SPIRIT OF THE PITIES
So he fulfils the inhuman antickings
He thinks imposed upon him.... What says he?
SPIRIT OF RUMOUR
He says it is the sun of Austerlitz!
The Russians, so far from being driven out of their redoubts,
issue from them towards the French. But they have to retreat,
BAGRATION and his Chief of Staff being wounded. NAPOLÉON sips
his grog hopefully, and orders a still stronger attack on the
great redoubt in the centre.
It is carried out. The redoubt becomes the scene of a huge
massacre. In other parts of the field also the action almost
ceases to be a battle, and takes the form of wholesale butchery
by the thousand, now advantaging one side, now the other.
SPIRIT OF THE YEARS
Thus do the mindless minions of the spell
In mechanized enchantment sway and show
A Will that wills above the will of each,
Yet but the will of all conjunctively;
A fabric of excitement, web of rage,
That permeates as one stuff the weltering whole.
SPIRIT OF THE PITIES
The ugly horror grossly regnant here
Wakes even the drowsed half-drunken Dictator
To all its vain uncouthness!
SPIRIT OF RUMOUR
Murat cries
That on this much-anticipated day
Napoléon’s genius flags inoperative.
The firing from the top of the redoubt has ceased. The French have
got inside. The Russians retreat upon their rear, and fortify
themselves on the heights there. PONIATOWSKI furiously attacks them.
But the French are worn out, and fall back to their station before
the battle. So the combat dies resultlessly away. The sun sets, and
the opposed and exhausted hosts sink to lethargic repose. NAPOLÉON
enters his tent in the midst of his lieutenants, and night descends.
SHADE OF THE EARTH
The fumes of nitre and the reek of gore
Make my airs foul and fulsome unto me!
SPIRIT IRONIC
The natural nausea of a nurse, dear Dame.
SPIRIT OF RUMOUR
Strange: even within that tent no notes of joy
Throb as at Austerlitz! [signifying Napoléon’s tent].