Chapter XLVII: Prologue: To Hellas (1)

HERALD OF ETERNITY: It is the day when all the sons of God Wait in the roofless senate-house, whose floor Is Chaos, and the immovable abyss Frozen by His steadfast word to hyaline

...

The shadow of God, and delegate _5 Of that before whose breath the universe Is as a print of dew. Hierarchs and kings Who from your thrones pinnacled on the past Sway the reluctant present, ye who sit Pavilioned on the radiance or the gloom _10 Of mortal thought, which like an exhalation Steaming from earth, conceals the ... of heaven Which gave it birth. ... assemble here Before your Father’s throne; the swift decree Yet hovers, and the fiery incarnation _15 Is yet withheld, clothed in which it shall annul The fairest of those wandering isles that gem The sapphire space of interstellar air, That green and azure sphere, that earth enwrapped _20 Less in the beauty of its tender light Than in an atmosphere of living spirit Which interpenetrating all the ... it rolls from realm to realm And age to age, and in its ebb and flow _25 Impels the generations To their appointed place, Whilst the high Arbiter Beholds the strife, and at the appointed time Sends His decrees veiled in eternal... _30

Within the circuit of this pendent orb There lies an antique region, on which fell The dews of thought in the world’s golden dawn Earliest and most benign, and from it sprung Temples and cities and immortal forms _35 And harmonies of wisdom and of song, And thoughts, and deeds worthy of thoughts so fair. And when the sun of its dominion failed, And when the winter of its glory came, The winds that stripped it bare blew on and swept _40 That dew into the utmost wildernesses In wandering clouds of sunny rain that thawed The unmaternal bosom of the North. Haste, sons of God, ... for ye beheld, Reluctant, or consenting, or astonished, _45 The stern decrees go forth, which heaped on Greece Ruin and degradation and despair. A fourth now waits: assemble, sons of God, To speed or to prevent or to suspend, If, as ye dream, such power be not withheld, _50 The unaccomplished destiny.

NOTE: _8 your Garnett; yon Forman, Dowden.

...

CHORUS: The curtain of the Universe Is rent and shattered, The splendour-winged worlds disperse Like wild doves scattered. _55

Space is roofless and bare, And in the midst a cloudy shrine, Dark amid thrones of light. In the blue glow of hyaline Golden worlds revolve and shine. _60 In ... flight From every point of the Infinite, Like a thousand dawns on a single night The splendours rise and spread; And through thunder and darkness dread _65 Light and music are radiated, And in their pavilioned chariots led By living wings high overhead The giant Powers move, Gloomy or bright as the thrones they fill. _70

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A chaos of light and motion Upon that glassy ocean.

...

The senate of the Gods is met, Each in his rank and station set; There is silence in the spaces— _75 Lo! Satan, Christ, and Mahomet Start from their places!

CHRIST: Almighty Father! Low-kneeling at the feet of Destiny

...

There are two fountains in which spirits weep _80 When mortals err, Discord and Slavery named, And with their bitter dew two Destinies Filled each their irrevocable urns; the third Fiercest and mightiest, mingled both, and added Chaos and Death, and slow Oblivion’s lymph, _85 And hate and terror, and the poisoned rain

...

The Aurora of the nations. By this brow Whose pores wept tears of blood, by these wide wounds, By this imperial crown of agony, By infamy and solitude and death, _90 For this I underwent, and by the pain Of pity for those who would ... for me The unremembered joy of a revenge, For this I felt—by Plato’s sacred light, Of which my spirit was a burning morrow— _95 By Greece and all she cannot cease to be. Her quenchless words, sparks of immortal truth, Stars of all night—her harmonies and forms, Echoes and shadows of what Love adores In thee, I do compel thee, send forth Fate, _100 Thy irrevocable child: let her descend, A seraph-winged Victory [arrayed] In tempest of the omnipotence of God Which sweeps through all things.

From hollow leagues, from Tyranny which arms _105 Adverse miscreeds and emulous anarchies To stamp, as on a winged serpent’s seed, Upon the name of Freedom; from the storm Of faction, which like earthquake shakes and sickens The solid heart of enterprise; from all _110 By which the holiest dreams of highest spirits Are stars beneath the dawn... She shall arise Victorious as the world arose from Chaos! And as the Heavens and the Earth arrayed Their presence in the beauty and the light _115 Of Thy first smile, O Father,—as they gather The spirit of Thy love which paves for them Their path o’er the abyss, till every sphere Shall be one living Spirit,—so shall Greece—

SATAN: Be as all things beneath the empyrean, _120 Mine! Art thou eyeless like old Destiny, Thou mockery-king, crowned with a wreath of thorns? Whose sceptre is a reed, the broken reed Which pierces thee! whose throne a chair of scorn; For seest thou not beneath this crystal floor _125 The innumerable worlds of golden light Which are my empire, and the least of them which thou wouldst redeem from me? Know’st thou not them my portion? Or wouldst rekindle the ... strife _130 Which our great Father then did arbitrate Which he assigned to his competing sons Each his apportioned realm? Thou Destiny, Thou who art mailed in the omnipotence Of Him who tends thee forth, whate’er thy task, _135 Speed, spare not to accomplish, and be mine Thy trophies, whether Greece again become The fountain in the desert whence the earth Shall drink of freedom, which shall give it strength To suffer, or a gulf of hollow death _140 To swallow all delight, all life, all hope. Go, thou Vicegerent of my will, no less Than of the Father’s; but lest thou shouldst faint, The winged hounds, Famine and Pestilence, Shall wait on thee, the hundred-forked snake _145 Insatiate Superstition still shall... The earth behind thy steps, and War shall hover Above, and Fraud shall gape below, and Change Shall flit before thee on her dragon wings, Convulsing and consuming, and I add _150 Three vials of the tears which daemons weep When virtuous spirits through the gate of Death Pass triumphing over the thorns of life, Sceptres and crowns, mitres and swords and snares, Trampling in scorn, like Him and Socrates. _155 The first is Anarchy; when Power and Pleasure, Glory and science and security, On Freedom hang like fruit on the green tree, Then pour it forth, and men shall gather ashes. The second Tyranny—

CHRIST: Obdurate spirit! _160 Thou seest but the Past in the To-come. Pride is thy error and thy punishment. Boast not thine empire, dream not that thy worlds Are more than furnace-sparks or rainbow-drops Before the Power that wields and kindles them. _165 True greatness asks not space, true excellence Lives in the Spirit of all things that live, Which lends it to the worlds thou callest thine.

