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William Morris - "Hopes and Fears for Art"

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Madame D'Arblay - "The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2"

The Dynasts

T >> Thomas Hardy >> The Dynasts




While one they eye, flushed from his crowning,
Ranks legions around him
To shake the enisled neighbour nation
And close her career!


SEMICHORUS I OF RUMOURS (aerial music)

O woven-winged squadrons of Toulon
And fellows of Rochefort,
Wait, wait for a wind, and draw westward
Ere Nelson be near!

For he reads not your force, or your freightage
Of warriors fell-handed,
Or when they will join for the onset,
Or whither they steer!


SEMICHORUS II

O Nelson, so zealous a watcher
Through months-long of cruizing,
Thy foes may elide thee a moment,
Put forth, and get clear;

And rendezvous westerly straightway
With Spain's aiding navies,
And hasten to head violation
Of Albion's frontier!


SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

Methinks too much assurance thrills your note
On secrets in my locker, gentle sprites;
But it may serve.--Our thought being now reflexed
To forces operant on this English isle,
Behoves it us to enter scene by scene,
And watch the spectacle of Europe's moves
In her embroil, as they were self-ordained
According to the naive and liberal creed
Of our great-hearted young Compassionates,
Forgetting the Prime Mover of the gear,
As puppet-watchers him who pulls the strings.--
You'll mark the twitchings of this Bonaparte
As he with other figures foots his reel,
Until he twitch him into his lonely grave:
Also regard the frail ones that his flings
Have made gyrate like animalcula
In tepid pools.--Hence to the precinct, then,
And count as framework to the stagery
Yon architraves of sunbeam-smitten cloud.--
So may ye judge Earth's jackaclocks to be
No fugled by one Will, but function-free.

[The nether sky opens, and Europe is disclosed as a prone and
emaciated figure, the Alps shaping like a backbone, and the
branching mountain-chains like ribs, the peninsular plateau of
Spain forming a head. Broad and lengthy lowlands stretch from
the north of France across Russia like a grey-green garment hemmed
by the Ural mountains and the glistening Arctic Ocean.

The point of view then sinks downwards through space, and draws
near to the surface of the perturbed countries, where the peoples,
distressed by events which they did not cause, are seen writhing,
crawling, heaving, and vibrating in their various cities and
nationalities.]


SPIRIT OF THE YEARS (to the Spirit of the Pities)

As key-scene to the whole, I first lay bare
The Will-webs of thy fearful questioning;
For know that of my antique privileges
This gift to visualize the Mode is one
(Though by exhaustive strain and effort only).
See, then, and learn, ere my power pass again.

[A new and penetrating light descends on the spectacle, enduring
men and things with a seeming transparency, and exhibiting as one
organism the anatomy of life and movement in all humanity and
vitalized matter included in the display.]


SPIRIT OF THE PITIES

Amid this scene of bodies substantive
Strange waves I sight like winds grown visible,
Which bear men's forms on their innumerous coils,
Twining and serpenting round and through.
Also retracting threads like gossamers--
Except in being irresistible--
Which complicate with some, and balance all.


SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

These are the Prime Volitions,--fibrils, veins,
Will-tissues, nerves, and pulses of the Cause,
That heave throughout the Earth's compositure.
Their sum is like the lobule of a Brain
Evolving always that it wots not of;
A Brain whose whole connotes the Everywhere,
And whose procedure may but be discerned
By phantom eyes like ours; the while unguessed
Of those it stirs, who (even as ye do) dream
Their motions free, their orderings supreme;
Each life apart from each, with power to mete
Its own day's measures; balanced, self complete;
Though they subsist but atoms of the One
Labouring through all, divisible from none;
But this no further now. Deem yet man's deeds self-done.


GENERAL CHORUS OF INTELLIGENCES (aerial music)

We'll close up Time, as a bird its van,
We'll traverse Space, as spirits can,
Link pulses severed by leagues and years,
Bring cradles into touch with biers;
So that the far-off Consequence appear
Prompt at the heel of foregone Cause.--
The PRIME, that willed ere wareness was,
Whose Brain perchance is Space, whose Thought its laws,
Which we as threads and streams discern,
We may but muse on, never learn.



END OF THE FORE SCENE




ACT FIRST


SCENE I

ENGLAND. A RIDGE IN WESSEX

[The time is a fine day in March 1805. A highway crosses the
ridge, which is near the sea, and the south coast is seen
bounding the landscape below, the open Channel extending beyond.]


SPIRITS OF THE YEARS

Hark now, and gather how the martial mood
Stirs England's humblest hearts. Anon we'll trace
Its heavings in the upper coteries there.


