SCENE viii PART SECOND
CHORUS OF PITIES (aerial music)
u We who withstood the blasting blaze of war When marshalled by the gallant Moore awhile, Beheld the grazing death-bolt with a smile, Closed combat edge to edge and bore to bore, Now rot upon this Isle !
" The ever wan morass, the dune, the blear Sandweed, and tepid pool, and putrid smell, Emaciate purpose to a fractious fear, Beckon the body to its last low cell— A chink no chart will tell.
" 0 ancient Delta, where the fen-lights flit / Ignoble sediment of loftier lands, Thy humour clings about our hearts and hands And solves us to its softness, till we sit As we were part of it.
" Suck force as fever leaves is maddened now, With tidings trickling in from day to day Of others* differing fortunes, wording how They yield their lives to baulk a tyranfs sway— Yield them not vainly, they !
" In champaigns green and purple, far and near, jfy town and thorpe where quiet spire-cocks turn, Through vales, by rocks, beside the brooding burn Echoes the aggressors arrogant career; And we pent pithless here !
"Here, where each creeping day the creeping file Draws past with shouldered comrades score on score, Bearing them to their lightless last asile, Where weary wave-wails from the clammy shore Will reach their ears no more. 315