...

MAHOMET: ...Haste thou and fill the waning crescent With beams as keen as those which pierced the shadow _170 Of Christian night rolled back upon the West, When the orient moon of Islam rode in triumph From Tmolus to the Acroceraunian snow.

...

Wake, thou Word Of God, and from the throne of Destiny _175 Even to the utmost limit of thy way May Triumph

...

Be thou a curse on them whose creed Divides and multiplies the most high God.

HELLAS.

DRAMATIS PERSONAE:

MAHMUD. HASSAN. DAOOD. AHASUERUS, A JEW. CHORUS OF GREEK CAPTIVE WOMEN. [THE PHANTOM OF MAHOMET II. (OMITTED, EDITION 1822.)] MESSENGERS, SLAVES, AND ATTENDANTS.

SCENE: CONSTANTINOPLE.

TIME: SUNSET.

SCENE: A TERRACE ON THE SERAGLIO. MAHMUD SLEEPING, AN INDIAN SLAVE SITTING BESIDE HIS COUCH.

CHORUS OF GREEK CAPTIVE WOMEN: We strew these opiate flowers On thy restless pillow,— They were stripped from Orient bowers, By the Indian billow. Be thy sleep _5 Calm and deep, Like theirs who fell—not ours who weep!

INDIAN: Away, unlovely dreams! Away, false shapes of sleep Be his, as Heaven seems, _10 Clear, and bright, and deep! Soft as love, and calm as death, Sweet as a summer night without a breath.

CHORUS: Sleep, sleep! our song is laden With the soul of slumber; _15 It was sung by a Samian maiden, Whose lover was of the number Who now keep That calm sleep Whence none may wake, where none shall weep. _20

INDIAN: I touch thy temples pale! I breathe my soul on thee! And could my prayers avail, All my joy should be Dead, and I would live to weep, _25 So thou mightst win one hour of quiet sleep.

CHORUS: Breathe low, low The spell of the mighty mistress now! When Conscience lulls her sated snake, And Tyrants sleep, let Freedom wake. _30 Breathe low—low The words which, like secret fire, shall flow Through the veins of the frozen earth—low, low!

SEMICHORUS 1: Life may change, but it may fly not; Hope may vanish, but can die not; _35 Truth be veiled, but still it burneth; Love repulsed,—but it returneth!

SEMICHORUS 2: Yet were life a charnel where Hope lay coffined with Despair; Yet were truth a sacred lie, _40 Love were lust—

SEMICHORUS 1: If Liberty Lent not life its soul of light, Hope its iris of delight, Truth its prophet’s robe to wear, Love its power to give and bear. _45

CHORUS: In the great morning of the world, The Spirit of God with might unfurled The flag of Freedom over Chaos, And all its banded anarchs fled, Like vultures frighted from Imaus, _50 Before an earthquake’s tread.— So from Time’s tempestuous dawn Freedom’s splendour burst and shone:— Thermopylae and Marathon Caught like mountains beacon-lighted, _55 The springing Fire.—The winged glory On Philippi half-alighted, Like an eagle on a promontory. Its unwearied wings could fan The quenchless ashes of Milan. _60 From age to age, from man to man, It lived; and lit from land to land Florence, Albion, Switzerland.

Then night fell; and, as from night, Reassuming fiery flight, _65 From the West swift Freedom came, Against the course of Heaven and doom. A second sun arrayed in flame, To burn, to kindle, to illume. From far Atlantis its young beams _70 Chased the shadows and the dreams. France, with all her sanguine steams, Hid, but quenched it not; again Through clouds its shafts of glory rain From utmost Germany to Spain. _75 As an eagle fed with morning Scorns the embattled tempest’s warning, When she seeks her aerie hanging In the mountain-cedar’s hair, And her brood expect the clanging _80 Of her wings through the wild air, Sick with famine:—Freedom, so To what of Greece remaineth now Returns; her hoary ruins glow Like Orient mountains lost in day; _85 Beneath the safety of her wings Her renovated nurslings prey, And in the naked lightenings Of truth they purge their dazzled eyes. Let Freedom leave—where’er she flies, _90 A Desert, or a Paradise: Let the beautiful and the brave Share her glory, or a grave.

NOTES: _77 tempest’s]tempests edition 1822. _87 prey edition 1822; play editions 1839.

SEMICHORUS 1: With the gifts of gladness Greece did thy cradle strew; _95

SEMICHORUS 2: With the tears of sadness Greece did thy shroud bedew!

SEMICHORUS 1: With an orphan’s affection She followed thy bier through Time;

SEMICHORUS 2: And at thy resurrection _100 Reappeareth, like thou, sublime!

SEMICHORUS 1: If Heaven should resume thee, To Heaven shall her spirit ascend;

SEMICHORUS 2: If Hell should entomb thee, To Hell shall her high hearts bend. _105

SEMICHORUS 1: If Annihilation—

SEMICHORUS 2: Dust let her glories be! And a name and a nation Be forgotten, Freedom, with thee!

INDIAN: His brow grows darker—breathe not—move not! _110 He starts—he shudders—ye that love not, With your panting loud and fast, Have awakened him at last.

MAHMUD [STARTING FROM HIS SLEEP]: Man the Seraglio-guard! make fast the gate! What! from a cannonade of three short hours? _115 ’Tis false! that breach towards the Bosphorus Cannot be practicable yet—who stirs? Stand to the match; that when the foe prevails One spark may mix in reconciling ruin The conqueror and the conquered! Heave the tower _120 Into the gap—wrench off the roof! [ENTER HASSAN.] Ha! what! The truth of day lightens upon my dream And I am Mahmud still.

HASSAN: Your Sublime Highness Is strangely moved.

MAHMUD: The times do cast strange shadows On those who watch and who must rule their course, _125 Lest they, being first in peril as in glory, Be whelmed in the fierce ebb:—and these are of them. Thrice has a gloomy vision hunted me As thus from sleep into the troubled day; It shakes me as the tempest shakes the sea, _130 Leaving no figure upon memory’s glass. Would that—no matter. Thou didst say thou knewest A Jew, whose spirit is a chronicle Of strange and secret and forgotten things. I bade thee summon him:—’tis said his tribe _135 Dream, and are wise interpreters of dreams.