SPIRIT SINISTER

Ay; begin small, and so lead up to the greater. It is a sound
dramatic principle. I always aim to follow it in my pestilences,
fires, famines, and other comedies. And though, to be sure, I did
not in my Lisbon earthquake, I did in my French Terror, and my St.
Domingo burlesque.


SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

THY Lisbon earthquake, THY French Terror. Wait.
Thinking thou will'st, thou dost but indicate.

[A stage-coach enters, with passengers outside. Their voices
after the foregoing sound small and commonplace, as from another
medium.]


FIRST PASSENGER

There seems to be a deal of traffic over Ridgeway, even at this time
o' year.


SECOND PASSENGER

Yes. It is because the King and Court are coming down here later
on. They wake up this part rarely! . . . See, now, how the Channel
and coast open out like a chart. That patch of mist below us is the
town we are bound for. There's the Isle of Slingers beyond, like a
floating snail. That wide bay on the right is where the "Abergavenny,"
Captain John Wordsworth, was wrecked last month. One can see half
across to France up here.


FIRST PASSENGER

Half across. And then another little half, and then all that's
behind--the Corsican mischief!


SECOND PASSENGER

Yes. People who live hereabout--I am a native of these parts--feel
the nearness of France more than they do inland.


FIRST PASSENGER

That's why we have seen so many of these marching regiments on the
road. This year his grandest attempt upon us is to be made, I reckon.


SECOND PASSENGER

May we be ready!


FIRST PASSENGER

Well, we ought to be. We've had alarms enough, God knows.

[Some companies of infantry are seen ahead, and the coach presently
overtakes them.]


SOLDIERS (singing as they walk)

We be the King's men, hale and hearty,
Marching to meet one Buonaparty;
If he won't sail, lest the wind should blow,
We shall have marched for nothing, O!
Right fol-lol!

We be the King's men, hale and hearty,
Marching to meet one Buonaparty;
If he be sea-sick, says "No, no!"
We shall have marched for nothing, O!
Right fol-lol!

[The soldiers draw aside, and the coach passes on.]


SECOND PASSENGER

Is there truth in it that Bonaparte wrote a letter to the King last
month?


FIRST PASSENGER

Yes, sir. A letter in his own hand, in which he expected the King
to reply to him in the same manner.


SOLDIERS (continuing, as they are left behind)

We be the King's men, hale and hearty,
Marching to meet one Buonaparty;
Never mind, mates; we'll be merry, though
We may have marched for nothing, O!
Right fol-lol!


THIRD PASSENGER

And was Boney's letter friendly?


FIRST PASSENGER

Certainly, sir. He requested peace with the King.


THIRD PASSENGER

And why shouldn't the King reply in the same manner?


FIRST PASSENGER

What! Encourage this man in an act of shameless presumption, and
give him the pleasure of considering himself the equal of the King
of England--whom he actually calls his brother!


THIRD PASSENGER

He must be taken for what he is, not for what he was; and if he calls
King George his brother it doesn't speak badly for his friendliness.


FIRST PASSENGER

Whether or no, the King, rightly enough, did not reply in person,
but through Lord Mulgrave our Foreign Minister, to the effect that
his Britannic Majesty cannot give a specific answer till he has
communicated with the Continental powers.


THIRD PASSENGER

Both the manner and the matter of the reply are British; but a huge
mistake.


FIRST PASSENGER

Sir, am I to deem you a friend of Bonaparte, a traitor to your
country---


THIRD PASSENGER

Damn my wig, sir, if I'll be called a traitor by you or any Court
sycophant at all at all!

[He unpacks a case of pistols.]


SECOND PASSENGER

Gentlemen forbear, forbear! Should such differences be suffered to
arise on a spot where we may, in less than three months, be fighting
for our very existence? This is foolish, I say. Heaven alone, who
reads the secrets of this man's heart, can tell what his meaning and
intent may be, and if his letter has been answered wisely or no.

[The coach is stopped to skid the wheel for the descent of the
hill, and before it starts again a dusty horseman overtakes it.]


SEVERAL PASSENGERS

A London messenger! (To horseman) Any news, sir? We are from
Bristol only.


HORSEMAN

Yes; much. We have declared war against Spain, an error giving
vast delight to France. Bonaparte says he will date his next
dispatches from London, and the landing of his army may be daily
expected.

[Exit horseman.]


THIRD PASSENGER

Sir, I apologize. He's not to be trusted! War is his name, and
aggression is with him!

[He repacks the pistols. A silence follows. The coach and
passengers move downwards and disappear towards the coast.]


