It’s true! It’s true! Rada, I am awake!
I am awake! And, in the name of Christ,
I accuse, I accuse ... O God, forgive us all!
(He falls on his knees by the bedroom door and calls, as if to the dead within:)
Awake, and after nineteen hundred years....
Bettine, Bettine! the British, they are coming!
Rada, you said it—they are coming quickly!
They are coming, with the reign of right and law.
But, O Bettine! Bettine! will they remember?
Are they awake? I only hear their guns.
What if they should grow used to it, Bettine,
And fail to wipe this horror from the world?
God, is there any hope for poor mankind?
God, are Thy little nations and Thy weak,
Thine innocent, condemned to hell for ever?
God, will the strong deliverers break the sword
And bring this world at last to Christmas Eve?
The Imperial Choir.
Æterni Parentis
Splendorem Æternum,
Velatum sub carne videbimus,
Deum infantem,
Pannis involutum,
Venite, adoremus,
Venite, adoremus,
Venite, adoremus Dominum.
Nanko.
Will Christ be born, oh, not in Bethlehem,
But in the soul of man, the abode of God?
There, in that deep, undying soul of man
(I still believe it), that immortal soul,
Will they lift up the cross with Christ upon it,
The Fool of God, whom intellectual fools,
The little fools of dust, in every land,
Grinning their What is Truth? still crucify.
Could they not thrust their hands into His wounds?
His wounds are these—these dead are all His wounds.
Bettine! Bettine! the British, they are coming!
But you are silent now, so silent now!
Will they lift up God’s poor old broken Fool,
And sleep no more until His kingdom come,
His infinite kingdom come?
Will they remember?
(He bows his head against the closed door, while the gramophone lifts the chorus of the Imperial Choir over the deepening thunder of the guns:)
Nunc cantet, exultans,
Chorus angelorum,
Cantet nunc aula celestium
Gloria, Gloria,
In excelsis Deo!
Venite, adoremus,
Venite, adoremus,
Venite, adoremus Dominum.