HASSAN: The Jew of whom I spake is old,—so old He seems to have outlived a world’s decay; The hoary mountains and the wrinkled ocean Seem younger still than he;—his hair and beard _140 Are whiter than the tempest-sifted snow; His cold pale limbs and pulseless arteries Are like the fibres of a cloud instinct With light, and to the soul that quickens them Are as the atoms of the mountain-drift _145 To the winter wind:—but from his eye looks forth A life of unconsumed thought which pierces The Present, and the Past, and the To-come. Some say that this is he whom the great prophet Jesus, the son of Joseph, for his mockery, _150 Mocked with the curse of immortality. Some feign that he is Enoch: others dream He was pre-adamite and has survived Cycles of generation and of ruin. The sage, in truth, by dreadful abstinence _155 And conquering penance of the mutinous flesh, Deep contemplation, and unwearied study, In years outstretched beyond the date of man, May have attained to sovereignty and science Over those strong and secret things and thoughts _160 Which others fear and know not.

MAHMUD: I would talk With this old Jew.

HASSAN: Thy will is even now Made known to him, where he dwells in a sea-cavern ‘Mid the Demonesi, less accessible Than thou or God! He who would question him _165 Must sail alone at sunset, where the stream Of Ocean sleeps around those foamless isles, When the young moon is westering as now, And evening airs wander upon the wave; And when the pines of that bee-pasturing isle, _170 Green Erebinthus, quench the fiery shadow Of his gilt prow within the sapphire water, Then must the lonely helmsman cry aloud ‘Ahasuerus!’ and the caverns round Will answer ‘Ahasuerus!’ If his prayer _175 Be granted, a faint meteor will arise Lighting him over Marmora, and a wind Will rush out of the sighing pine-forest, And with the wind a storm of harmony Unutterably sweet, and pilot him _180 Through the soft twilight to the Bosphorus: Thence at the hour and place and circumstance Fit for the matter of their conference The Jew appears. Few dare, and few who dare Win the desired communion—but that shout _185 Bodes—

[A SHOUT WITHIN.]

MAHMUD: Evil, doubtless; Like all human sounds. Let me converse with spirits.

HASSAN: That shout again.

MAHMUD: This Jew whom thou hast summoned—

HASSAN: Will be here—

MAHMUD: When the omnipotent hour to which are yoked He, I, and all things shall compel—enough! _190 Silence those mutineers—that drunken crew, That crowd about the pilot in the storm. Ay! strike the foremost shorter by a head! They weary me, and I have need of rest. Kinks are like stars—they rise and set, they have _195 The worship of the world, but no repose.

[EXEUNT SEVERALLY.]

CHORUS: Worlds on worlds are rolling ever From creation to decay, Like the bubbles on a river Sparkling, bursting, borne away. _200 But they are still immortal Who, through birth’s orient portal And death’s dark chasm hurrying to and fro, Clothe their unceasing flight In the brief dust and light _205 Gathered around their chariots as they go; New shapes they still may weave, New gods, new laws receive, Bright or dim are they as the robes they last On Death’s bare ribs had cast. _210

A power from the unknown God, A Promethean conqueror, came; Like a triumphal path he trod The thorns of death and shame. A mortal shape to him _215 Was like the vapour dim Which the orient planet animates with light; Hell, Sin, and Slavery came, Like bloodhounds mild and tame, Nor preyed, until their Lord had taken flight; _220 The moon of Mahomet Arose, and it shall set: While blazoned as on Heaven’s immortal noon The cross leads generations on.

Swift as the radiant shapes of sleep _225 From one whose dreams are Paradise Fly, when the fond wretch wakes to weep, And Day peers forth with her blank eyes; So fleet, so faint, so fair, The Powers of earth and air _230 Fled from the folding-star of Bethlehem: Apollo, Pan, and Love, And even Olympian Jove Grew weak, for killing Truth had glared on them; Our hills and seas and streams, _235 Dispeopled of their dreams, Their waters turned to blood, their dew to tears, Wailed for the golden years.

[ENTER MAHMUD, HASSAN, DAOOD, AND OTHERS.]

MAHMUD: More gold? our ancestors bought gold with victory, And shall I sell it for defeat?

DAOOD: The Janizars _240 Clamour for pay.

MAHMUD: Go! bid them pay themselves With Christian blood! Are there no Grecian virgins Whose shrieks and spasms and tears they may enjoy? No infidel children to impale on spears? No hoary priests after that Patriarch _245 Who bent the curse against his country’s heart, Which clove his own at last? Go! bid them kill, Blood is the seed of gold.

DAOOD: It has been sown, And yet the harvest to the sicklemen Is as a grain to each.

MAHMUD: Then, take this signet, _250 Unlock the seventh chamber in which lie The treasures of victorious Solyman,— An empire’s spoil stored for a day of ruin. O spirit of my sires! is it not come? The prey-birds and the wolves are gorged and sleep; _255 But these, who spread their feast on the red earth, Hunger for gold, which fills not.—See them fed; Then, lead them to the rivers of fresh death. [EXIT DAOOD.] O miserable dawn, after a night More glorious than the day which it usurped! _260 O faith in God! O power on earth! O word Of the great prophet, whose o’ershadowing wings Darkened the thrones and idols of the West, Now bright!—For thy sake cursed be the hour, Even as a father by an evil child, _265 When the orient moon of Islam rolled in triumph From Caucasus to White Ceraunia! Ruin above, and anarchy below; Terror without, and treachery within; The Chalice of destruction full, and all _270 Thirsting to drink; and who among us dares To dash it from his lips? and where is Hope?

