SEMICHORUS I OF IRONIC SPIRITS [aerial music]
Of Its doings if It knew,
What It does It would not do!
SEMICHORUS II
Since It knows not, what far sense
Speeds Its spinnings in the Immense?
SEMICHORUS I
None; a fixed foresightless dream
Is Its whole philosopheme.
SEMICHORUS II
Just so; an unconscious planning,
Like a potter raptly panning!
CHORUS
Are then, Love and Light Its aim—
Good Its glory, Bad Its blame?
Nay; to alter evermore
Things from what they were before.
SPIRIT OF THE YEARS
Your knowings of the Unknowable declared,
Let the last pictures of the play be bared.
[Enter, fighting, more English and Prussians against the French.
NEY is caught by the throng and borne ahead. RULLIERE hides an
eagle beneath his coat and follows Ney. NAPOLÉON is involved
none knows where in the crowd of fugitives.
WELLINGTON and BLÜCHER come severally to the view. They meet in
the dusk and salute warmly. The Prussian bands strike up “God save
the King” as the two shake hands. From his gestures of assent it
can be seen that WELLINGTON accepts BLÜCHER’S offer to pursue.
The reds disappear from the sky, and the dusk grows deeper. The
action of the battle degenerates to a hunt, and recedes further
and further into the distance southward. When the tramplings
and shouts of the combatants have dwindled, the lower sounds are
noticeable that come from the wounded: hopeless appeals, cries
for water, elaborate blasphemies, and impotent execrations of
Heaven and hell. In the vast and dusky shambles black slouching
shapes begin to move, the plunderers of the dead and dying.
The night grows clear and beautiful, and the moon shines musingly
down. But instead of the sweet smell of green herbs and dewy rye
as at her last beaming upon these fields, there is now the stench
of gunpowder and a muddy stew of crushed crops and gore.]
SPIRIT OF THE YEARS
So hath the Urging Immanence used to-day
Its inadvertent might to field this fray:
And Europe’s wormy dynasties rerobe
Themselves in their old gilt, to dazzle anew the globe!
[The scene us curtained by a night-mist.[25]]
SCENE IX
THE WOOD OF BOSSU
[It is midnight. NAPOLÉON enters a glade of the wood, a solitary
figure on a faded horse. The shadows of the boughs travel over
his listless form as he moves along. The horse chooses its own
path, comes to a standstill, and feeds. The tramp of BERTRAND,
SOULT, DROUOT, and LOBAU’S horses, gone forward in hope to find
a way of retreat, is heard receding over the hill.]
NAPOLÉON [to himself, languidly]
Here should have been some troops of Gerard’s corps,
Left to protect the passage of the convoys,
Yet they, too, fail.... I have nothing more to lose,
But life!
[Flocks of fugitive soldiers pass along the adjoining road without
seeing him. NAPOLÉON’S head droops lower and lower as he sits
listless in the saddle, and he falls into a fitful sleep. The
moon shines upon his face, which is drawn and waxen.]