THE DYNASTS ACT vi SEMICHORUS II If it be in the future human story To lift this man to yet intenser glory, Let the exploit be done With the least sting, or none, To those, his kind, at whose expense such pitch is won / SPIRIT OF THE YEARS Again ye deprecate the World-Soufs way That I so long have told? Then note anew (Since ye forge f) the ordered potencies, Nerves, sinews, trajects, eddies, ducts of It The Eternal Urger, pressing change on change. At once, as earlier, a preternatural clearness possesses the atmosphere of the battle-field, in which the scene becomes anatomized and the living masses of humanity transparent. The controlling Immanent Will appears therein, as a brain-like network of currents and ejections, twitching, interpenetrating, entangling, and thrusting hither and thither the human forms. SEMICHORUS I OF IRONIC SPIRITS (aerial music) O Innocents, can ye forget That things to be were shaped and set Ere mortals and this planet met ? SEMICHORUS 11 Stand ye apostrophizing That Which, working all, works but thereat Like some sublime fermenting-vat SEMICHORUS I Heaving throughout its vast content With strenuously transmutive bent Though of its aim unsentient ?__ 150