HASSAN: The lamp of our dominion still rides high; One God is God—Mahomet is His prophet. Four hundred thousand Moslems, from the limits _275 Of utmost Asia, irresistibly Throng, like full clouds at the Sirocco’s cry; But not like them to weep their strength in tears: They bear destroying lightning, and their step Wakes earthquake to consume and overwhelm, _280 And reign in ruin. Phrygian Olympus, Tmolus, and Latmos, and Mycale, roughen With horrent arms; and lofty ships even now, Like vapours anchored to a mountain’s edge, Freighted with fire and whirlwind, wait at Scala _285 The convoy of the ever-veering wind. Samos is drunk with blood;—the Greek has paid Brief victory with swift loss and long despair. The false Moldavian serfs fled fast and far When the fierce shout of ‘Allah-illa-Allah!’ _290 Rose like the war-cry of the northern wind Which kills the sluggish clouds, and leaves a flock Of wild swans struggling with the naked storm. So were the lost Greeks on the Danube’s day! If night is mute, yet the returning sun _295 Kindles the voices of the morning birds; Nor at thy bidding less exultingly Than birds rejoicing in the golden day, The Anarchies of Africa unleash Their tempest-winged cities of the sea, _300 To speak in thunder to the rebel world. Like sulphurous clouds, half-shattered by the storm, They sweep the pale Aegean, while the Queen Of Ocean, bound upon her island-throne, Far in the West, sits mourning that her sons _305 Who frown on Freedom spare a smile for thee: Russia still hovers, as an eagle might Within a cloud, near which a kite and crane Hang tangled in inextricable fight, To stoop upon the victor;—for she fears _310 The name of Freedom, even as she hates thine. But recreant Austria loves thee as the Grave Loves Pestilence, and her slow dogs of war Fleshed with the chase, come up from Italy, And howl upon their limits; for they see _315 The panther, Freedom, fled to her old cover, Amid seas and mountains, and a mightier brood Crouch round. What Anarch wears a crown or mitre, Or bears the sword, or grasps the key of gold, Whose friends are not thy friends, whose foes thy foes? _320 Our arsenals and our armouries are full; Our forts defy assault; ten thousand cannon Lie ranged upon the beach, and hour by hour Their earth-convulsing wheels affright the city; The galloping of fiery steeds makes pale _325 The Christian merchant; and the yellow Jew Hides his hoard deeper in the faithless earth. Like clouds, and like the shadows of the clouds, Over the hills of Anatolia, Swift in wide troops the Tartar chivalry _330 Sweep;—the far flashing of their starry lances Reverberates the dying light of day. We have one God, one King, one Hope, one Law; But many-headed Insurrection stands Divided in itself, and soon must fall. _335

NOTES: _253 spoil edition 1822; spoils editions 1839. _279 bear edition 1822; have editions 1839. _322 assault edition 1822; assaults editions 1839.

MAHMUD: Proud words, when deeds come short, are seasonable: Look, Hassan, on yon crescent moon, emblazoned Upon that shattered flag of fiery cloud Which leads the rear of the departing day; Wan emblem of an empire fading now! _340 See how it trembles in the blood-red air, And like a mighty lamp whose oil is spent Shrinks on the horizon’s edge, while, from above, One star with insolent and victorious light Hovers above its fall, and with keen beams, _345 Like arrows through a fainting antelope, Strikes its weak form to death.

HASSAN: Even as that moon Renews itself—

MAHMUD: Shall we be not renewed! Far other bark than ours were needed now To stem the torrent of descending time: _350 The Spirit that lifts the slave before his lord Stalks through the capitals of armed kings, And spreads his ensign in the wilderness: Exults in chains; and, when the rebel falls, Cries like the blood of Abel from the dust; _355 And the inheritors of the earth, like beasts When earthquake is unleashed, with idiot fear Cower in their kingly dens—as I do now. What were Defeat when Victory must appal? Or Danger, when Security looks pale?— _360 How said the messenger—who, from the fort Islanded in the Danube, saw the battle Of Bucharest?—that—

NOTES: _351 his edition 1822; its editions 1839. _356 of the earth edition 1822; of earth editions 1839.

HASSAN: Ibrahim’s scimitar Drew with its gleam swift victory from Heaven, To burn before him in the night of battle— _365 A light and a destruction.

MAHMUD: Ay! the day Was ours: but how?—

HASSAN: The light Wallachians, The Arnaut, Servian, and Albanian allies Fled from the glance of our artillery Almost before the thunderstone alit. _370 One half the Grecian army made a bridge Of safe and slow retreat, with Moslem dead; The other—

MAHMUD: Speak—tremble not.—

HASSAN: Islanded By victor myriads, formed in hollow square With rough and steadfast front, and thrice flung back _375 The deluge of our foaming cavalry; Thrice their keen wedge of battle pierced our lines. Our baffled army trembled like one man Before a host, and gave them space; but soon, From the surrounding hills, the batteries blazed, _380 Kneading them down with fire and iron rain: Yet none approached; till, like a field of corn Under the hook of the swart sickleman, The band, intrenched in mounds of Turkish dead, Grew weak and few.—Then said the Pacha, ‘Slaves, _385 Render yourselves—they have abandoned you— What hope of refuge, or retreat, or aid? We grant your lives.’ ‘Grant that which is thine own!’ Cried one, and fell upon his sword and died! Another—‘God, and man, and hope abandon me; _390 But I to them, and to myself, remain Constant:’—he bowed his head, and his heart burst. A third exclaimed, ‘There is a refuge, tyrant, Where thou darest not pursue, and canst not harm Shouldst thou pursue; there we shall meet again.’ _395 Then held his breath, and, after a brief spasm, The indignant spirit cast its mortal garment Among the slain—dead earth upon the earth! So these survivors, each by different ways, Some strange, all sudden, none dishonourable, _400 Met in triumphant death; and when our army Closed in, while yet wonder, and awe, and shame Held back the base hyaenas of the battle That feed upon the dead and fly the living, One rose out of the chaos of the slain: _405 And if it were a corpse which some dread spirit Of the old saviours of the land we rule Had lifted in its anger, wandering by;— Or if there burned within the dying man Unquenchable disdain of death, and faith _410 Creating what it feigned;—I cannot tell— But he cried, ‘Phantoms of the free, we come! Armies of the Eternal, ye who strike To dust the citadels of sanguine kings, And shake the souls throned on their stony hearts, _415 And thaw their frostwork diadems like dew;— O ye who float around this clime, and weave The garment of the glory which it wears, Whose fame, though earth betray the dust it clasped, Lies sepulchred in monumental thought;— _420 Progenitors of all that yet is great, Ascribe to your bright senate, O accept In your high ministrations, us, your sons— Us first, and the more glorious yet to come! And ye, weak conquerors! giants who look pale _425 When the crushed worm rebels beneath your tread, The vultures and the dogs, your pensioners tame, Are overgorged; but, like oppressors, still They crave the relic of Destruction’s feast. The exhalations and the thirsty winds _430 Are sick with blood; the dew is foul with death; Heaven’s light is quenched in slaughter: thus, where’er Upon your camps, cities, or towers, or fleets, The obscene birds the reeking remnants cast Of these dead limbs,—upon your streams and mountains, _435 Upon your fields, your gardens, and your housetops, Where’er the winds shall creep, or the clouds fly, Or the dews fall, or the angry sun look down With poisoned light—Famine, and Pestilence, And Panic, shall wage war upon our side! _440 Nature from all her boundaries is moved Against ye: Time has found ye light as foam. The Earth rebels; and Good and Evil stake Their empire o’er the unborn world of men On this one cast;—but ere the die be thrown, _445 The renovated genius of our race, Proud umpire of the impious game, descends, A seraph-winged Victory, bestriding The tempest of the Omnipotence of God, Which sweeps all things to their appointed doom, _450 And you to oblivion!’—More he would have said, But—

