That I had felt the freshness of that dawn
    Bathe in the same cold dew my brow and hair,
    And sate as thus upon that slope of lawn

    Under the self-same bough, and heard as there
    The birds, the fountains, and the ocean, hold
    Sweet talk in music through the enamoured air. 
    And then a vision on my brain was rolled.

Such is the exordium of the poem.  It will be noticed that at this point one series of the interwoven triplets is concluded.  The “Triumph of Life” itself begins with a new series of rhymes, describing the vision for which preparation has been made in the preceding prelude.  It is not without perplexity that an ear unaccustomed to the windings of the terza rima, feels its way among them.  Entangled and impeded by the labyrinthine sounds, the reader might be compared to one who, swimming in his dreams, is carried down the course of a swift river clogged with clinging and retarding water-weeds.  He moves; but not without labour:  yet after a while the very obstacles add fascination to his movement.

    As in that trance of wondrous thought I lay,
    This was the tenour of my waking dream:—­
    Methought I sate beside a public way

    Thick strewn with summer dust, and a great stream
    Of people there was hurrying to and fro,
    Numerous as gnats upon the evening gleam,

    All hastening onward, yet none seemed to know
    Whither he went, or whence he came, or why
    He made one of the multitude, and so

    Was borne amid the crowd, as through the sky
    One of the million leaves of summer’s bier;
    Old age and youth, manhood and infancy,

    Mixed in one mighty torrent did appear: 
    Some flying from the thing they feared, and some
    Seeking the object of another’s fear;

    And others, as with steps towards the tomb,
    Pored on the trodden worms that crawled beneath,
    And others mournfully within the gloom

    Of their own shadow walked and called it death;
    And some fled from it as it were a ghost,
    Half fainting in the affliction of vain breath.

    But more, with motions which each other crossed,
    Pursued or spurned the shadows the clouds threw,
    Or birds within the noon-day ether lost,

    Upon that path where flowers never grew—­
    And weary with vain toil and faint for thirst,
    Heard not the fountains, whose melodious dew

    Out of their mossy cells for ever burst;
    Nor felt the breeze which from the forest told
    Of grassy paths, and wood-lawn interspersed,

    With over-arching elms, and caverns cold,
    And violet banks where sweet dreams brood;—­but they
    Pursued their serious folly as of old.