oland did.

SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

Meanwhile the mighty Emperor nears apace,
And soon will glitter at the city gates
With palpitating drums, and breathing brass,
And rampant joyful-jingling retinue.

[An evening mist cloaks the scene.]

SCENE VI

THE SAME

[It is a brilliant morning, with a fresh breeze, and not a cloud.
The open Platz and the adjoining streets are filled with dense
crowds of citizens, in whose upturned faces curiosity has
mastered consternation and grief.

Martial music is heard, at first faint, then louder, followed
by a trampling of innumerable horses and a clanking of arms and
accoutrements. Through a street on the right hand of the view
from the windows come troops of French dragoons heralding the
arrival of BONAPARTE.

Re-enter the room hurriedly and cross to the windows several
ladies as before, some in tears.]

FIRST LADY

The kingdom late of Prussia, can it be
That thus it disappears?--a patriot-cry,
A battle, bravery, ruin; and no more?

SECOND LADY

Thank God the Queen's gone!

THIRD LADY

To what sanctuary?
From earthquake shocks there is no sheltering cell!
--Is this what men call conquest? Must it close
As historied conquests do, or be annulled
By modern reason and the urbaner sense?--
Such issue none would venture to predict,
Yet folly 'twere to nourish foreshaped fears
And suffer in conjecture and in deed.--
If verily our country be dislimbed,
Then at the mercy of his domination
The face of earth will lie, and vassal kings
Stand waiting on himself the Overking,
Who ruling rules all; till desperateness
Sting and excite a bonded last resistance,
And work its own release.

SECOND LADY

He comes even now
From sacrilege. I learn that, since the fight,
In marching here by Potsdam yesterday,
Sans-Souci Palace drew his curious feet,
Where even great Frederick's tomb was bared to him.

FOURTH LADY

All objects on the Palace--cared for, kept
Even as they were when our arch-monarch died--
The books, the chair, the inkhorn, and the pen
He quizzed with flippant curiosity;
And entering where our hero's bones are urned
He seized the sword and standards treasured there,
And with a mixed effrontery and regard
Declared they should be all dispatched to Paris
As gifts to the Hot