NOTE: _384 band edition 1822; bands editions 1839.

MAHMUD: Died—as thou shouldst ere thy lips had painted Their ruin in the hues of our success. A rebel’s crime, gilt with a rebel’s tongue! Your heart is Greek, Hassan.

HASSAN: It may be so: _455 A spirit not my own wrenched me within, And I have spoken words I fear and hate; Yet would I die for—

MAHMUD: Live! oh live! outlive Me and this sinking empire. But the fleet—

HASSAN: Alas!—

MAHMUD: The fleet which, like a flock of clouds _460 Chased by the wind, flies the insurgent banner! Our winged castles from their merchant ships! Our myriads before their weak pirate bands! Our arms before their chains! our years of empire Before their centuries of servile fear! _465 Death is awake! Repulse is on the waters! They own no more the thunder-bearing banner Of Mahmud; but, like hounds of a base breed, Gorge from a stranger’s hand, and rend their master.

NOTE: _466 Repulse is “Shelley, Errata”, edition 1822; Repulsed edition 1822.

HASSAN: Latmos, and Ampelos, and Phanae saw _470 The wreck—

MAHMUD: The caves of the Icarian isles Told each to the other in loud mockery, And with the tongue as of a thousand echoes, First of the sea-convulsing fight—and, then,— Thou darest to speak—senseless are the mountains: _475 Interpret thou their voice!

NOTE: _472 Told Errata, Wms. transcript; Hold edition 1822.

HASSAN: My presence bore A part in that day’s shame. The Grecian fleet Bore down at daybreak from the North, and hung As multitudinous on the ocean line, As cranes upon the cloudless Thracian wind. _480 Our squadron, convoying ten thousand men, Was stretching towards Nauplia when the battle Was kindled.— First through the hail of our artillery The agile Hydriote barks with press of sail _485 Dashed:—ship to ship, cannon to cannon, man To man were grappled in the embrace of war, Inextricable but by death or victory. The tempest of the raging fight convulsed To its crystalline depths that stainless sea, _490 And shook Heaven’s roof of golden morning clouds, Poised on an hundred azure mountain-isles. In the brief trances of the artillery One cry from the destroyed and the destroyer Rose, and a cloud of desolation wrapped _495 The unforeseen event, till the north wind Sprung from the sea, lifting the heavy veil Of battle-smoke—then victory—victory! For, as we thought, three frigates from Algiers Bore down from Naxos to our aid, but soon _500 The abhorred cross glimmered behind, before, Among, around us; and that fatal sign Dried with its beams the strength in Moslem hearts, As the sun drinks the dew.—What more? We fled!— Our noonday path over the sanguine foam _505 Was beaconed,—and the glare struck the sun pale,— By our consuming transports: the fierce light Made all the shadows of our sails blood-red, And every countenance blank. Some ships lay feeding The ravening fire, even to the water’s level; _510 Some were blown up; some, settling heavily, Sunk; and the shrieks of our companions died Upon the wind, that bore us fast and far, Even after they were dead. Nine thousand perished! We met the vultures legioned in the air _515 Stemming the torrent of the tainted wind; They, screaming from their cloudy mountain-peaks, Stooped through the sulphurous battle-smoke and perched Each on the weltering carcase that we loved, Like its ill angel or its damned soul, _520 Riding upon the bosom of the sea. We saw the dog-fish hastening to their feast. Joy waked the voiceless people of the sea, And ravening Famine left his ocean cave To dwell with War, with us, and with Despair. _525 We met night three hours to the west of Patmos, And with night, tempest—

NOTES: _503 in edition 1822; of editions 1839. _527 And edition 1822; As editions 1839.

MAHMUD: Cease!

[ENTER A MESSENGER.]

MESSENGER: Your Sublime Highness, That Christian hound, the Muscovite Ambassador, Has left the city.—If the rebel fleet Had anchored in the port, had victory _530 Crowned the Greek legions in the Hippodrome, Panic were tamer.—Obedience and Mutiny, Like giants in contention planet-struck, Stand gazing on each other.—There is peace In Stamboul.—

MAHMUD: Is the grave not calmer still? _535 Its ruins shall be mine.

HASSAN: Fear not the Russian: The tiger leagues not with the stag at bay Against the hunter.—Cunning, base, and cruel, He crouches, watching till the spoil be won, And must be paid for his reserve in blood. _540 After the war is fought, yield the sleek Russian That which thou canst not keep, his deserved portion Of blood, which shall not flow through streets and fields, Rivers and seas, like that which we may win, But stagnate in the veins of Christian slaves! _545

[ENTER SECOND MESSENGER.]

