RECORDING ANGEL (from a book, in recitative)

Now mellow-eyed Peace is made captive,
And Vengeance is chartered
To deal forth its dooms on the Peoples
With sword and with spear.

Men's musings are busy with forecasts
Of muster and battle,
And visions of shock and disaster
Rise red on the year.

The easternmost ruler sits wistful,
And tense he to midward;
The King to the west mans his borders
In front and in rear.

While one they eye, flushed from his crowning,
Ranks legions around him
To shake the enisled neighbour nation
And close her career!


SEMICHORUS I OF RUMOURS (aerial music)

O woven-winged squadrons of Toulon
And fellows of Rochefort,
Wait, wait for a wind, and draw westward
Ere Nelson be near!