ll her labourings curbed and kinged!

SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

Shall such be mooted now? Already change
Hath played strange pranks since first I brooded here.
But old Laws operate yet; and phase and phase
Of men's dynastic and imperial moils
Shape on accustomed lines. Though, as for me,
I care not thy shape, or what they be.

SPIRIT OF THE PITIES

You seem to have small sense of mercy, Sire?

SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

Mercy I view, not urge;--nor more than mark
What designate your titles Good and Ill.
'Tis not in me to feel with, or against,
These flesh-hinged mannikins Its hand upwinds
To click-clack off Its preadjusted laws;
But only through my centuries to behold
Their aspects, and their movements, and their mould.

SPIRIT OF THE PITIES

They are shapes that bleed, mere mannikins or no,
And each has parcel in the total Will.

SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

Which overrides them as a whole its parts
In other entities.

SPIRIT SINISTER [aside]

Limbs of Itself:
Each one a jot of It in quaint disguise?
I'll fear all men henceforward!

SPIRIT OF THE PITIES

Go to. Let this terrestrial tragedy--

SPIRIT IRONIC

Nay, Comedy--

SPIRIT OF THE PITIES

Let this earth-tragedy
Whereof we spake, afford a spectacle
Forthwith conned closelier than your custom is.--

SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

How does it stand? [To a Recording Angel]
Open and chant the page
Thou'st lately writ, that sums these happenings,
In brief reminder of their instant points
Slighted by us amid our converse here.

RECORDING ANGEL [from a book, in recitative]

Now mellow-eyed Peace is made captive,
And Vengeance is chartered
To deal forth its dooms on the Peoples
With sword and with spear.

Men's musings are busy with forecasts
Of muster and battle,
And visions of shock and disaster
Rise red on the year.

The easternmost ruler sits wistful,
And tense he to midward;
The King to the west mans his borders
In front and in rear.

While one they eye, flushed from his crowning,
Ranks legions around him
To shake the enisled neig