Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated) (1029 page)

She, and my daughter—I speak freely to you.

'Twas good I made that codicil this morning

That you and Blackwood witnessed.  Now she rests

Safe on the nation's honour.... Let her have

My hair, and the small treasured things I owned,

And take care of her, as you care for me!

[HARDY promises.]

NELSON
[resuming in a murmur]

Does love die with our frame's decease, I wonder,

Or does it live on ever?...

[A silence.  BEATTY approaches.]

HARDY

     Now I'll leave,

See if your order's gone, and then return.

NELSON
[symptoms of death beginning to change his face]

Yes, Hardy; yes; I know it.  You must go.—

Here we shall meet no more; since Heaven forfend

That care for me should keep you idle now,

When all the ship demands you.  Beatty, too.

Go to the others who lie bleeding there;

Them can you aid.  Me you can render none!

My time here is the briefest.—If I live

But long enough I'll anchor.... But—too late—

My anchoring's elsewhere ordered!... Kiss me, Hardy:

[HARDY bends over him.]

I'm satisfied.  Thank God, I have done my duty!

[HARDY brushes his eyes with his hand, and withdraws to go above,

pausing to look back before he finally disappears.]

BEATTY
[watching Nelson]

Ah!—Hush around!...

He's sinking.  It is but a trifle now

Of minutes with him.  Stand you, please, aside,

And give him air.

[BEATTY, the Chaplain, MAGRATH, the Steward, and attendants

continue to regard NELSON.  BEATTY looks at his watch.]

BEATTY

Two hours and fifty minutes since he fell,

And now he's going.

[They wait.  NELSON dies.]

CHAPLAIN

     Yes.... He has homed to where

There's no more sea.

BEATTY

     We'll let the Captain know,

Who will confer with Collingwood at once.

I must now turn to these.

[He goes to another part of the cockpit, a midshipman ascends to

the deck, and the scene overclouds.]

CHORUS OF THE PITIES
[aerial music]

His thread was cut too slowly!  When he fell.

     And bade his fame farewell,

He might have passed, and shunned his long-drawn pain,

     Endured in vain, in vain!

SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

Young Spirits, be not critical of That

Which was before, and shall be after you!

SPIRIT OF THE PITIES

But out of tune the Mode and meritless

That quickens sense in shapes whom, thou hast said,

Necessitation sways!  A life there was

Among these self-same frail ones—Sophocles—

Who visioned it too clearly, even while

He dubbed the Will "the gods."  Truly said he,

"Such gross injustice to their own creation

Burdens the time with mournfulness for us,

And for themselves with shame."—Things mechanized

By coils and pivots set to foreframed codes

Would, in a thorough-sphered melodic rule,

And governance of sweet consistency,

Be cessed no pain, whose burnings would abide

With That Which holds responsibility,

Or inexist.

SPIRIT OF THE PITIES

          Yea, yea, yea!

          Thus would the Mover pay

          The score each puppet owes,

The Reaper reap what his contrivance sows!

Why make Life debtor when it did not buy?

Why wound so keenly Right that it would die?

SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

Nay, blame not!  For what judgment can ye blame?—

In that immense unweeting Mind is shown

One far above forethinking; processive,

Yet superconscious; a Clairvoyancy

That knows not what It knows, yet works therewith.—

The cognizance ye mourn, Life's doom to feel,

If I report it meetly, came unmeant,

Emerging with blind gropes from impercipience

By listless sequence—luckless, tragic Chance,

In your more human tongue.

SPIRIT OF THE PITIES

          And hence unneeded

In the economy of Vitality,

Which might have ever kept a sealed cognition

As doth the Will Itself.

CHORUS OF THE YEARS
[aerial music]

          Nay, nay, nay;

          Your hasty judgments stay,

          Until the topmost cyme

Have crowned the last entablature of Time.

O heap not blame on that in-brooding Will;

O pause, till all things all their days fulfil!

SCENE V

LONDON.  THE GUILDHALL

[A crowd of citizens has gathered outside to watch the carriages

as they drive up and deposit guests invited to the Lord Mayor's

banquet, for which event the hall is brilliantly lit within.  A

cheer rises when the equipage of any popular personage arrives

at the door.

FIRST CITIZEN

Well, well!  Nelson is the man who ought to have been banqueted

to-night.  But he is coming to Town in a coach different from these.!

SECOND CITIZEN

Will they bring his poor splintered body home?

FIRST CITIZEN

Yes.  They say he's to be tombed in marble, at St. Paul's or

Westminster.  We shall see him if he lays in state.  It will

make a patriotic spectacle for a fine day.

BOY

How can you see a dead man, father, after so long?

FIRST CITIZEN

They'll embalm him, my boy, as they did all the great Egyptian

admirals.

BOY

His lady will be handy for that, won't she?

FIRST CITIZEN

Don't ye ask awkward questions.

SECOND CITIZEN

Here's another coming!

FIRST CITIZEN

That's my Lord Chancellor Eldon.  Wot he'll say, and wot he'll look!

Mr. Pitt will be here soon.

BOY

I don't like Billy.  He killed Uncle John's parrot.

SECOND CITIZEN

How may ye make that out, youngster?

BOY

Mr. Pitt made the war, and the war made us want sailors; and Uncle

John went for a walk down Wapping High Street to talk to the pretty

ladies one evening; and there was a press all along the river that

night—a regular hot one—and Uncle John was carried on board a

man-of-war to fight under Nelson; and nobody minded Uncle John's

parrot, and it talked itself to death.  So Mr. Pitt killed Uncle

John's parrot; see it, sir?

