still plod behind Smohain
Their coming must be late. Blucher's attack
Strikes the remote right rear of the enemy,
Somewhere by Plancenoit.

WELLINGTON

A timely blow;
But would that Zieten sped! Well, better late
Than never. We'll still stand.

[The point of observation shifts.]

SCENE VIII

THE SAME. LATER

[NEY'S long attacks on the centre with cavalry having failed,
those left of the squadrons and their infantry-supports fall
back pell-mell in broken groups across the depression between
the armies.

Meanwhile BULOW, having engaged LOBAU'S Sixth Corps, carries
Plancenoit.

The artillery-fire between the French and the English continues.
An officer of the Third Foot-guards comes up to WELLINGTON and
those of his suite that survive.]

OFFICER

Our Colonel Canning--coming I know not whence--

WELLINGTON

I lately sent him with important words
To the remoter lines.

OFFICER

As he returned
A grape-shot struck him in the breast; he fell,
At once a dead man. General Halkett, too,
Has had his cheek shot through, but still keeps going.

WELLINGTON

And how proceeds De Lancey?

OFFICER

I am told
That he forbids the surgeons waste their time
On him, who well can wait till worse are eased.

WELLINGTON

A noble fellow.

[NAPOLEON can now be seen, across the valley, pushing forward a
new scheme of some sort, urged to it obviously by the visible
nearing of further Prussian corps. The EMPEROR is as critically
situated as WELLINGTON, and his army is now formed in a right
angle ["en potence"], the main front to the English, the lesser
to as many of the Prussians as have yet arrived. His gestures
show him to be giving instructions of desperate import to a
general whom he has called up.]

SPIRIT IRONIC

He bids La Bedoyere to speed away
Along the whole sweep of the surging line,
And there announce to the breath-shotten bands
Who toil for a chimaera trustfully,
With seventy pounds of luggage on their loins,
That the dim Prussian masses seen afar
Are Grouchy's three-and-thirty thousand, come
To clinch a victory.

SPIRIT OF THE PITIES

But Ney demurs!

SPIRIT IRONIC

Ney holds indignantly that such a feint
Is not war-wor