SPIRIT OF THE PITIES

Ill chanced it that the English monarch George
Did not respond to the said Emperor!


SPIRIT SINISTER

I saw good sport therein, and paean'd the Will
To unimpel so stultifying a move!
Which would have marred the European broil,
And sheathed all swords, and silenced every gun
That riddles human flesh.


SPIRIT OF THE PITIES

O say no more;
If aught could gratify the Absolute
'Twould verily be thy censure, not thy praise!


SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

The ruling was that we should witness things
And not dispute them. To the drama, then.
Emprizes over-Channel are the key
To this land's stir and ferment.--Thither we.

[Clouds gather over the scene, and slowly open elsewhere.]



SCENE II

PARIS. OFFICE OF THE MINISTER OF MARINE

[ADMIRAL DECRES seated at a table. A knock without.]


DECRES

Come in! Good news, I hope!

[An attendant enters.]


ATTENDANT
A courier, sir.


DECRES

Show him in straightway.

[The attendant goes out.]

From the Emperor
As I expected!


COURIER

Sir, for your own hand
And yours alone.


DECRES

Thanks. Be in waiting near.

[The courier withdraws.]


DECRES reads:

"I am resolved that no wild dream of Ind,
And what we there might win; or of the West,
And bold re-conquest there of Surinam
And other Dutch retreats along those coasts,
Or British islands nigh, shall draw me now
From piercing into England through Boulogne
As lined in my first plan. If I do strike,
I strike effectively; to forge which feat
There's but one way--planting a mortal wound
In England's heart--the very English land--
Whose insolent and cynical reply
To my well-based complaint on breach of faith
Concerning Malta, as at Amiens pledged,
Has lighted up anew such flames of ire
As may involve the world.--Now to the case:
Our naval forces can be all assembled
Without the foe's foreknowledge or surmise,
By these rules following; to whose text I ask
Your gravest application; and, when conned,
That steadfastly you stand by word and word,
Making no question of one jot therein.

"First, then, let Villeneuve wait a favouring wind
For process westward swift to Martinique,
Coaxing the English after. Join him there
Gravina, Missiessy, and Ganteaume;
Which junction once effected all our keels--
While the pursuers linger in the West
At hopeless fault.--Having hoodwinked them thus,
Our boats skim over, disembark the army,
And in the twinkling of a patriot's eye
All London will be ours.

"In strictest secrecy carve this to shape--
Let never an admiral or captain scent
Save Villeneuve and Ganteaume; and pen each charge
With your own quill. The surelier to outwit them
I start for Italy; and there, as 'twere
Engrossed in fetes and Coronation rites,
Abide till, at the need, I reach Boulogne,
And head the enterprize.--NAPOLEON."

[DECRES reflects, and turns to write.]


SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

He buckles to the work. First to Villeneuve,
His onetime companion and his boyhood's friend,
Now lingering at Toulon, he jots swift lines,
The duly to Ganteaume.--They are sealed forthwith,
And superscribed: "Break not till on the main."

[Boisterous singing is heard in the street.]


SPIRIT OF THE PITIES

I hear confused and simmering sounds without,
Like those which thrill the hives at evenfall
When swarming pends.


SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

They but proclaim the crowd,
Which sings and shouts its hot enthusiasms
For this dead-ripe design on England's shore,
Till the persuasion of its own plump words,
Acting upon mercurial temperaments,
Makes hope as prophecy. "Our Emperor
Will show himself (say they) in this exploit
Unwavering, keen, and irresistible
As is the lightning prong. Our vast flotillas
Have been embodied as by sorcery;
Soldiers made seamen, and the ports transformed
To rocking cities casemented with guns.
Against these valiants balance England's means:
Raw merchant-fellows from the counting-house,
Raw labourers from the fields, who thumb for arms
Clumsy untempered pikes forged hurriedly,
And cry them full-equipt. Their batteries,
Their flying carriages, their catamarans,
Shall profit not, and in one summer night
We'll find us there!"


RECORDING ANGEL

And is this prophecy true?


SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

Occasion will reveal.


SHADE OF EARTH

What boots it, Sire,
To down this dynasty, set that one up,
Goad panting peoples to the throes thereof,
Make wither here my fruit, maintain it there,
And hold me travailling through fineless years
In vain and objectless monotony,
When all such tedious conjuring could be shunned
By uncreation? Howsoever wise
The governance of these massed mortalities,
A juster wisdom his who should have ruled
They had not been.


SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

Nay, something hidden urged
The giving matter motion; and these coils
Are, maybe, good as any.


SPIRIT OF THE PITIES

But why any?


SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

Sprite of Compassions, ask the Immanent!
I am but an accessory of Its works,
Whom the Ages render conscious; and at most
Figure as bounden witness of Its laws.


SPIRIT OF THE PITIES

How ask the aim of unrelaxing Will?
Tranced in Its purpose to unknowingness?
(If thy words, Ancient Phantom, token true.)


SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

Thou answerest well. But cease to ask of me.
Meanwhile the mime proceeds.--We turn herefrom,
Change our homuncules, and observe forthwith
How the High Influence sways the English realm,
And how the jacks lip out their reasonings there.

[The Cloud-curtain draws.]



SCENE III

LONDON. THE OLD HOUSE OF COMMONS

[A long chamber with a gallery on each side supported by thin
columns having gilt Ionic capitals. Three round-headed windows
are at the further end, above the Speaker's chair, which is backed
by a huge pedimented structure in white and gilt, surmounted by the
lion and the unicorn. The windows are uncurtained, one being open,
through which some boughs are seen waving in the midnight gloom
without. Wax candles, burnt low, wave and gutter in a brass
chandelier which hangs from the middle of the ceiling, and in
branches projecting from the galleries.

The House is sitting, the benches, which extend round to the
Speaker's elbows, being closely packed, and the galleries
likewise full. Among the members present on the Government
side are PITT and other ministers with their supporters,
including CANNING, CASTLEREAGH, LORD C. SOMERSET, ERSKINE,
W. DUNDAS, HUSKISSON, ROSE, BEST, ELLIOT, DALLAS, and the
general body of the party. On the opposite side are noticeable
FOX, SHERIDAN, WINDHAM, WHITBREAD, GREY, T. GRENVILLE, TIERNEY,
EARL TEMPLE, PONSONBY, G. AND H. WALPOLE, DUDLEY NORTH, and
TIMOTHY SHELLEY. Speaker ABBOT occupies the Chair.]


SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

As prelude to the scene, as means to aid
Our younger comrades in its construing,
Pray spread your scripture, and rehearse in brief
The reasonings here of late--to whose effects
Words of to-night form sequence.

[The Recording Angels chant from their books, antiphonally, in a
minor recitative.]


ANGEL I (aerial music)

Feeble-framed dull unresolve, unresourcefulness,
Sat in the halls of the Kingdom's high Councillors,
Whence the grey glooms of a ghost-eyed despondency
Wanned as with winter the national mind.


ANGEL II

England stands forth to the sword of Napoleon
Nakedly--not an ally in support of her;
Men and munitions dispersed inexpediently;
Projects of range and scope poorly defined.


ANGEL I

Once more doth Pitt deem the land crying loud to him.--
Frail though and spent, and an-hungered for restfulness
Once more responds he, dead fervours to energize,
Aims to concentre, slack efforts to bind.


ANGEL II

Ere the first fruit thereof grow audible,
Holding as hapless his dream of good guardianship,
Jestingly, earnestly, shouting it serviceless,
Tardy, inept, and uncouthly designed.


ANGELS I AND II

So now, to-night, in slashing old sentences,
Hear them speak,--gravely these, those with gay-heartedness,--
Midst their admonishments little conceiving how
Scarlet the scroll that the years will unwind!


SPIRIT OF THE PITIES (to the Spirit of the Years)

Let us put on and suffer for the nonce
The feverish fleshings of Humanity,
And join the pale debaters here convened.
So may thy soul be won to sympathy
By donning their poor mould.


SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

I'll humour thee,
Though my unpassioned essence could not change
Did I incarn in moulds of all mankind!


SPIRIT IRONIC

'Tis enough to make every little dog in England run to mixen to
hear this Pitt sung so strenuously! I'll be the third of the
incarnate, on the chance of hearing the tune played the other way.


SPIRIT SINISTER

And I the fourth. There's sure to be something in my line toward,
where politicians gathered together!

[The four Phantoms enter the Gallery of the House in the disguise
of ordinary strangers.]


SHERIDAN (rising)

The Bill I would have leave to introduce
Is framed, sir, to repeal last Session's Act,
By party-scribes intituled a Provision
For England's Proper Guard; but elsewhere known
As Mr. Pitt's new Patent Parish Pill. (Laughter.)

The ministerial countenances, I mark,
Congeal to dazed surprise at my straight motion--
Why, passes sane conjecture. It may be
That, with a haughty and unwavering faith
In their own battering-rams of argument,
They deemed our buoyance whelmed, and sapped, and sunk
To our hope's sheer bottom, whence a miracle
Was all could friend and float us; or, maybe,
They are amazed at our rude disrespect
In making mockery of an English Law
Sprung sacred from the King's own Premier's brain!
--I hear them snort; but let them wince at will,
My duty must be done; shall be done quickly
By citing some few facts.