SECOND MESSENGER: Nauplia, Tripolizza, Mothon, Athens, Navarin, Artas, Monembasia, Corinth, and Thebes are carried by assault, And every Islamite who made his dogs Fat with the flesh of Galilean slaves _550 Passed at the edge of the sword: the lust of blood, Which made our warriors drunk, is quenched in death; But like a fiery plague breaks out anew In deeds which make the Christian cause look pale In its own light. The garrison of Patras _555 Has store but for ten days, nor is there hope But from the Briton: at once slave and tyrant, His wishes still are weaker than his fears, Or he would sell what faith may yet remain From the oaths broke in Genoa and in Norway; _560 And if you buy him not, your treasury Is empty even of promises—his own coin. The freedman of a western poet-chief Holds Attica with seven thousand rebels, And has beat back the Pacha of Negropont: _565 The aged Ali sits in Yanina A crownless metaphor of empire: His name, that shadow of his withered might, Holds our besieging army like a spell In prey to famine, pest, and mutiny; _570 He, bastioned in his citadel, looks forth Joyless upon the sapphire lake that mirrors The ruins of the city where he reigned Childless and sceptreless. The Greek has reaped The costly harvest his own blood matured, _575 Not the sower, Ali—who has bought a truce From Ypsilanti with ten camel-loads Of Indian gold.

NOTE: _563 freedman edition 1822; freeman editions 1839.

[ENTER A THIRD MESSENGER.]

MAHMUD: What more?

THIRD MESSENGER: The Christian tribes Of Lebanon and the Syrian wilderness Are in revolt;—Damascus, Hems, Aleppo _580 Tremble;—the Arab menaces Medina, The Aethiop has intrenched himself in Sennaar, And keeps the Egyptian rebel well employed, Who denies homage, claims investiture As price of tardy aid. Persia demands _585 The cities on the Tigris, and the Georgians Refuse their living tribute. Crete and Cyprus, Like mountain-twins that from each other’s veins Catch the volcano-fire and earthquake-spasm, Shake in the general fever. Through the city, _590 Like birds before a storm, the Santons shriek, And prophesyings horrible and new Are heard among the crowd: that sea of men Sleeps on the wrecks it made, breathless and still. A Dervise, learned in the Koran, preaches _595 That it is written how the sins of Islam Must raise up a destroyer even now. The Greeks expect a Saviour from the West, Who shall not come, men say, in clouds and glory, But in the omnipresence of that Spirit _600 In which all live and are. Ominous signs Are blazoned broadly on the noonday sky: One saw a red cross stamped upon the sun; It has rained blood; and monstrous births declare The secret wrath of Nature and her Lord. _605 The army encamped upon the Cydaris Was roused last night by the alarm of battle, And saw two hosts conflicting in the air, The shadows doubtless of the unborn time Cast on the mirror of the night. While yet _610 The fight hung balanced, there arose a storm Which swept the phantoms from among the stars. At the third watch the Spirit of the Plague Was heard abroad flapping among the tents; Those who relieved watch found the sentinels dead. _615 The last news from the camp is, that a thousand Have sickened, and—

[ENTER A FOURTH MESSENGER.]

MAHMUD: And thou, pale ghost, dim shadow Of some untimely rumour, speak!

FOURTH MESSENGER: One comes Fainting with toil, covered with foam and blood: He stood, he says, on Chelonites’ _620 Promontory, which o’erlooks the isles that groan Under the Briton’s frown, and all their waters Then trembling in the splendour of the moon, When as the wandering clouds unveiled or hid Her boundless light, he saw two adverse fleets _625 Stalk through the night in the horizon’s glimmer, Mingling fierce thunders and sulphureous gleams, And smoke which strangled every infant wind That soothed the silver clouds through the deep air. At length the battle slept, but the Sirocco _630 Awoke, and drove his flock of thunder-clouds Over the sea-horizon, blotting out All objects—save that in the faint moon-glimpse He saw, or dreamed he saw, the Turkish admiral And two the loftiest of our ships of war, _635 With the bright image of that Queen of Heaven, Who hid, perhaps, her face for grief, reversed; And the abhorred cross—

NOTE:
_620 on Chelonites’]on Chelonites “Errata”;
upon Clelonite’s edition 1822;
upon Clelonit’s editions 1839.

[ENTER AN ATTENDANT.]

ATTENDANT: Your Sublime Highness, The Jew, who—

MAHMUD: Could not come more seasonably: Bid him attend. I’ll hear no more! too long _640 We gaze on danger through the mist of fear, And multiply upon our shattered hopes The images of ruin. Come what will! To-morrow and to-morrow are as lamps Set in our path to light us to the edge _645 Through rough and smooth, nor can we suffer aught Which He inflicts not in whose hand we are.

[EXEUNT.]

SEMICHORUS 1: Would I were the winged cloud Of a tempest swift and loud! I would scorn _650 The smile of morn And the wave where the moonrise is born! I would leave The spirits of eve A shroud for the corpse of the day to weave _655 From other threads than mine! Bask in the deep blue noon divine. Who would? Not I.

NOTE: _657 the deep blue “Errata”, Wms. transcript; the blue edition 1822.

SEMICHORUS 2: Whither to fly?

SEMICHORUS 1: Where the rocks that gird th’ Aegean _660 Echo to the battle paean Of the free— I would flee A tempestuous herald of victory! My golden rain For the Grecian slain _665 Should mingle in tears with the bloody main, And my solemn thunder-knell Should ring to the world the passing-bell Of Tyranny! _670

SEMICHORUS 2: Ah king! wilt thou chain The rack and the rain? Wilt thou fetter the lightning and hurricane? The storms are free, But we— _675

CHORUS: O Slavery! thou frost of the world’s prime, Killing its flowers and leaving its thorns bare! Thy touch has stamped these limbs with crime, These brows thy branding garland bear, But the free heart, the impassive soul _680 Scorn thy control!

SEMICHORUS 1: Let there be light! said Liberty, And like sunrise from the sea, Athens arose!—Around her born, Shone like mountains in the morn _685 Glorious states;—and are they now Ashes, wrecks, oblivion?

SEMICHORUS 2: Go, Where Thermae and Asopus swallowed Persia, as the sand does foam: Deluge upon deluge followed, _690 Discord, Macedon, and Rome: And lastly thou!

SEMICHORUS 1: Temples and towers, Citadels and marts, and they Who live and die there, have been ours, And may be thine, and must decay; _695 But Greece and her foundations are Built below the tide of war, Based on the crystalline sea Of thought and its eternity; Her citizens, imperial spirits, _700 Rule the present from the past, On all this world of men inherits Their seal is set.

SEMICHORUS 2: Hear ye the blast, Whose Orphic thunder thrilling calls From ruin her Titanian walls? _705 Whose spirit shakes the sapless bones Of Slavery? Argos, Corinth, Crete Hear, and from their mountain thrones The daemons and the nymphs repeat The harmony.

