SEMICHORUS II
But the weaving Will from eternity,
[Hemming them in by a circling sea]
Evolved the fleet of the Englishry.
SEMICHORUS I
The wane of his armaments ill-advised,
At Trafalgar, to a force despised,
Was a wound which never has cicatrized.
SEMICHORUS II
This, O this is the cramp that grips!
And freezes the Emperor’s finger-tips
From signing a peace with the Land of Ships.
CHORUS
The Universal-empire plot
Demands the rule of that wave-walled spot;
And peace with England cometh not!
THE SCENE REOPENS
[A lurid gloom now envelops the Platz and city; and Bonaparte
is heard as from the Palace:
VOICE OF NAPOLÉON
These monstrous violations being in train
Of law and national integrities
By English arrogance in things marine,
[Which dares to capture simple merchant-craft,
In honest quest of harmless merchandize,
For crime of kinship to a hostile power]
Our vast, effectual, and majestic strokes
In this unmatched campaign, enable me
To bar from commerce with the Continent
All keels of English frame. Hence I decree:—
SPIRIT OF RUMOUR
This outlines his renowned “Berlin Decree.”
Maybe he meditates its scheme in sleep,
Or hints it to his suite, or syllables it
While shaping, to his scribes.
VOICE OF NAPOLÉON
All England’s ports to suffer strict blockade;
All traffic with that land to cease forthwith;
All natives of her isles, wherever met,
To be detained as windfalls of the war.
All chattels of her make, material, mould,
To be good prize wherever pounced upon:
And never a bottom hailing from her shores
But shall be barred from every haven here.
This for her monstrous harms to human rights,
And shameless sauciness to neighbour powers!
SPIRIT SINISTER
I spell herein that our excellently high-coloured drama is not
played out yet!
SPIRIT OF THE YEARS
Nor will it be for many a month of moans,
And summer shocks, and winter-whitened bones.
[The night gets darker, and the Palace outlines are lost.]