SECOND CITIZEN

You had better have a care of this boy, friend.  His brain is too

precious for the common risks of Cheapside.  Not but what he might

as well have said Boney killed the parrot when he was about it.

And as for Nelson—who's now sailing shinier seas than ours, if

they've rubbed Her off his slate where he's gone to,—the French

papers say that our loss in him is greater than our gain in ships;

so that logically the victory is theirs.  Gad, sir, it's almost

true!

[A hurrahing is heard from Cheapside, and the crowd in that

direction begins to hustle and show excitement.]

FIRST CITIZEN

He's coming, he's coming!  Here, let me lift you up, my boy.— Why,

they have taken out the horses, as I am man alive!

SECOND CITIZEN

Pitt for ever!—Why, here's a blade opening and shutting his mouth

like the rest, but never a sound does he raise!

THIRD CITIZEN

I've not too much breath to carry me through my day's work, so I

can't afford to waste it in such luxuries as crying Hurrah to

aristocrats.  If ye was ten yards off y'd think I was shouting

as loud as any.

SECOND CITIZEN

It's a very mean practice of ye to husband yourself at such a time,

and gape in dumbshow like a frog in Plaistow Marshes.

THIRD CITIZEN

No, sir; it's economy; a very necessary instinct in these days of

ghastly taxations to pay half the armies in Europe!  In short, in

the word of the Ancients, it is scarcely compass-mentas to do

otherwise!  Somebody must save something, or the country will be

as bankrupt as Mr. Pitt himself is, by all account; though he

don't look it just now.

[PITT's coach passes, drawn by a troop of running men and boy.

The Prime Minister is seen within, a thin, erect, up-nosed

figure, with a flush of excitement on his usually pale face.

The vehicle reached the doorway to the Guildhall and halts with

a jolt.  PITT gets out shakily, and amid cheers enters the

building.]

FOURTH CITIZEN

Quite a triumphal entry.  Such is power;

Now worshipped, now accursed!  The overthrow

Of all Pitt's European policy

When his hired army and his chosen general

Surrendered them at Ulm a month ago,

Is now forgotten!  Ay; this Trafalgar

Will botch up many a ragged old repute,

Make Nelson figure as domestic saint

No less than country's saviour, Pitt exalt

As zenith-star of England's firmament,

And uncurse all the bogglers of her weal

At this adventurous time.

THIRD CITIZEN

Talk of Pitt being ill.  He looks hearty as a buck.

FIRST CITIZEN

It's the news—no more.  His spirits are up like a rocket for the

moment.

BOY

Is it because Trafalgar is near Portugal that he loves Port wine?

SECOND CITIZEN

Ah, as I said, friend; this boy must go home and be carefully put

to bed!

FIRST CITIZEN

Well, whatever William's faults, it is a triumph for his virtues

to-night!

[PITT having disappeared, the Guildhall doors are closed, and

the crowd slowly disperses, till in the course of an hour the

street shows itself empty and dark, only a few oil lamps burning.

The SCENE OPENS, revealing the interior of the Guildhall, and

the brilliant assembly of City magnates, Lords, and Ministers

seated there, Mr. PITT occupying a chair of honour by the Lord

Mayor.  His health has been proposed as that of the Saviour of

England, and drunk with acclamations.]

PITT
[standing up after repeated calls]

My lords and gentlemen:—You have toasted me

As one who has saved England and her cause.

I thank you, gentlemen, unfeignedly.

But—no man has saved England, let me say:

England has saved herself, by her exertions:

She will, I trust, save Europe by her example!

[Loud applause, during which he sits down, rises, and sits down

again.  The scene then shuts, and the night without has place.]

SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

Those words of this man Pitt—his last large words,

As I may prophesy—that ring to-night

In their first mintage to the feasters here,

Will spread with ageing, lodge, and crystallize,

And stand embedded in the English tongue

Till it grow thin, outworn, and cease to be.—

So is't ordained by That Which all ordains;

For words were never winged with apter grace.

Or blent with happier choice of time and place,

To hold the imagination of this strenuous race.

SCENE VI

AN INN AT RENNES

[Night.  A sleeping-chamber.  Two candles are burning near a bed

in an alcove, and writing-materials are on the table.

The French admiral, VILLENEUVE, partly undressed, is pacing up

and down the room.]

VILLENEUVE

These hauntings have at last nigh proved to me

That this thing must be done.  Illustrious foe

And teacher, Nelson: blest and over blest

In thy outgoing at the noon of strife

When glory clasped thee round; while wayward Death

Refused my coaxings for the like-timed call!

Yet I did press where thickest missiles fell,

And both by precept and example showed

Where lay the line of duty, patriotism,

And honour, in that combat of despair.

[He see himself in the glass as he passes.]

Unfortunate Villeneuve!—whom fate has marked

To suffer for too firm a faithfulness.—

An Emperor's chide is a command to die.—

By him accursed, forsaken by my friend,

Awhile stern England's prisoner, then unloosed

Like some poor dolt unworth captivity,

Time serves me now for ceasing.  Why not cease?...

When, as Shades whisper in the chasmal night,

"Better, far better, no percipience here."—

O happy lack, that I should have no child

To come into my hideous heritage,