The Battle of Life by Charles Dickens
Scanned and proofed by David Price
email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk

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 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.

The Seasons in their course, however, though they passed as lightly 
as the summer clouds themselves, obliterated, in the lapse of time, 
even these remains of the old conflict; and wore away such 
legendary traces of it as the neighbouring people carried in their 
minds, until they dwindled into old wives' tales, dimly remembered 
round the winter fire, and waning every year.  Where the wild 
flowers and berries had so long remained upon the stem untouched, 
gardens arose, and houses were built, and children played at 
battles on the turf.  The wounded trees had long ago made Christmas 
logs, and blazed and roared away.  The deep green patches were no 
greener now than the memory of those who lay in dust below.  The 
ploughshare still turned up from time to time some rusty bits of 
metal, but it was hard to say what use they had ever served, and 
those who found them wondered and disputed.  An old dinted 
corselet, and a helmet, had been hanging in the church so long, 
that the same weak half-blind old man who tried in vain to make 
them out above the whitewashed arch, had marvelled at them as a 
baby.  If the host slain upon the field, could have been for a 
moment reanimated in the forms in which they fell, each upon the 
spot that was the bed of his untimely death, gashed and ghastly 
soldiers would have stared in, hundreds deep, at household door and 
window; and would have risen on the hearths of quiet homes; and 
would have been the garnered store of barns and granaries; and 
would have started up between the cradled infant and its nurse; and 
would have floated with the stream, and whirled round on the mill, 
and crowded the orchard, and burdened the meadow, and piled the 
rickyard high with dying men.  So altered was the battle-ground, 
where thousands upon thousands had been killed in the great fight.