The Dynasts: An Epic-Drama of the War with Napoleon Part 90

SHERIDAN

If heat be evidence of loyalty, Et caetera--something quaint like that might please 'em.

PRINCE OF WALES [to the company]

If heat be evidence of loyalty, This room affords it truly without question; If heat be not, then its accompaniment Most surely 'tis to-night. The news I bring, Good ladies, friends, and gentlemen, perchance You have divined already? That our arms-- Engaged to thwart Napoleon's tyranny Over the jaunty, jocund land of Spain Even to the highest apex of our strength-- Are rayed with victory! [Cheers.] Lengthy was the strife And fierce, and hot; and sore the suffering; But proudly we endured it; and shall hear, No doubt, of its far consequence Ere many days. I'll read the details sent. [Cheers.]

[He reads again from the dispatch amid more cheering, the ball- room guests crowding round. When he has done he answers questions; then continuing:

Meanwhile our interest is, if possible, As keenly waked elsewhere. Into the Scheldt Some forty thousand bayonets and swords, And twoscore s.h.i.+ps o' the line, with frigates, sloops, And gunboats sixty more, make headway now, Bleaching the waters with their bellying sails; Or maybe they already anchor there, And that level ooze of Walcheren sh.o.r.e Ring with the voices of that landing host In every tw.a.n.g of British dialect, Clamorous to loosen fettered Europe's chain! [Cheers.]

A n.o.bLE LORD [aside to Sheridan]

Prinny's outpouring tastes suspiciously like your brew, Sheridan.

I'll be d.a.m.ned if it is his own concoction. How d'ye sell it a gallon?

SHERIDAN

I don't deal that way nowadays. I give the recipe, and charge a duty on the gauging. It is more artistic, and saves trouble.

[The company proceed to the supper-rooms, and the ball-room sinks into solitude.]

SPIRIT OF THE PITIES

So they pa.s.s on. Let be!--But what is this-- A moan?--all frailly floating from the east To usward, even from the forenamed isle?...

Would I had not broke nescience, to inspect A world so ill-contrived!

SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

But since thou hast We'll hasten to the isle; and thou'lt behold-- Such as it is--the scene its coasts enfold.

SCENE VIII

WALCHEREN

[A marshy island at the mouth of the Scheldt, lit by the low suns.h.i.+ne of an evening in late summer. The horizontal rays from the west lie in yellow sheaves across the vapours that the day's heat has drawn from the sweating soil. Sour gra.s.ses grow in places, and strange fishy smells, now warm, now cold, pa.s.s along.

Bra.s.s-hued and opalescent bubbles, compounded of many gases, rise where pa.s.sing feet have trodden the damper spots. At night the place is the haunt of the Jack-lantern.]

DUMB SHOW

A vast army is encamped here, and in the open s.p.a.ces are infantry on parade--skeletoned men, some flushed, some s.h.i.+vering, who are kept moving because it is dangerous to stay still. Every now and then one falls down, and is carried away to a hospital with no roof, where he is laid, bedless, on the ground.

In the distance soldiers are digging graves for the funerals which are to take place after dark, delayed till then that the sight of so many may not drive the living melancholy-mad. Faint noises are heard in the air.

SHADE OF THE EARTH

What storm is this of souls dissolved in sighs, And what the dingy doom it signifies?

SPIRIT OF THE PITIES

We catch a lamentation shaped thuswise:

CHORUS OF THE PITIES [aerial music]

"We who withstood the blasting blaze of war When marshalled by the gallant Moore awhile, Beheld the grazing death-bolt with a smile, Closed combat edge to edge and bore to bore, Now rot upon this Isle!

"The ever wan mora.s.s, the dune, the blear Sandweed, and tepid pool, and putrid smell, Emaciate purpose to a fractious fear, Beckon the body to its last low cell-- A c.h.i.n.k no chart will tell.

"O ancient Delta, where the fen-lights flit!

Ign.o.ble sediment of loftier lands, Thy humour clings about our hearts and hands And solves us to its softness, till we sit As we were part of it.

"Such force as fever leaves maddened now, With tidings trickling in from day to day Of others' differing fortunes, wording how They yield their lives to baulk a tyrant's sway-- Yield them not vainly, they!

"In champaigns green and purple, far and near, In town and thorpe where quiet spire-c.o.c.ks turn, Through vales, by rocks, beside the brooding burn Echoes the aggressor's arrogant career; And we pent pithless here!

"Here, where each creeping day the creeping file Draws past with shouldered comrades score on score, Bearing them to their lightless last asile, Where weary wave-wails from the clammy sh.o.r.e Will reach their ears no more.

"We might have fought, and had we died, died well, Even if in dynasts' discords not our own; Our death-spot some sad haunter might have shown, Some tongue have asked our sires or sons to tell The tale of how we fell;

"But such be chanced not. Like the mist we fade, No l.u.s.trous lines engrave in story we, Our country's chiefs, for their own fames afraid, Will leave our names and fates by this pale sea, To perish silently!"

SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

Why must ye echo as mechanic mimes These mortal minion's bootless cadences, Played on the stops of their anatomy As is the mewling music on the strings Of yonder s.h.i.+p-masts by the unweeting wind, Or the frail tune upon this withering sedge That holds its papery blades against the gale?

--Men pa.s.s to dark corruption, at the best, Ere I can count five score: these why not now?-- The Immanent Shaper builds Its beings so Whether ye sigh their sighs with them or no!

The night fog enwraps the isle and the dying English army.

ACT FIFTH