their Choruses, Rumours, Spirit-messengers and
Recording Angels.

Europe has now sunk netherward to its far-off position as in the
Fore Scene, and it is beheld again as a prone and emaciated figure
of which the Alps form the vertebrae, and the branching mountain-
chains the ribs, the Spanish Peninsula shaping the head of the
ecorche. The lowlands look like a grey-green garment half-thrown
off, and the sea around like a disturbed bed on which the figure
lies.]

SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

Thus doth the Great Foresightless mechanize
In blank entrancement now as evermore
Its ceaseless artistries in Circumstance
Of curious stuff and braid, as just forthshown.

Yet but one flimsy riband of Its web
Have we here watched in weaving--web Enorm,
Whose furthest hem and selvage may extend
To where the roars and plashings of the flames
Of earth-invisible suns swell noisily,
And onwards into ghastly gulfs of sky,
Where hideous presences churn through the dark--
Monsters of magnitude without a shape,
Hanging amid deep wells of nothingness.

Yet seems this vast and singular confection
Wherein our scenery glints of scantest size,
Inutile all--so far as reasonings tell.

SPIRIT OF THE PITIES

Thou arguest still the Inadvertent Mind.--
But, even so, shall blankness be for aye?
Men gained cognition with the flux of time,
And wherefore not the Force informing them,
When far-ranged aions past all fathoming
Shall have swung by, and stand as backward years?

SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

What wouldst have hoped and had the Will to be?--
How wouldst have paeaned It, if what hadst dreamed
Thereof were truth, and all my showings dream?

SPIRIT OF THE PITIES

The Will that fed my hope was far from thine,
One I would thus have hymned eternally:--

SEMICHORUS I OF THE PITIES [aerial music]

To Thee whose eye all Nature owns,
Who hurlest Dynasts from their thrones,[26]
And liftest those of low estate
We sing, with Her men consecrate!

SEMICHORUS II

Yea, Great and Good, Thee, Thee we hail,
Who shak'st the strong, Who shield'st the frail,
Who hadst not shaped such souls as we
If tendermercy lacked in Thee!

SEMICHORUS I

Though