The Dynasts | Page 8

But old Laws operate yet; and phase and phase Of men's dynastic and imperial moils Shape on accustomed lines. Though, as for me, I care not thy shape, or what they be.
SPIRIT OF THE PITIES
You seem to have small sense of mercy, Sire?
SPIRIT OF THE YEARS
Mercy I view, not urge;--nor more than mark What designate your titles Good and Ill. 'Tis not in me to feel with, or against, These flesh-hinged mannikins Its hand upwinds To click-clack off Its preadjusted laws; But only through my centuries to behold Their aspects, and their movements, and their mould.
SPIRIT OF THE PITIES
They are shapes that bleed, mere mannikins or no, And each has parcel in the total Will.
SPIRIT OF THE YEARS
Which overrides them as a whole its parts In other entities.
SPIRIT SINISTER (aside)
Limbs of Itself: Each one a jot of It in quaint disguise? I'll fear all men henceforward!
SPIRIT OF THE PITIES
Go to. Let this terrestrial tragedy--
SPIRIT IRONIC
Nay, Comedy--
SPIRIT OF THE PITIES
Let this earth-tragedy Whereof we spake, afford a spectacle Forthwith conned closelier than your custom is.--
SPIRIT OF THE YEARS
How does it stand? (To a Recording Angel) Open and chant the page Thou'st lately writ, that sums these happenings, In brief reminder of their instant points Slighted by us amid our converse here.
RECORDING ANGEL (from a book, in recitative)
Now mellow-eyed Peace is made captive, And Vengeance is chartered To deal forth its dooms on the Peoples With sword and with spear.
Men's musings are busy with forecasts Of muster and battle, And visions of shock and disaster Rise red on the year.
The easternmost ruler sits wistful, And tense he to midward; The King to the west mans his borders In front and in rear.
While one they eye, flushed from his crowning, Ranks legions around him To shake the enisled neighbour nation And close her career!
SEMICHORUS I OF RUMOURS (aerial music)
O woven-winged squadrons of Toulon And fellows of Rochefort, Wait, wait for a wind, and draw westward Ere Nelson be near!
For he reads not your force, or your freightage Of warriors fell-handed, Or when they will join for the onset, Or whither they steer!
SEMICHORUS II
O Nelson, so zealous a watcher Through months-long of cruizing, Thy foes may elide thee a moment, Put forth, and get clear;
And rendezvous westerly straightway With Spain's aiding navies, And hasten to head violation Of Albion's frontier!
SPIRIT OF THE YEARS
Methinks too much assurance thrills your note On secrets in my locker, gentle sprites; But it may serve.--Our thought being now reflexed To forces operant on this English isle, Behoves it us to enter scene by scene, And watch the spectacle of Europe's moves In her embroil, as they were self-ordained According to the naive and liberal creed Of our great-hearted young Compassionates, Forgetting the Prime Mover of the gear, As puppet-watchers him who pulls the strings.-- You'll mark the twitchings of this Bonaparte As he with other figures foots his reel, Until he twitch him into his lonely grave: Also regard the frail ones that his flings Have made gyrate like animalcula In tepid pools.--Hence to the precinct, then, And count as framework to the stagery Yon architraves of sunbeam-smitten cloud.-- So may ye judge Earth's jackaclocks to be No fugled by one Will, but function-free.
[The nether sky opens, and Europe is disclosed as a prone and emaciated figure, the Alps shaping like a backbone, and the branching mountain-chains like ribs, the peninsular plateau of Spain forming a head. Broad and lengthy lowlands stretch from the north of France across Russia like a grey-green garment hemmed by the Ural mountains and the glistening Arctic Ocean.
The point of view then sinks downwards through space, and draws near to the surface of the perturbed countries, where the peoples, distressed by events which they did not cause, are seen writhing, crawling, heaving, and vibrating in their various cities and nationalities.]
SPIRIT OF THE YEARS (to the Spirit of the Pities)
As key-scene to the whole, I first lay bare The Will-webs of thy fearful questioning; For know that of my antique privileges This gift to visualize the Mode is one (Though by exhaustive strain and effort only). See, then, and learn, ere my power pass again.
[A new and penetrating light descends on the spectacle, enduring men and things with a seeming transparency, and exhibiting as one organism the anatomy of life and movement in all humanity and vitalized matter included in the display.]
SPIRIT OF THE PITIES
Amid this scene of bodies substantive Strange waves I sight like winds grown visible, Which bear men's forms on their innumerous coils, Twining and serpenting round and through. Also retracting threads like gossamers-- Except in being irresistible-- Which complicate with some, and balance all.
SPIRIT OF THE YEARS
These are the Prime Volitions,--fibrils, veins, Will-tissues, nerves, and pulses of the Cause, That heave throughout the Earth's compositure. Their sum is like the lobule