Forgetting the Prime Mover of the gear,
As puppet-watchers him who pulls the strings.--
You'll mark the twitchings of this Bonaparte
As he with other figures foots his reel,
Until he twitch him into his lonely grave:
Also regard the frail ones that his flings
Have made gyrate like animalcula
In tepid pools.--Hence to the precinct, then,
And count as framework to the stagery
Yon architraves of sunbeam-smitten cloud.--
So may ye judge Earth's jackaclocks to be
No fugled by one Will, but function-free.

[The nether sky opens, and Europe is disclosed as a prone and
emaciated figure, the Alps shaping like a backbone, and the
branching mountain-chains like ribs, the peninsular plateau of
Spain forming a head. Broad and lengthy lowlands stretch from
the north of France across Russia like a grey-green garment hemmed
by the Ural mountains and the glistening Arctic Ocean.

The point of view then sinks downwards through space, and draws
near to the surface of the perturbed countries, where the peoples,
distressed by events which they did not cause, are seen writhing,
crawling, heaving, and vibrating in their various cities and
nationalities.]


SPIRIT OF THE YEARS (to the Spirit of the Pities)

As key-scene to the whole, I first lay bare