SEMICHORUS 1: I hear! I hear! _710

SEMICHORUS 2: The world’s eyeless charioteer, Destiny, is hurrying by! What faith is crushed, what empire bleeds Beneath her earthquake-footed steeds? What eagle-winged victory sits _715 At her right hand? what shadow flits Before? what splendour rolls behind? Ruin and renovation cry ‘Who but We?’

SEMICHORUS 1: I hear! I hear! The hiss as of a rushing wind, _720 The roar as of an ocean foaming, The thunder as of earthquake coming. I hear! I hear! The crash as of an empire falling, The shrieks as of a people calling _725 ‘Mercy! mercy!’—How they thrill! Then a shout of ‘kill! kill! kill!’ And then a small still voice, thus—

SEMICHORUS 2: For Revenge and Wrong bring forth their kind, The foul cubs like their parents are, _730 Their den is in the guilty mind, And Conscience feeds them with despair.

NOTE: _728 For edition 1822, Wms. transcript; Fear cj. Fleay, Forman, Dowden. See Editor’s Note.

SEMICHORUS 1: In sacred Athens, near the fane Of Wisdom, Pity’s altar stood: Serve not the unknown God in vain. _735 But pay that broken shrine again, Love for hate and tears for blood.

[ENTER MAHMUD AND AHASUERUS.]

MAHMUD: Thou art a man, thou sayest, even as we.

AHASUERUS: No more!

MAHMUD: But raised above thy fellow-men By thought, as I by power.

AHASUERUS: Thou sayest so. _740

MAHMUD: Thou art an adept in the difficult lore Of Greek and Frank philosophy; thou numberest The flowers, and thou measurest the stars; Thou severest element from element; Thy spirit is present in the Past, and sees _745 The birth of this old world through all its cycles Of desolation and of loveliness, And when man was not, and how man became The monarch and the slave of this low sphere, And all its narrow circles—it is much— _750 I honour thee, and would be what thou art Were I not what I am; but the unborn hour, Cradled in fear and hope, conflicting storms, Who shall unveil? Nor thou, nor I, nor any Mighty or wise. I apprehended not _755 What thou hast taught me, but I now perceive That thou art no interpreter of dreams; Thou dost not own that art, device, or God, Can make the Future present—let it come! Moreover thou disdainest us and ours; _760 Thou art as God, whom thou contemplatest.

AHASUERUS: Disdain thee?—not the worm beneath thy feet! The Fathomless has care for meaner things Than thou canst dream, and has made pride for those Who would be what they may not, or would seem _765 That which they are not. Sultan! talk no more Of thee and me, the Future and the Past; But look on that which cannot change—the One, The unborn and the undying. Earth and ocean, Space, and the isles of life or light that gem _770 The sapphire floods of interstellar air, This firmament pavilioned upon chaos, With all its cressets of immortal fire, Whose outwall, bastioned impregnably Against the escape of boldest thoughts, repels them _775 As Calpe the Atlantic clouds—this Whole Of suns, and worlds, and men, and beasts, and flowers, With all the silent or tempestuous workings By which they have been, are, or cease to be, Is but a vision;—all that it inherits _780 Are motes of a sick eye, bubbles and dreams; Thought is its cradle and its grave, nor less The Future and the Past are idle shadows Of thought’s eternal flight—they have no being: Nought is but that which feels itself to be. _785

NOTE: _762 thy edition 1822; my editions 1839.

MAHMUD: What meanest thou? Thy words stream like a tempest Of dazzling mist within my brain—they shake The earth on which I stand, and hang like night On Heaven above me. What can they avail? They cast on all things surest, brightest, best, _790 Doubt, insecurity, astonishment.

AHASUERUS: Mistake me not! All is contained in each. Dodona’s forest to an acorn’s cup Is that which has been, or will be, to that Which is—the absent to the present. Thought _795 Alone, and its quick elements, Will, Passion, Reason, Imagination, cannot die; They are, what that which they regard appears, The stuff whence mutability can weave All that it hath dominion o’er, worlds, worms, _800 Empires, and superstitions. What has thought To do with time, or place, or circumstance? Wouldst thou behold the Future?—ask and have! Knock and it shall be opened—look, and lo! The coming age is shadowed on the Past _805 As on a glass.

MAHMUD: Wild, wilder thoughts convulse My spirit—Did not Mahomet the Second Win Stamboul?

AHASUERUS: Thou wouldst ask that giant spirit The written fortunes of thy house and faith. Thou wouldst cite one out of the grave to tell _810 How what was born in blood must die.

MAHMUD: Thy words Have power on me! I see—

AHASUERUS: What hearest thou?

MAHMUD: A far whisper— Terrible silence.

AHASUERUS: What succeeds?

MAHMUD: The sound As of the assault of an imperial city, _815 The hiss of inextinguishable fire, The roar of giant cannon; the earthquaking Fall of vast bastions and precipitous towers, The shock of crags shot from strange enginery, The clash of wheels, and clang of armed hoofs, _820 And crash of brazen mail as of the wreck Of adamantine mountains—the mad blast Of trumpets, and the neigh of raging steeds, The shrieks of women whose thrill jars the blood, And one sweet laugh, most horrible to hear, _825 As of a joyous infant waked and playing With its dead mother’s breast, and now more loud The mingled battle-cry,—ha! hear I not ‘En touto nike!’ ‘Allah-illa-Allah!‘?

AHASUERUS: The sulphurous mist is raised—thou seest—

MAHMUD: A chasm, _830 As of two mountains in the wall of Stamboul; And in that ghastly breach the Islamites, Like giants on the ruins of a world, Stand in the light of sunrise. In the dust Glimmers a kingless diadem, and one _835 Of regal port has cast himself beneath The stream of war. Another proudly clad In golden arms spurs a Tartarian barb Into the gap, and with his iron mace Directs the torrent of that tide of men, _840 And seems—he is—Mahomet!

