Hellas (1822)/Hellas: A Lyrical Drama

by Percy Bysshe Shelley

HELLAS

A LYRICAL DRAMA.

 

Scene, a Terrace on the Seraglio.

Mahmud (sleeping), an Indian Slave sitting beside his Couch.

CHORUS OF GREEK CAPTIVE WOMEN.We strew these opiate flowersOn thy restless pillow,—They were stript from Orient bowers,By the Indian billow.Be thy sleepCalm and deep,Like their's who fell—not ours who weep!

INDIAN.Away, unlovely dreams!Away, false shapes of sleep!Be his, as Heaven seems,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 ladenWith the soul of slumber;It was sung by a Samian maiden,Whose lover was of the numberWho now keepThat calm sleepWhence none may wake, where none shall weep.

INDIAN.I touch thy temples pale!I breathe my soul on thee!And could my prayers avail,All my joy should beDead, and I would live to weep,So thou might'st win one hour of quiet sleep.

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

SEMICHORUS 1st.Life may change, but it may fly not;Hope may vanish, but can die not;Truth be veil'd, but still it burneth;Love repulsed,—but it returneth!

SEMICHORUS 2d.Yet were life a charnel whereHope lay coffin'd with Despair;Yet were truth a sacred lie,Love were lust—

SEMICHORUS 1st.If LibertyLent 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.

CHORUS.In the great morning of the world,The spirit of God with might unfurl'dThe flag of Freedom over Chaos,And all its banded anarchs fled,Like vultures frighted from Imaus,Before an earthquake’s tread.—So from Time’s tempestuous dawnFreedom’s splendour burst and shone:—Thermopylæ and Marathon Caught like mountains beacon-lighted,The springing Fire.—The winged gloryOn Philippi half-alighted,Like an eagle on a promontory.Its unwearied wings could fanThe quenchless ashes of Milan. (¹)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,Re-assuming fiery flight,From the West swift Freedom came,Against the course of Heaven and doom,A second sun array'd in flame,To burn, to kindle, to illume.From far Atlantis its young beams Chased the shadows and the dreamsFrance, with all her sanguine steams,Hid, but quench'd it not; againThrough clouds its shafts of glory rainFrom utmost Germany to Spain.As an eagle fed with morningScorns the embattled tempests warning,When she seeks her aiëry hangingIn the mountain-cedar’s hair,And her brood expect the clangingOf her wings through the wild air, Sick with famine:—Freedom, soTo what of Greece remaineth nowReturns; her hoary ruins glowLike Orient mountains lost in day;Beneath the safety of her wingsHer renovated nurselings prey,And in the naked lightningsOf truth they purge their dazzled eyes.Let Freedom leave—where’er she flies,A Desart, or a Paradise:Let the beautiful and the braveShare her glory, or a grave.

SEMICHORUS 1st.With the gifts of gladnessGreece did thy cradle strew;

SEMICHORUS 2d.With the tears of sadnessGreece did thy shroud bedew!

SEMICHORUS 1st.With an orphan’s affectionShe followed thy bier through Time;

SEMICHORUS 2d.And at thy resurrectionRe-appeareth, like thou, sublime!

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

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

SEMICHORUS 1st.If Annihilation—

SEMICHORUS 2d.Dust let her glories be!And a name and a nationBe forgotten, Freedom, with thee!

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

Mahmud (starting from his sleep.)Man the Seraglio-guard! make fast the gate.What! from a cannonade of three short hours?'Tis false! that breach towards the BosphorusCannot be practicable yet—who stirs?Stand to the match; that when the foe prevailsOne spark may mix in reconciling ruinThe conqueror and the conquered! Heave the tower Into the gap—wrench off the roof!(Enter Hassan.)Ha! what!The truth of day lightens upon my dreamAnd I am Mahmud still.

Hassan.Your Sublime HighnessIs strangely moved.

Mahmud.The times do cast strange shadowsOn those who watch and who must rule their course.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 meAs thus from sleep into the troubled day;It shakes me as the tempest shakes the sea,Leaving no figure upon memory's glass.Would that—no matter. Thou didst say thou knewestA Jew, whose spirit is a chronicleOf strange and secret and forgotten things.I bade thee summon him:—'tis said his tribeDream, and are wise interpreters of dreams.

Hassan.The Jew of whom I spake is old,—so oldHe seems to have outlived a world's decay;The hoary mountains and the wrinkled oceanSeem younger still than he;—his hair and beardAre whiter than the tempest-sifted snow;His cold pale limbs and pulseless arteriesAre like the fibres of a cloud instinct With light, and to the soul that quickens themAre as the atoms of the mountain-drift To the winter wind:—but from his eye looks forthA life of unconsumed thought which piercesThe present, and the past, and the to-come.Some say that this is he whom the great prophetJesus, the son of Joseph, for his mockery Mocked with the curse of immortality.Some feign that he is Enoch: others dreamHe was pre-adamite and has survivedCycles of generation and of ruin.The sage, in truth, by dreadful abstinence And conquering penance of the mutinous flesh,Deep contemplation, and unwearied study,In years outstretch'd beyond the date of man,May have attained to sovereignty and scienceOver those strong and secret things and thoughts Which others fear and know not.

Mahmud.I would talkWith this old Jew.

Hassan.Thy will is even nowMade known to him, where he dwells in a sea-cavern'Mid the Demonesi, less accessibleThan thou or God! He who would question him Must sail alone at sunset, where the streamOf 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, Green Erebinthus, quench the fiery shadowOf his gilt prow within the sapphire water,Then must the lonely helmsman cry aloudAhasuerus! and the caverns roundWill answer Ahasuerus! If his prayer Be granted, a faint meteor will ariseLighting him over Marmora, and a windWill rush out of the sighing pine-forest,And with the wind a storm of harmonyUnutterably sweet, and pilot him Through the soft twilight to the Bosphorus:Thence at the hour and place and circumstanceFit for the matter of their conferenceThe Jew appears. Few dare, and few who dareWin the desired communion—but that shout 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 summon'd—

Hassan.Will be here—

Mahmud.When the omnipotent hour to which are yokedHe, I, and all things shall compel—enough.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 The worship of the world, but no repose.(Exeunt severally.

Chorus. (²)Worlds on worlds are rolling everFrom creation to decay,Like the bubbles on a riverSparkling, bursting, borne away.But they are still immortalWho, through birth’s orient portalAnd death’s dark chasm hurrying to and fro,Clothe their unceasing flightIn the brief dust and lightGather'd 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 lastOn Death’s bare ribs had cast.

A power from the unknown God,A Promethean conqueror, came;Like a triumphal path he trodThe thorns of death and shame.A mortal shape to him Was like the vapour dimWhich the orient planet animates with light;Hell, