The Life of Thomas Hardy
To raise up visions of historic ware
Which taxed the endurance of our ancestors;
That such reminders of the feats they did
May stouten hearts now strained by issues hid;
Therefore we have essayed to represent,
By our faint means, event upon event
That Europe saw a hundred years ago—
—What matters that Napoleon was our foe?
Fair France herself had no ambitious ends;
And we are happy in a change that tends
To make the nearest neighbours closest friends.
Which taxed the endurance of our ancestors;
That such reminders of the feats they did
May stouten hearts now strained by issues hid;
Therefore we have essayed to represent,
By our faint means, event upon event
That Europe saw a hundred years ago—
—What matters that Napoleon was our foe?
Fair France herself had no ambitious ends;
And we are happy in a change that tends
To make the nearest neighbours closest friends.
This is the epilogue:
May such reminders soon forever pass,
And war be but a shade on memory's glass,
And might uphold the injured people's cause,
And Europe move again to genial laws;
And soon succumb all influences malign,
And still the Star of England proudly shine!
God save the King!
And war be but a shade on memory's glass,
And might uphold the injured people's cause,
And Europe move again to genial laws;
And soon succumb all influences malign,
And still the Star of England proudly shine!
God save the King!
The prose commentary was assigned to a reader, and such lyric passages as were retained were delivered by two stately "muses." It is interesting thus to find the most feasible way of dealing with the chorus-matter to be by means of the Elizabethan induction machinery. The stage itself was also handled in Elizabethan fashion, with an inner stage for "scenes," while only properties were used on the main stage. What this performance chiefly served to bring out, besides the possibility of presenting the poem on the stage at all, was the intense dramatic quality of the scenes. At the same time, this production did not attempt, nor did it achieve, the im-
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