AHASUERUS: What thou seest Is but the ghost of thy forgotten dream. A dream itself, yet less, perhaps, than that Thou call’st reality. Thou mayst behold How cities, on which Empire sleeps enthroned, _845 Bow their towered crests to mutability. Poised by the flood, e’en on the height thou holdest, Thou mayst now learn how the full tide of power Ebbs to its depths.—Inheritor of glory, Conceived in darkness, born in blood, and nourished _850 With tears and toil, thou seest the mortal throes Of that whose birth was but the same. The Past Now stands before thee like an Incarnation Of the To-come; yet wouldst thou commune with That portion of thyself which was ere thou _855 Didst start for this brief race whose crown is death, Dissolve with that strong faith and fervent passion Which called it from the uncreated deep, Yon cloud of war, with its tempestuous phantoms Of raging death; and draw with mighty will _860 The imperial shade hither.

[EXIT AHASUERUS.]

[THE PHANTOM OF MAHOMET THE SECOND APPEARS.]

MAHMUD: Approach!

PHANTOM: I come Thence whither thou must go! The grave is fitter To take the living than give up the dead; Yet has thy faith prevailed, and I am here. The heavy fragments of the power which fell _865 When I arose, like shapeless crags and clouds, Hang round my throne on the abyss, and voices Of strange lament soothe my supreme repose, Wailing for glory never to return.— A later Empire nods in its decay: _870 The autumn of a greener faith is come, And wolfish change, like winter, howls to strip The foliage in which Fame, the eagle, built Her aerie, while Dominion whelped below. The storm is in its branches, and the frost _875 Is on its leaves, and the blank deep expects Oblivion on oblivion, spoil on spoil, Ruin on ruin:—Thou art slow, my son; The Anarchs of the world of darkness keep A throne for thee, round which thine empire lies _880 Boundless and mute; and for thy subjects thou, Like us, shalt rule the ghosts of murdered life, The phantoms of the powers who rule thee now— Mutinous passions, and conflicting fears, And hopes that sate themselves on dust, and die!— _885 Stripped of their mortal strength, as thou of thine. Islam must fall, but we will reign together Over its ruins in the world of death:— And if the trunk be dry, yet shall the seed Unfold itself even in the shape of that _890 Which gathers birth in its decay. Woe! woe! To the weak people tangled in the grasp Of its last spasms.

MAHMUD: Spirit, woe to all! Woe to the wronged and the avenger! Woe To the destroyer, woe to the destroyed! _895 Woe to the dupe, and woe to the deceiver! Woe to the oppressed, and woe to the oppressor! Woe both to those that suffer and inflict; Those who are born and those who die! but say, Imperial shadow of the thing I am, _900 When, how, by whom, Destruction must accomplish Her consummation!

PHANTOM: Ask the cold pale Hour, Rich in reversion of impending death, When HE shall fall upon whose ripe gray hairs Sit Care, and Sorrow, and Infirmity— _905 The weight which Crime, whose wings are plumed with years, Leaves in his flight from ravaged heart to heart Over the heads of men, under which burthen They bow themselves unto the grave: fond wretch! He leans upon his crutch, and talks of years _910 To come, and how in hours of youth renewed He will renew lost joys, and—

VOICE WITHOUT: Victory! Victory!

[THE PHANTOM VANISHES.]

MAHMUD: What sound of the importunate earth has broken My mighty trance?

VOICE WITHOUT: Victory! Victory!

MAHMUD: Weak lightning before darkness! poor faint smile _915 Of dying Islam! Voice which art the response Of hollow weakness! Do I wake and live? Were there such things, or may the unquiet brain, Vexed by the wise mad talk of the old Jew, Have shaped itself these shadows of its fear? _920 It matters not!—for nought we see or dream, Possess, or lose, or grasp at, can be worth More than it gives or teaches. Come what may, The Future must become the Past, and I As they were to whom once this present hour, _925 This gloomy crag of time to which I cling, Seemed an Elysian isle of peace and joy Never to be attained.—I must rebuke This drunkenness of triumph ere it die, And dying, bring despair. Victory! poor slaves! _930

[EXIT MAHMUD.]

VOICE WITHOUT: Shout in the jubilee of death! The Greeks Are as a brood of lions in the net Round which the kingly hunters of the earth Stand smiling. Anarchs, ye whose daily food Are curses, groans, and gold, the fruit of death, _935 From Thule to the girdle of the world, Come, feast! the board groans with the flesh of men; The cup is foaming with a nation’s blood, Famine and Thirst await! eat, drink, and die!

SEMICHORUS 1: Victorious Wrong, with vulture scream, _940 Salutes the rising sun, pursues the flying day! I saw her, ghastly as a tyrant’s dream, Perch on the trembling pyramid of night, Beneath which earth and all her realms pavilioned lay In visions of the dawning undelight. _945 Who shall impede her flight? Who rob her of her prey?

VOICE WITHOUT: Victory! Victory! Russia’s famished eagles Dare not to prey beneath the crescent’s light. Impale the remnant of the Greeks! despoil! _950 Violate! make their flesh cheaper than dust!

SEMICHORUS 2: Thou voice which art The herald of the ill in splendour hid! Thou echo of the hollow heart Of monarchy, bear me to thine abode _955 When desolation flashes o’er a world destroyed: Oh, bear me to those isles of jagged cloud Which float like mountains on the earthquake, mid The momentary oceans of the lightning, Or to some toppling promontory proud _960 Of solid tempest whose black pyramid, Riven, overhangs the founts intensely bright’ning Of those dawn-tinted deluges of fire Before their waves expire, When heaven and earth are light, and only light _965 In the thunder-night!

NOTE: _958 earthquake edition 1822; earthquakes editions 1839.

VOICE WITHOUT: Victory! Victory! Austria, Russia, England, And that tame serpent, that poor shadow, France, Cry peace, and that means death when monarchs speak. Ho, there! bring torches, sharpen those red stakes, _970 These chains are light, fitter for slaves and poisoners Than Greeks. Kill! plunder! burn! let none remain.

SEMICHORUS 1: Alas! for Liberty! If numbers, wealth, or unfulfilling years, Or fate, can quell the free! _975 Alas! for Virtue, when Torments, or contumely, or the sneers Of erring judging men Can break the heart where it abides. Alas! if Love, whose smile makes this obscure world splendid, _980 Can change with its false times and tides, Like hope and terror,— Alas for Love! And Truth, who wanderest lone and unbefriended, If thou canst veil thy lie-consuming mirror _985 Before the dazzled eyes of Error, Alas for thee! Image of the Above.