The Dynasts: An Epic-Drama of the War with Napoleon Part 2

Giulay, Gottesheim, Klenau, and Prschebiszewsky.

Regiments of the Austrian Army.

Regiments of the Russian Army.

WOMEN

Queen Charlotte.

English Princesses.

Ladies of the English Court.

LADY HESTER STANHOPE.

A LADY.

Lady Caroline Lamb, Mrs. Damer, and other English Ladies.

THE EMPRESS JOSEPHINE.

Princesses and Ladies of Josephine's Court.

Seven Milanese Young Ladies.

City- and Towns-women.

Country-women.

A MILITIAMAN'S WIFE.

A STREET-WOMAN.

s.h.i.+p-women.

Servants.

FORE SCENE

THE OVERWORLD

[Enter the Ancient Spirit and Chorus of the Years, the Spirit and Chorus of the Pities, the Shade of the Earth, the Spirits Sinister and Ironic with their Choruses, Rumours, Spirit- Messengers, and Recording Angels.]

SHADE OF THE EARTH

What of the Immanent Will and Its designs?

SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

It works unconsciously, as heretofore, Eternal artistries in Circ.u.mstance, Whose patterns, wrought by rapt aesthetic rote, Seem in themselves Its single listless aim, And not their consequence.

CHORUS OF THE PITIES [aerial music]

Still thus? Still thus?

Ever unconscious!

An automatic sense Unweeting why or whence?

Be, then, the inevitable, as of old, Although that SO it be we dare not hold!

SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

Hold what ye list, fond believing Sprites, You cannot swerve the pulsion of the Byss, Which thinking on, yet weighing not Its thought, Unchecks Its clock-like laws.

SPIRIT SINISTER [aside]

Good, as before.

My little engines, then, will still have play.

SPIRIT OF THE PITIES

Why doth It so and so, and ever so, This viewless, voiceless Turner of the Wheel?

SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

As one sad story runs, It lends Its heed To other worlds, being wearied out with this; Wherefore Its mindlessness of earthly woes.

Some, too, have told at whiles that rightfully Its warefulness, Its care, this planet lost When in her early growth and crudity By bad mad acts of severance men contrived, Working such nescience by their own device.-- Yea, so it stands in certain chronicles, Though not in mine.

SPIRIT OF THE PITIES

Meet is it, none the less, To bear in thought that though Its consciousness May be estranged, engrossed afar, or sealed, Sublunar shocks may wake Its watch anon?

SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

Nay. In the Foretime, even to the germ of Being, Nothing appears of shape to indicate That cognizance has marshalled things terrene, Or will [such is my thinking] in my span.

Rather they show that, like a knitter drowsed, Whose fingers play in skilled unmindfulness, The Will has woven with an absent heed Since life first was; and ever will so weave.

SPIRIT SINISTER

Hence we've rare dramas going--more so since It wove Its web in the Ajaccian womb!