age.

SPIRIT OF THE PITIES

Why prompts the Will so senseless-shaped a doing?

SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

I have told thee that It works unwittingly,
As one possessed, not judging.

SEMICHORUS I OF IRONIC SPIRITS [aerial music]

Of Its doings if It knew,
What It does It would not do!

SEMICHORUS II

Since It knows not, what far sense
Speeds Its spinnings in the Immense?

SEMICHORUS I

None; a fixed foresightless dream
Is Its whole philosopheme.

SEMICHORUS II

Just so; an unconscious planning,
Like a potter raptly panning!

CHORUS

Are then, Love and Light Its aim--
Good Its glory, Bad Its blame?
Nay; to alter evermore
Things from what they were before.

SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

Your knowings of the Unknowable declared,
Let the last pictures of the play be bared.

[Enter, fighting, more English and Prussians against the French.
NEY is caught by the throng and borne ahead. RULLIERE hides an
eagle beneath his coat and follows Ney. NAPOLEON is involved
none knows where in the crowd of fugitives.

WELLINGTON and BLUCHER come severally to the view. They meet in
the dusk and salute warmly. The Prussian bands strike up "God save
the King" as the two shake hands. From his gestures of assent it
can be seen that WELLINGTON accepts BLUCHER'S offer to pursue.

The reds disappear from the sky, and the dusk grows deeper. The
action of the battle degenerates to a hunt, and recedes further
and further into the distance southward. When the tramplings
and shouts of the combatants have dwindled, the lower sounds are
noticeable that come from the wounded: hopeless appeals, cries
for water, elaborate blasphemies, and impotent execrations of
Heaven and hell. In the vast and dusky shambles black slouching
shapes begin to move, the plunderers of the dead and dying.

The night grows clear and beautiful, and the moon shines musingly
down. But instead of the sweet smell of green herbs and dewy rye
as at her last beaming upon these fields, there is now the stench
of gunpowder and a muddy stew of crushed crops and gore.]

SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

So hath the Urging Immanence used to-day
Its inadvertent might to field this fray:
And Europe's wormy dynasties rerobe