The Dynasts: An Epic-Drama of the War with Napoleon Part 41

Again ye deprecate the World-Soul's way That I so long have told? Then note anew [Since ye forget] the ordered potencies, Nerves, sinews, trajects, eddies, ducts of It The Eternal Urger, pressing change on change.

[At once, as earlier, a preternatural clearness possesses the atmosphere of the battle-field, in which the scene becomes anatomized and the living ma.s.ses of humanity transparent. The controlling Immanent Will appears therein, as a brain-like network of currents and ejections, twitching, interpenetrating, entangling, and thrusting hither and thither the human forms.]

SEMICHORUS I OF IRONIC SPIRITS [aerial music]

O Innocents, can ye forget That things to be were shaped and set Ere mortals and this planet met?

SEMICHORUS II

Stand ye apostrophizing That Which, working all, works but thereat Like some sublime fermenting-vat.

SEMICHORUS I

Heaving throughout its vast content With strenuously trans.m.u.tive bent Though of its aim insentient?--

SEMICHORUS II

Could ye have seen Its early deeds Ye would not cry, as one who pleads For quarter, when a Europe bleeds!

SEMICHORUS I

Ere ye, young Pities, had upgrown From out the deeps where mortals moan Against a ruling not their own,

SEMICHORUS II

He of the Years beheld, and we, Creation's prentice artistry Express in forms that now unbe

SEMICHORUS I

Tentative dreams from day to day; Mangle its types, re-knead the clay In some more palpitating way;

SEMICHORUS II

Beheld the rarest wrecked amain, Whole nigh-perfected species slain By those that scarce could boast a brain;

SEMICHORUS I

Saw ravage, growth, diminish, add, Here peoples sane, there peoples mad, In choiceless throws of good and bad;

SEMICHORUS II

Heard laughters at the ruthless dooms Which tortured to the eternal glooms Quick, quivering hearts in hecatombs.

CHORUS

Us Ancients, then, it ill befits To quake when Slaughter's spectre flits Athwart this field of Austerlitz!

SHADE OF THE EARTH

Pain not their young compa.s.sions by such lore, But hold you mute, and read the battle yonder: The moment marks the day's catastrophe.

SCENE IV

THE SAME. THE RUSSIAN POSITION

[It is about noon, and the vital spectacle is now near the village of Tilnitz. The fog has dispersed, and the sun s.h.i.+nes clearly, though without warmth, the ice on the pools gleaming under its radiance.

GENERAL BUXHOVDEN and his aides-de-camp have reined up, and remain at pause on a hillock. The General watches through a gla.s.s his battalions, which are still disputing the village. Suddenly approach down the track from the upland of Pratzen large companies of Russian infantry helter-skelter. COUNT LANGERON is beheld to be retreating with them; and soon, pale and agitated, he hastens up to GENERAL BUXHOVDEN, whose face is flushed.]

LANGERON

While they are upon us you stay idle here!

Prschebiszewsky's column is distraught and rent, And more than half my own made captive! Yea, Kreznowitz carried, and Sokolnitz hemmed: The enemy's whole strength will stound you soon!

BUXHOVDEN

You seem to see the enemy everywhere.

LANGERON

You cannot see them, be they here or no!

BUXHOVDEN

I only wait Prschebiszewsky's nearing corps To join Dokhtorof's to them. Here they come.

[SOULT, supported by BERNADOTTE and OUDINOT, having cleared and secured the Pratzen height, his battalions are perceived descending from it on this side, behind DOKHTOROF'S division, so placing the latter between themselves and the pools.]

LANGERON