to the top, as upon unseen wings
Carrying me upward like a leaf: (then I thought it was a dream, —
Yet life is oft so like a dream, we know not where we are.)
So I stood on the moimtain, and behold! before me a giant pyramid,
And I clomb with eager haste its high and difficult steps;
For I longed, like another Belus, to mount up, yea to heaven,
Nor sought I rest until my feet had spurned the crest of earth.

Then I sat on my granite throne under the burning sun,
And the world lay smiling beneath me, but I was wrapt in flames;
(And I hoped, in glimmering consciousness, that all this torture was a dream, —
Yet life is oft so like a dream, we know not where we are.)
And anon, as I sat scorching, the pyramid shuddered to its root.
And I felt the quarried mass leap from its sand foundations:
Awhile it tottered and tilted, as raised by invisible levers, —
(And now my reason spake with me; I knew it was a dream:
Yet I hushed that whisper into silence, for I hoped to learn of wisdom.
By tracking up my truant thoughts, whereunto they might lead.)
And suddenly, as rolling upon wheels, adown the cliff it rushed.
And I thought, in my hot brain, of the Muscovites' icy slope;
A thousand yards in a moment we ploughed the sandy seas,
And crushed those happy fields, and that smiling village.
And onward, as a living thing, still rushed my mighty throne,
Thundering along, and pounding, as it went, the millions in my way:
Before me all was life, and joy, and full-blown summer,
Behind me death and woe, the desert and simoom.
Then I wept and shrieked aloud, for pity and for fear;
But might not stop, for, comet-like, flew on the maddened mass
Over the crashing cities, and falling obelisks and towers,
And columns, razed as by a scythe, and high domes, shivered as an egg-shell.
And deep embattled ranks, and women, crowded in the streets,
And children, kneeling as for mercy, and all I had ever loved,
Yea, over all, mine awful throne rushed on with seeming instinct, —
And over the crackling forests, and over the rugged beach,
And on with a terrible hiss through the foaming wild Atlantic
That roared around me as I sat, but could not quench my spirit, —
Still on, through startled solitudes we shattered the pavement of the sea,
Down, down, to that central vault, the bolted doors of hell;
And these, with horrid shock, my huge throne battered in,
And on to the deepest deep, where the fierce flames were hottest.
Blazing tenfold as conquering furiously the seas that rushed in with me, —
And there I stopped: and a fearful voice shouted in mine ear-,
"Behold the home of Discontent; behold the rest of Ambition !"


Transcribed from Proverbial Philosophy by Mick Puttock, August 2011 (Spelling, punctuation and grammer left mostly unchanged from the 25th edition)