The Dynasts | Page 8

us-- The free
trajection of our entities.
SPIRIT OF THE PITIES
On things terrene, then, I would say that though The human news
wherewith the Rumours stirred us May please thy temper, Years, 'twere
better far Such deeds were nulled, and this strange man's career Wound
up, as making inharmonious jars In her creation whose meek wraith we
know. The more that he, turned man of mere traditions, Now profits
naught. For the large potencies Instilled into his idiosyncrasy-- To
throne fair Liberty in Privilege' room-- Are taking taint, and sink to
common plots For his own gain.
SHADE OF THE EARTH
And who, then, Cordial One, Wouldst substitute for this Intractable?
CHORUS OF THE EARTH
We would establish those of kindlier build, In fair Compassions skilled,
Men of deep art in life-development; Watchers and warders of thy
varied lands, Men surfeited of laying heavy hands, Upon the innocent,
The mild, the fragile, the obscure content Among the myriads of thy
family. Those, too, who love the true, the excellent, And make their
daily moves a melody.
SHADE OF THE EARTH
They may come, will they. I am not averse. Yet know I am but the
ineffectual Shade Of her the Travailler, herself a thrall To It; in all her
labourings curbed and kinged!
SPIRIT OF THE YEARS
Shall such be mooted now? Already change Hath played strange pranks
since first I brooded here. 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