The Dynasts. Томас Харди

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СКАЧАТЬ This gift to visualize the Mode is one

       [Though by exhaustive strain and effort only].

       See, then, and learn, ere my power pass again.

       [A new and penetrating light descends on the spectacle, enduring

       men and things with a seeming transparency, and exhibiting as one

       organism the anatomy of life and movement in all humanity and

       vitalized matter included in the display.]

      SPIRIT OF THE PITIES

       Amid this scene of bodies substantive

       Strange waves I sight like winds grown visible,

       Which bear men's forms on their innumerous coils,

       Twining and serpenting round and through.

       Also retracting threads like gossamers—

       Except in being irresistible—

       Which complicate with some, and balance all.

      SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

       These are the Prime Volitions,—fibrils, veins,

       Will-tissues, nerves, and pulses of the Cause,

       That heave throughout the Earth's compositure.

       Their sum is like the lobule of a Brain

       Evolving always that it wots not of;

       A Brain whose whole connotes the Everywhere,

       And whose procedure may but be discerned

       By phantom eyes like ours; the while unguessed

       Of those it stirs, who [even as ye do] dream

       Their motions free, their orderings supreme;

       Each life apart from each, with power to mete

       Its own day's measures; balanced, self complete;

       Though they subsist but atoms of the One

       Labouring through all, divisible from none;

       But this no further now. Deem yet man's deeds self-done.

      GENERAL CHORUS OF INTELLIGENCES [aerial music]

       We'll close up Time, as a bird its van,

       We'll traverse Space, as spirits can,

       Link pulses severed by leagues and years,

       Bring cradles into touch with biers;

       So that the far-off Consequence appear

       Prompt at the heel of foregone Cause.—

       The PRIME, that willed ere wareness was,

       Whose Brain perchance is Space, whose Thought its laws,

       Which we as threads and streams discern,

       We may but muse on, never learn.

      END OF THE FORE SCENE

ACT FIRST

       Table of Contents

      SCENE I

       ENGLAND. A RIDGE IN WESSEX

       [The time is a fine day in March 1805. A highway crosses the

       ridge, which is near the sea, and the south coast is seen

       bounding the landscape below, the open Channel extending beyond.]

      SPIRITS OF THE YEARS

       Hark now, and gather how the martial mood

       Stirs England's humblest hearts. Anon we'll trace

       Its heavings in the upper coteries there.

      SPIRIT SINISTER

       Ay; begin small, and so lead up to the greater. It is a sound

       dramatic principle. I always aim to follow it in my pestilences,

       fires, famines, and other comedies. And though, to be sure, I did

       not in my Lisbon earthquake, I did in my French Terror, and my St.

       Domingo burlesque.

      SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

       THY Lisbon earthquake, THY French Terror. Wait.

       Thinking thou will'st, thou dost but indicate.

       [A stage-coach enters, with passengers outside. Their voices

       after the foregoing sound small and commonplace, as from another

       medium.]

      FIRST PASSENGER

       There seems to be a deal of traffic over Ridgeway, even at this time

       o' year.

      SECOND PASSENGER

       Yes. It is because the King and Court are coming down here later

       on. They wake up this part rarely!... See, now, how the Channel

       and coast open out like a chart. That patch of mist below us is the

       town we are bound for. There's the Isle of Slingers beyond, like a

       floating snail. That wide bay on the right is where the “Abergavenny,”

       Captain John Wordsworth, was wrecked last month. One can see half

       across to France up here.

      FIRST PASSENGER

       Half across. And then another little half, and then all that's

       behind—the Corsican mischief!

      SECOND PASSENGER

       Yes. People who live hereabout—I am a native of these parts—feel

       the nearness of France more than they do inland.

      FIRST PASSENGER

       That's why we have seen so many of these marching regiments on the

       road. This year his grandest attempt upon us is to be made, I reckon.

      SECOND PASSENGER

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