CHORUS OF THE YEARS
Yea, the coneys are scared by the thud of hoofs,
And their white scuts flash at their vanishing heels,
And swallows abandon the hamlet-roofs.
The mole’s tunnelled chambers are crushed by wheels,
The lark’s eggs scattered, their owners fled;
And the hedgehog’s household the sapper unseals.
The snail draws in at the terrible tread,
But in vain; he is crushed by the felloe-rim
The worm asks what can be overhead,
And wriggles deep from a scene so grim,
And guesses him safe; for he does not know
What a foul red flood will be soaking him!
Beaten about by the heel and toe
Are butterflies, sick of the day’s long rheum,
To die of a worse than the weather-foe.
Trodden and bruised to a miry tomb
Are ears that have greened but will never be gold,
And flowers in the bud that will never bloom.
CHORUS OF THE PITIES
So the season’s intent, ere its fruit unfold,
Is frustrate, and mangled, and made succumb,
Like a youth of promise struck stark and cold!...
And what of these who to-night have come?
CHORUS OF THE YEARS
The young sleep sound; but the weather awakes
In the veterans, pains from the past that numb;
Old stabs of Ind, old Peninsular aches,
Old Friedland chills, haunt their moist mud bed,
Cramps from Austerlitz; till their slumber breaks.
CHORUS OF SINISTER SPIRITS
And each soul shivers as sinks his head
On the loam he’s to lease with the other dead
From to-morrow’s mist-fall till Time be sped!
[The fires of the English go out, and silence prevails, save
for the soft hiss of the rain that falls impartially on both
the sleeping armies.]
ACT SEVENTH
SCENE I
THE FIELD OF WATERLOO
[An aerial view of the battlefield at the time of sunrise is
disclosed.
The sky is still overcast, and rain still falls. A green
expanse, almost unbroken, of rye, wheat, and clover, in oblong
and irregular patches undivided by fences, covers the undulating
ground, which sinks into a shallow valley between the French and
English positions. The road from Brussels to Charleroi runs like
a spit through both positions, passing at the back of the English
into the leafy forest of Soignes.
The latter are turning out from their bivouacs. They move stiffly
from their wet rest, and hurry to and fro like ants in an ant-hill.
The tens of thousands of moving specks are largely of a brick-red
colour, but the foreign contingent is darker.
Breakfasts are cooked over smoky fires of green wood. Innumerable
groups, many in their shirt-sleeves, clean their rusty firelocks,
drawing or exploding the charges, scrape the mud from themselves,
and pipeclay from their cross-belts the red dye washed off their
jackets by the rain.
At six o’clock, they parade, spread out, and take up their positions
in the line of battle, the front of which extends in a wavy riband
three miles long, with three projecting bunches at Hougomont, La
Haye Sainte, and La Haye.
Looking across to the French positions we observe that after
advancing in dark streams from where they have passed the night
they, too, deploy and wheel into their fighting places—figures
with red epaulettes and hairy knapsacks, their arms glittering
like a display of cutlery at a hill-side fair.
They assume three concentric lines of crescent shape, that converge
on the English midst, with great blocks of the Imperial Guard at
the back of them. The rattle of their drums, their fanfarades,
and their bands playing “Veillons au salut de l’Empire” contrast
with the quiet reigning on the English side.
A knot of figures, comprising WELLINGTON with a suite of general
and other staff-officers, ride backwards and forwards in front
of the English lines, where each regimental colour floats in the
hands of the junior ensign. The DUKE himself, now a man of forty-
six, is on his bay charger Copenhagen, in light pantaloons, a
small plumeless hat, and a blue cloak, which shows its white
lining when blown back.
On the French side, too, a detached group creeps along the front
in preliminary survey. BONAPARTE—also forty-six—in a grey
overcoat, is mounted on his white arab Marengo, and accompanied
by SOULT, NEY, JÉRÔME, DROUOT, and other marshals. The figures
of aides move to and fro like shuttle-cocks between the group
and distant points in the field. The sun has begun to gleam.]
SPIRIT OF THE PITIES
Discriminate these, and what they are,
Who stand so stalwartly to war.
SPIRIT OF THE YEARS
Report, ye Rumourers of things near and far.
SEMICHORUS I OF RUMOURS [chanting]
Sweep first the Frenchmen’s leftward lines along,
And eye the peaceful panes of Hougomont—
That seemed to hold prescriptive right of peace
In fee from Time till Time itself should cease!—
Jarred now by Reille’s fierce foot-divisions three,
Flanked on their left by Pire’s cavalry.—
The fourfold corps of d’Erlon, spread at length,
Compose the right, east of the famed chaussee—
The shelterless Charleroi-and-Brussels way,—
And Jacquinot’s alert light-steeded strength
Still further right, their sharpened swords display.
Thus stands the first line.