Aides gallop through the screeching shot and haze of smoke and dust between NAPOLEON and his various marshals. The Emperor walks about, looks through his glass, goes to a camp-stool, on which he sits down, and drinks glasses of spirits and hot water to relieve his still violent cold, as may be discovered from his red eyes, raw nose, rheumatic manner when he moves, and thick voice in giving orders. SPIRIT OF THE PITIES So he fulfils the inhuman antickings He thinks imposed upon him.... What says he? SPIRIT OF RUMOUR He says it is the sun of Austerlitz! The Russians, so far from being driven out of their redoubts, issue from them towards the French. But they have to retreat, BAGRATION and his Chief of Staff being wounded. NAPOLEON sips his grog hopefully, and orders a still stronger attack on the great redoubt in the centre. It is carried out. The redoubt becomes the scene of a huge massacre. In other parts of the field also the action almost ceases to be a battle, and takes the form of wholesale butchery by the thousand, now advantaging one side, now the other. SPIRIT OF THE YEARS Thus do the mindless minions of the spell In mechanized enchantment sway and show A Will that wills above the will of each, Yet but the will of all conjunctively; A fabric of excitement, web of rage, That permeates as one stuff the weltering whole. SPIRIT OF THE PITIES The ugly horror grossly regnant here Wakes even the drowsed half-drunken Dictator To all its vain uncouthness! SPIRIT OF RUMOUR Murat cries That on this much-anticipated day Napoleon's genius flags inoperative. The firing from the top of the redoubt has ceased. The French have got inside. The Russians retreat upon their rear, and fortify themselves on the heights there. PONIATOWSKI furiously attacks them. But the French are worn out, and fall back to their station before the battle. So the combat dies resultlessly away. The sun sets, and the opposed and exhausted hosts sink to lethargic repose. NAPOLEON enters his tent in the midst of his lieutenants, and night descends. SHADE OF THE EARTH The fumes of nitre and the reek of gore Make my airs foul and fulsome unto me! SPIRIT IRONIC The natural nausea of a nurse, dear Dame. SPIRIT OF RUMOUR Strange: even within that tent no notes of joy Throb as at Austerlitz! [signifying Napoleon's tent]. SPIRIT OF THE PITIES But mark that roar-- A mash of men's crazed cries entreating mates To run them through and end their agony; Boys calling on their mothers, veterans Blaspheming God and man. Those shady shapes Are horses, maimed in myriads, tearing round In maddening pangs, the harnessings they wear Clanking discordant jingles as they tear!