Well, what's done can't be undone.... By God, though, they've just saved themselves thereby From capture to a man! VOICE OF A GENERAL We've not struck ill, Despite this slip, my lord.... And have you heard That Colonel Dalbiac's wife rode in the charge Behind her spouse to-day? VOICE OF WELLINGTON Did she though: did she! Why that must be Susanna, whom I know-- A Wessex woman, blithe, and somewhat fair.... Not but great irregularities Arise from such exploits.--And was it she I noticed wandering to and fro below here, Just as the French retired? VOICE OF ANOTHER OFFICER Ah no, my lord. That was the wife of Prescott of the Seventh, Hoping beneath the heel of hopelessness, As these young women will!--Just about sunset She found him lying dead and bloody there, And in the dusk we bore them both away.[18] VOICE OF WELLINGTON Well, I'm damned sorry for her. Though I wish The women-folk would keep them to the rear: Much awkwardness attends their pottering round! [The talking shapes disappear, and as the features of the field grow undistinguishable the comparative quiet is broken by gay notes from guitars and castanets in the direction of the city, and other sounds of popular rejoicing at Wellington's victory. People come dancing out from the town, and the merry-making continues till midnight, when it ceases, and darkness and silence prevail everywhere.] SEMICHORUS I OF THE YEARS [aerial music] What are Space and Time? A fancy!-- Lo, by Vision's necromancy Muscovy will now unroll; Where for cork and olive-tree Starveling firs and birches be. SEMICHORUS II Though such features lie afar From events Peninsular, These, amid their dust and thunder, Form with those, as scarce asunder, Parts of one compacted whole. CHORUS Marmont's aide, then, like a swallow Let us follow, follow, follow, Over hill and over hollow, Past the plains of Teute and Pole! [There is semblance of a sound in the darkness as of a rushing through the air.] SCENE IV THE FIELD OF BORODINO [Borodino, seventy miles west of Moscow, is revealed in a bird's- eye view from a point above the position of the French Grand Army, advancing on the Russian capital.