The Poetical Works Of John Milton Book

An odd one - a sequence of three historical dramas in verse, intended for reading rather than performance. In adapting to the "drama" novelistic condensations of time and space as well as the novel's capacity for infinitely expandable casts, Hardy anticipates any number of cinematic techniques, some almost certainly requiring digital technology.

The main problem here is lack of momentum. Hardy draws all the named characters in his cast from history and the result is more like a pageant of historical scenes than a drama. The only character present from beginning to end is Napoleon, and Hardy doesn't manage to get inside him - he is seen as an instrument of fate, or the "Immanent Will" as Hardy terms it, and this instrumentality largely frees the author of responsibility for delving into motivation.

Individual scenes, however, are often excellent and there are memorable passages, like this from Pitt: Tasking and toilsome war's details must be,
And toilsome, too, must be their criticism,'
Not in a moment's stroke extemporized.
- (Part 1 - I. iii.) Or this line from Empress Josephine: Yet there's no joy save sorrow waived awhile.
- (Part 2 - I. vi.) Or, from Napoleon's final meditation in defeat: Great men are meteors that consume themselves
To light the earth. - (Part 3, VII, ix)Hardy attempts to unify his work by having the action observed and commented upon by a group of "spirits" of different natures: pity, irony, sinister, the years, and the earth. They are a kind of atheistic substitution for the gods of ancient epics. SPIRIT OF THE PITIES
What is the creed that these rich rites disclose?
SPIRIT OF THE YEARS
A local cult, called Christianity,
Which the wild dramas of the wheeling spheres
Include, with divers other such, in dim
Pathetical and brief parentheses,
Beyond whose span, uninfluenced, unconcerned,
The systems of the suns go sweeping on
With all their many-mortaled planet train
In mathematic roll unceasingly.
SPIRIT OF THE PITIES
I did not recognize it here, forsooth;
Though in its early, lovingkindly days
Of gracious purpose it was much to me.
- (Part 1 - I. vi.) These spirits seem to watch the action without foreknowledge, though occasionally, apparently for the sake of a good line, they are allowed to know something of things to come: ARCHDUKE
I amply recognize the drear disgrace
Involving Austria if this upstart chief
Should of his cunning seize and hold in pawn
A royal-lineaged son, whose ancestors
Root on the primal rocks of history.
SPIRIT IRONIC
Note that. Five years, and legal brethren they -
This feudal treasure and the upstart man!
- (Part 1 - IV. iii.) Interestingly, this passage is not included in the Project Gutenberg text of the work. Hardy later somewhat justifies this foreknowledge by having the "spirit of the years" refer to "The bounded prophecy I am dowered with - " (Part 3, IV, ii)

Though there are a few passages in prose, mainly for servants and unnamed commoners, most characters speak in an "elevated" blank verse that can seem pretentions or silly at times: Perhaps within this very house and hour,
Under an innocent mask of Love or Hope,
Some enemy queues my ways to coffin me....
When at the first clash of the late campaign,
A bold belief in Austria's star prevailed,
There pulsed quick pants of expectation round
Among the cowering kings, that too well told
What would have fared had I been overthrown!
So; I must send down shoots to future time
Who'll plant my standard and my story there;
And a way opens.'Better I had not
Bespoke a wife from Alexander's house.
Not there now lies my look. But done is done!
- (Part 2, V, i) For the most part I found the scenes narrated by the spirits trying to get through. In addition to providing a "cosmic" perspective on the action, they occasionally speak lyrical passages that I, who read poetry infrequently, found to be somewhat hit or miss. The longest and best of these was this passage in terza rima set in the British encampment on the night before Waterloo: CHORUS OF THE YEARS [aerial music]
The eyelids of eve fall together at last,
And the forms so foreign to field and tree
Lie down as though native, and slumber fast!
CHORUS OF THE PITIES
Sore are the thrills of misgiving we see
In the artless champaign at this harlequinade,
Distracting a vigil where calm should be!

The green seems opprest, and the Plain afraid
Of a Something to come, whereof these are the proofs,'
Neither earthquake, nor storm, nor eclipses's shade!
CHORUS OF THE YEARS
Yea, the coneys are scared by the thud of hoofs,
And their white scuts flash at their vanishing heels,
And swallows abandon the hamlet-roofs.

The mole's tunnelled chambers are crushed by wheels,
The lark's eggs scattered, their owners fled;
And the hedgehog's household the sapper unseals.

The snail draws in at the terrible tread,
But in vain; he is crushed by the felloe-rim
The worm asks what can be overhead,

And wriggles deep from a scene so grim,
And guesses him safe; for he does not know
What a foul red flood will be soaking him!

Beaten about by the heel and toe
Are butterflies, sick of the day's long rheum,
To die of a worse than the weather-foe.

Trodden and bruised to a miry tomb
Are ears that have greened but will never be gold,
And flowers in the bud that will never bloom.
CHORUS OF THE PITIES
So the season's intent, ere its fruit unfold,
Is frustrate, and mangled, and made succumb,
Like a youth of promise struck stark and cold!...

And what of these who to-night have come?
CHORUS OF THE YEARS
The young sleep sound; but the weather awakes
In the veterans, pains from the past that numb;

Old stabs of Ind, old Peninsular aches,
Old Friedland chills, haunt their moist mud bed,
Cramps from Austerlitz; till their slumber breaks.
CHORUS OF SINISTER SPIRITS
And each soul shivers as sinks his head
On the loam he's to lease with the other dead
From to-morrow's mist-fall till Time be sped!
- (Part 3, VI, viii)