An Act for our defence!
It weakens, not defends; and oversea
Swoln France's despot and his myrmidons
This moment know it, and can scoff thereat.
Our people know it too--those who can peer
Behind the scenes of this poor painted show
Called soldiering!--The Act has failed, must fail,
As my right honourable friend well proved
When speaking t'other night, whose silencing
By his right honourable _vis a vis_
Was of the genuine Governmental sort,
And like the catamarans their sapience shaped
All fizzle and no harm. (Laughter.) The Act, in brief,
Effects this much: that the whole force of England
Is strengthened by--eleven thousand men!
So sorted that the British infantry
Are now eight hundred less than heretofore!

In Ireland, where the glamouring influence
Of the right honourable gentleman
Prevails with magic might, ELEVEN men
Have been amassed. And in the Cinque-Port towns,
Where he is held in absolute veneration,
His method has so quickened martial fire
As to bring in--one man. O would that man
Might meet my sight! (Laughter.) A Hercules, no doubt,
A god-like emanation from this Act,
Who with his single arm will overthrow
All Buonaparte's legions ere their keels
Have scraped one pebble of our fortless shore! . . .
Such is my motion, sir, and such my mind.

[He sits down amid cheers. The candle-snuffers go round, and Pitt
rises. During the momentary pause before he speaks the House assumes
an attentive stillness, in which can be heard the rustling of the
trees without, a horn from an early coach, and the voice of the watch
crying the hour.]


PITT

Not one on this side but appreciates
Those mental gems and airy pleasantries
Flashed by the honourable gentleman,
Who shines in them by birthright. Each device
Of drollery he has laboured to outshape,
(Or treasured up from others who have shaped it,)
Displays that are the conjurings of the moment,
(Or mellowed and matured by sleeping on)--
Dry hoardings in his book of commonplace,
Stored without stint of toil through days and months--
He heaps into one mass, and light and fans
As fuel for his flaming eloquence,
Mouthed and maintained without a thought or care
If germane to the theme, or not at all.

Now vain indeed it were should I assay
To match him in such sort. For, sir, alas,
To use imagination as the ground
Of chronicle, take myth and merry tale
As texts for prophecy, is not my gift
Being but a person primed with simple fact,
Unprinked by jewelled art.--But to the thing.

The preparations of the enemy,
Doggedly bent to desolate our land,
Advance with a sustained activity.
They are seen, they are known, by you and by us all.
But they evince no clear-eyed tentative
In furtherance of the threat, whose coming off,
Ay, years may yet postpone; whereby the Act
Will far outstrip him, and the thousands called
Duly to join the ranks by its provisions,
In process sure, if slow, will ratch the lines
Of English regiments--seasoned, cool, resolved--
To glorious length and firm prepotency.
And why, then, should we dream of its repeal
Ere profiting by its advantages?
Must the House listen to such wilding words
As this proposal, at the very hour
When the Act's gearing finds its ordered grooves
And circles into full utility?
The motion of the honourable gentleman
Reminds me aptly of a publican
Who should, when malting, mixing, mashing's past,
Fermenting, barrelling, and spigoting,
Quick taste the brew, and shake his sapient head,
And cry in acid voice: The ale is new!
Brew old, you varlets; cast this slop away! (Cheers.)

But gravely, sir, I would conclude to-night,
And, as a serious man on serious things,
I now speak here. . . . I pledge myself to this:
Unprecedented and magnificent
As were our strivings in the previous war,
Our efforts in the present shall transcend them,
As men will learn. Such efforts are not sized
By this light measuring-rule my critic here
Whips from his pocket like a clerk-o'-works! . . .
Tasking and toilsome war's details must be,
And toilsome, too, must be their criticism,--
Not in a moment's stroke extemporized.

The strange fatality that haunts the times
Wherein our lot is cast, has no example.
Times are they fraught with peril, trouble, gloom;
We have to mark their lourings, and to face them.
Sir, reading thus the full significance
Of these big days, large though my lackings be,
Can any hold of those who know my past
That I, of all men, slight our safeguarding?
No: by all honour no!--Were I convinced
That such could be the mind of members here,
My sorrowing thereat would doubly shade
The shade on England now! So I do trust
All in the House will take my tendered word,
And credit my deliverance here to-night,
That in this vital point of watch and ward
Against the threatenings from yonder coast
We stand prepared; and under Providence
Shall fend whatever hid or open stroke
A foe may deal.

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