The Dynasts: An Epic-Drama of the War with Napoleon Part 129

[The marshals are silent with looks of incredulity, and Caulaincourt shrugs his shoulders.]

Now no more words; but hear. Eugene and Ney With their divisions fall straight back upon The Petersburg and Zwenigarod Roads; Those of Davout upon the Smolensk route.

I will retire meanwhile to Petrowskoi.

Come, let us go.

[NAPOLEON and the marshals move to the door. In leaving, the Emperor pauses and looks back.]

I fear that this event Marks the beginning of a train of ills....

Moscow was meant to be my rest, My refuge, and--it vanishes away!

[Exeunt NAPOLEON, marshals, etc. The smoke grows denser and obscures the scene.]

SCENE IX

THE ROAD FROM SMOLENSKO INTO LITHUANIA

[The season is far advanced towards winter. The point of observation is high amongst the clouds, which, opening and shutting fitfully to the wind, reveal the earth as a confused expanse merely.]

SPIRIT OF THE PITIES

Where are we? And why are we where we are?

SHADE OF THE EARTH

Above a wild waste garden-plot of mine Nigh bare in this late age, and now grown chill, Lithuania called by some. I gather not Why we haunt here, where I can work no charm Either upon the ground or over it.

SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

The wherefore will unfold. The rolling brume That parts, and joins, and parts again below us In ragged restlessness, unscreens by fits The quality of the scene.

SPIRIT OF THE PITIES

I notice now Primeval woods, pine, birch--the skinny growths That can sustain life well where earth affords But sustenance elsewhere yclept starvation.

SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

And what see you on the far land-verge there, Labouring from eastward towards our longitude?

SPIRIT OF THE PITIES

An object like a dun-piled caterpillar, Shuffling its length in painful heaves along, Hitherward.... Yea, what is this Thing we see Which, moving as a single monster might, Is yet not one but many?

SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

Even the Army Which once was called the Grand; now in retreat From Moscow's muteness, urged by That within it; Together with its train of followers-- Men, matrons, babes, in brabbling mult.i.tudes.

SPIRIT OF THE PITIES

And why such flight?

SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

Recording Angels, say.

RECORDING ANGEL I [in minor plain-song]

The host has turned from Moscow where it lay, And Israel-like, moved by some master-sway, Is made to wander on and waste away!

ANGEL II

By track of Tarutino first it flits; Thence swerving, strikes at old Jaroslawitz; The which, accurst by slaughtering swords, it quits.

ANGEL I

Hara.s.sed, it treads the trail by which it came, To Borodino, field of bloodshot fame, Whence stare unburied horrors beyond name!

ANGEL II

And so and thus it nears Smolensko's walls, And, stayed its hunger, starts anew its crawls, Till floats down one white morsel, which appals.

[What has floated down from the sky upon the Army is a flake of snow. Then come another and another, till natural features, hitherto varied with the tints of autumn, are confounded, and all is phantasmal grey and white.

The caterpillar shape still creeps laboriously nearer, but instead, increasing in size by the rules of perspective, it gets more attenuated, and there are left upon the ground behind it minute parts of itself, which are speedily flaked over, and remain as white pimples by the wayside.]

SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

These atoms that drop off are snuffed-out souls Who are enghosted by the caressing snow.

[Pines rise mournfully on each side of the nearing object; ravens in flocks advance with it overhead, waiting to pick out the eyes of strays who fall. The snowstorm increases, descending in tufts which can hardly be shaken off. The sky seems to join itself to the land. The marching figures drop rapidly, and almost immediately become white grave-mounds.

Endowed with enlarged powers of audition as of vision, we are struck by the mournful taciturnity that prevails. Nature is mute. Save for the incessant flogging of the wind-broken and lacerated horses there are no sounds.