The Dynasts: An Epic-Drama of the War with Napoleon Part 178

UXBRIDGE [looking through gla.s.s]

Yes, by G.o.d; His face as clear-cut as the edge of a cloud The sun behind shows up! His suite and all!

Fire--fire! And aim you well.

[The battery makes ready and fires.]

No! It won't do.

He brings on mounted ordnance of his Guard, So we're in danger here. Then limber up, And off as soon as may be.

[The English artillery and cavalry retreat at full speed, just as the weather bursts, with flashes of lightning and drops of rain.

They all clatter off along the Brussels road, UXBRIDGE and his aides galloping beside the column; till no British are left at Quatre-Bras except the slain.

The focus of the scene follows the retreating English army, the highway and its and margins panoramically gliding past the vision of the spectator. The phantoms chant monotonously while the retreat goes on.]

CHORUS OF RUMOURS [aerial music]

Day's nether hours advance; storm supervenes In heaviness unparalleled, that screens With water-woven gauzes, vapour-bred, The creeping clumps of half-obliterate red-- Severely hara.s.sed past each round and ridge By the inimical lance. They gain the bridge And village of Genappe, in equal fence With weather and the enemy's violence.

--Cannon upon the foul and flooded road, Cavalry in the cornfields mire-bestrowed, With frothy horses floundering to their knees, Make wayfaring a moil of miseries!

Till Britishry and Bonapartists lose Their clashing colours for the tawny hues That twilight sets on all its stealing tinct imbues.

[The rising ground of Mont Saint-Jean, in front of Waterloo, is gained by the English vanguard and main ma.s.ses of foot, and by degrees they are joined by the cavalry and artillery. The French are but little later in taking up their position amid the cornfields around La Belle Alliance.

Fires begin to shine up from the English bivouacs. Camp kettles are slung, and the men pile arms and stand round the blaze to dry themselves. The French opposite lie down like dead men in the dripping green wheat and rye, without supper and without fire.

By and by the English army also lies down, the men huddling together on the ploughed mud in their wet blankets, while some sleep sitting round the dying fires.]

CHORUS OF THE YEARS [aerial music]

The eyelids of eve fall together at last, And the forms so foreign to field and tree Lie down as though native, and slumber fast!

CHORUS OF THE PITIES

Sore are the thrills of misgiving we see In the artless champaign at this harlequinade, Distracting a vigil where calm should be!

The green seems opprest, and the Plain afraid Of a Something to come, whereof these are the proofs,-- Neither earthquake, nor storm, nor eclipses's shade!

CHORUS OF THE YEARS

Yea, the coneys are scared by the thud of hoofs, And their white scuts flash at their vanishing heels, And swallows abandon the hamlet-roofs.

The mole's tunnelled chambers are crushed by wheels, The lark's eggs scattered, their owners fled; And the hedgehog's household the sapper unseals.

The snail draws in at the terrible tread, But in vain; he is crushed by the felloe-rim The worm asks what can be overhead,

And wriggles deep from a scene so grim, And guesses him safe; for he does not know What a foul red flood will be soaking him!

Beaten about by the heel and toe Are b.u.t.terflies, sick of the day's long rheum, To die of a worse than the weather-foe.

Trodden and bruised to a miry tomb Are ears that have greened but will never be gold, And flowers in the bud that will never bloom.

CHORUS OF THE PITIES

So the season's intent, ere its fruit unfold, Is frustrate, and mangled, and made succ.u.mb, Like a youth of promise struck stark and cold!...

And what of these who to-night have come?

CHORUS OF THE YEARS

The young sleep sound; but the weather awakes In the veterans, pains from the past that numb;

Old stabs of Ind, old Peninsular aches, Old Friedland chills, haunt their moist mud bed, Cramps from Austerlitz; till their slumber breaks.

CHORUS OF SINISTER SPIRITS

And each soul shivers as sinks his head On the loam he's to lease with the other dead From to-morrow's mist-fall till Time be sped!

[The fires of the English go out, and silence prevails, save for the soft hiss of the rain that falls impartially on both the sleeping armies.]

ACT SEVENTH

SCENE I

THE FIELD OF WATERLOO

[An aerial view of the battlefield at the time of sunrise is disclosed.

The sky is still overcast, and rain still falls. A green expanse, almost unbroken, of rye, wheat, and clover, in oblong and irregular patches undivided by fences, covers the undulating ground, which sinks into a shallow valley between the French and English positions. The road from Brussels to Charleroi runs like a spit through both positions, pa.s.sing at the back of the English into the leafy forest of Soignes.

The latter are turning out from their bivouacs. They move stiffly from their wet rest, and hurry to and fro like ants in an ant-hill.

The tens of thousands of moving specks are largely of a brick-red colour, but the foreign contingent is darker.

Breakfasts are cooked over smoky fires of green wood. Innumerable groups, many in their shirt-sleeves, clean their rusty firelocks, drawing or exploding the charges, sc.r.a.pe the mud from themselves, and pipeclay from their cross-belts the red dye washed off their jackets by the rain.

At six o'clock, they parade, spread out, and take up their positions in the line of battle, the front of which extends in a wavy riband three miles long, with three projecting bunches at Hougomont, La Haye Sainte, and La Haye.

Looking across to the French positions we observe that after advancing in dark streams from where they have pa.s.sed the night they, too, deploy and wheel into their fighting places--figures with red epaulettes and hairy knapsacks, their arms glittering like a display of cutlery at a hill-side fair.

They a.s.sume three concentric lines of crescent shape, that converge on the English midst, with great blocks of the Imperial Guard at the back of them. The rattle of their drums, their fanfarades, and their bands playing "Veillons au salut de l'Empire" contrast with the quiet reigning on the English side.