SPIRIT OF THE YEARS
As prelude to the scene, as means to aid
Our younger comrades in its construing,
Pray spread your scripture, and rehearse in brief
The reasonings here of late—to whose effects
Words of to-night form sequence.
[The Recording Angels chant from their books, antiphonally, in a
minor recitative.]
ANGEL I [aerial music]
Feeble-framed dull unresolve, unresourcefulness,
Sat in the halls of the Kingdom’s high Councillors,
Whence the grey glooms of a ghost-eyed despondency
Wanned as with winter the national mind.
ANGEL II
England stands forth to the sword of Napoléon
Nakedly—not an ally in support of her;
Men and munitions dispersed inexpediently;
Projects of range and scope poorly defined.
ANGEL I
Once more doth Pitt deem the land crying loud to him.—
Frail though and spent, and an-hungered for restfulness
Once more responds he, dead fervours to energize,
Aims to concentre, slack efforts to bind.
ANGEL II
Ere the first fruit thereof grow audible,
Holding as hapless his dream of good guardianship,
Jestingly, earnestly, shouting it serviceless,
Tardy, inept, and uncouthly designed.
ANGELS I AND II
So now, to-night, in slashing old sentences,
Hear them speak,—gravely these, those with gay-heartedness,—
Midst their admonishments little conceiving how
Scarlet the scroll that the years will unwind!
SPIRIT OF THE PITIES [to the Spirit of the Years]
Let us put on and suffer for the nonce
The feverish fleshings of Humanity,
And join the pale debaters here convened.
So may thy soul be won to sympathy
By donning their poor mould.
SPIRIT OF THE YEARS
I’ll humour thee,
Though my unpassioned essence could not change
Did I incarn in moulds of all mankind!
SPIRIT IRONIC
’Tis enough to make every little dog in England run to mixen to
hear this Pitt sung so strenuously! I’ll be the third of the
incarnate, on the chance of hearing the tune played the other way.
SPIRIT SINISTER
And I the fourth. There’s sure to be something in my line toward,
where politicians gathered together!
[The four Phantoms enter the Gallery of the House in the disguise
of ordinary strangers.]