The Dynasts: An Epic-Drama of the War with Napoleon Part 4

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 a.s.surance 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 Compa.s.sionates, 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 p.r.o.ne 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 s.p.a.ce, 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 pa.s.s 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 of a Brain Evolving always that it wots not of; A Brain whose whole connotes the Everywhere, And whose procedure may but be discerned By phantom eyes like ours; the while unguessed Of those it stirs, who [even as ye do] dream Their motions free, their orderings supreme; Each life apart from each, with power to mete Its own day's measures; balanced, self complete; Though they subsist but atoms of the One Labouring through all, divisible from none; But this no further now. Deem yet man's deeds self-done.

GENERAL CHORUS OF INTELLIGENCES [aerial music]

We'll close up Time, as a bird its van, We'll traverse s.p.a.ce, as spirits can, Link pulses severed by leagues and years, Bring cradles into touch with biers; So that the far-off Consequence appear Prompt at the heel of foregone Cause.-- The PRIME, that willed ere wareness was, Whose Brain perchance is s.p.a.ce, whose Thought its laws, Which we as threads and streams discern, We may but muse on, never learn.

END OF THE FORE SCENE

ACT FIRST

SCENE I

ENGLAND. A RIDGE IN WESs.e.x

[The time is a fine day in March 1805. A highway crosses the ridge, which is near the sea, and the south coast is seen bounding the landscape below, the open Channel extending beyond.]

SPIRITS OF THE YEARS

Hark now, and gather how the martial mood Stirs England's humblest hearts. Anon we'll trace Its heavings in the upper coteries there.

SPIRIT SINISTER

Ay; begin small, and so lead up to the greater. It is a sound dramatic principle. I always aim to follow it in my pestilences, fires, famines, and other comedies. And though, to be sure, I did not in my Lisbon earthquake, I did in my French Terror, and my St.

Domingo burlesque.

SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

THY Lisbon earthquake, THY French Terror. Wait.

Thinking thou will'st, thou dost but indicate.

[A stage-coach enters, with pa.s.sengers outside. Their voices after the foregoing sound small and commonplace, as from another medium.]

FIRST Pa.s.sENGER

There seems to be a deal of traffic over Ridgeway, even at this time o' year.

SECOND Pa.s.sENGER

Yes. It is because the King and Court are coming down here later on. They wake up this part rarely!... See, now, how the Channel and coast open out like a chart. That patch of mist below us is the town we are bound for. There's the Isle of Slingers beyond, like a floating snail. That wide bay on the right is where the "Abergavenny,"

Captain John Wordsworth, was wrecked last month. One can see half across to France up here.

FIRST Pa.s.sENGER

Half across. And then another little half, and then all that's behind--the Corsican mischief!

SECOND Pa.s.sENGER

Yes. People who live hereabout--I am a native of these parts--feel the nearness of France more than they do inland.

FIRST Pa.s.sENGER

That's why we have seen so many of these marching regiments on the road. This year his grandest attempt upon us is to be made, I reckon.