The Dynasts. Томас Харди

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       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,

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