The Dynasts: An Epic-Drama of the War with Napoleon Part 191

SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

I have told thee that It works unwittingly, As one possessed, not judging.

SEMICHORUS I OF IRONIC SPIRITS [aerial music]

Of Its doings if It knew, What It does It would not do!

SEMICHORUS II

Since It knows not, what far sense Speeds Its spinnings in the Immense?

SEMICHORUS I

None; a fixed foresightless dream Is Its whole philosopheme.

SEMICHORUS II

Just so; an unconscious planning, Like a potter raptly panning!

CHORUS

Are then, Love and Light Its aim-- Good Its glory, Bad Its blame?

Nay; to alter evermore Things from what they were before.

SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

Your knowings of the Unknowable declared, Let the last pictures of the play be bared.

[Enter, fighting, more English and Prussians against the French.

NEY is caught by the throng and borne ahead. RULLIERE hides an eagle beneath his coat and follows Ney. NAPOLEON is involved none knows where in the crowd of fugitives.

WELLINGTON and BLUCHER come severally to the view. They meet in the dusk and salute warmly. The Prussian bands strike up "G.o.d save the King" as the two shake hands. From his gestures of a.s.sent it can be seen that WELLINGTON accepts BLUCHER'S offer to pursue.

The reds disappear from the sky, and the dusk grows deeper. The action of the battle degenerates to a hunt, and recedes further and further into the distance southward. When the tramplings and shouts of the combatants have dwindled, the lower sounds are noticeable that come from the wounded: hopeless appeals, cries for water, elaborate blasphemies, and impotent execrations of Heaven and h.e.l.l. In the vast and dusky shambles black slouching shapes begin to move, the plunderers of the dead and dying.

The night grows clear and beautiful, and the moon shines musingly down. But instead of the sweet smell of green herbs and dewy rye as at her last beaming upon these fields, there is now the stench of gunpowder and a muddy stew of crushed crops and gore.]

SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

So hath the Urging Immanence used to-day Its inadvertent might to field this fray: And Europe's wormy dynasties rerobe Themselves in their old gilt, to dazzle anew the globe!

[The scene us curtained by a night-mist.[25]]

SCENE IX

THE WOOD OF BOSSU

[It is midnight. NAPOLEON enters a glade of the wood, a solitary figure on a faded horse. The shadows of the boughs travel over his listless form as he moves along. The horse chooses its own path, comes to a standstill, and feeds. The tramp of BERTRAND, SOULT, DROUOT, and LOBAU'S horses, gone forward in hope to find a way of retreat, is heard receding over the hill.]

NAPOLEON [to himself, languidly]

Here should have been some troops of Gerard's corps, Left to protect the pa.s.sage of the convoys, Yet they, too, fail.... I have nothing more to lose, But life!

[Flocks of fugitive soldiers pa.s.s along the adjoining road without seeing him. NAPOLEON'S head droops lower and lower as he sits listless in the saddle, and he falls into a fitful sleep. The moon shines upon his face, which is drawn and waxen.]

SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

"Sic diis immortalibus placet,"-- "Thus is it pleasing to the immortal G.o.ds,"

As earthlings used to say. Thus, to this last, The Will in thee has moved thee, Bonaparte, As we say now.

NAPOLEON [starting]

Whose frigid tones are those, Breaking upon my lurid loneliness So brusquely?... Yet, 'tis true, I have ever know That such a Will I pa.s.sively obeyed!

[He drowses again.]

SPIRIT IRONIC

Nothing care I for these high-doctrined dreams, And shape the case in quite a common way, So I would ask, Ajaccian Bonaparte, Has all this been worth while?

NAPOLEON

O hideous hour, Why am I stung by spectral questionings?

Did not my clouded soul incline to match Those of the corpses yonder, thou should'st rue Thy saying, Fiend, whoever those may'st be!...

Why did the death-drops fail to bite me close I took at Fontainebleau? Had I then ceased, This deep had been umplumbed; had they but worked, I had thrown threefold the glow of Hannibal Down History's dusky lanes!--Is it too late?...

Yes. Self-sought death would smoke but damply here!

If but a Kremlin cannon-shot had met me My greatness would have stood: I should have scored A vast repute, scarce paralleled in time.

As it did not, the fates had served me best If in the thick and thunder of to-day, Like Nelson, Harold, Hector, Cyrus, Saul, I had been shifted from this jail of flesh, To wander as a greatened ghost elsewhere.

--Yes, a good death, to have died on yonder field; But never a ball came padding down my way!

So, as it is, a miss-mark they will dub me; And yet--I found the crown of France in the mire, And with the point of my prevailing sword I picked it up! But for all this and this I shall be nothing....

To shoulder Christ from out the topmost niche In human fame, as once I fondly felt, Was not for me. I came too late in time To a.s.sume the prophet or the demi-G.o.d, A part past playing now. My only course To make good showance to posterity Was to implant my line upon the throne.

And how shape that, if now extinction nears?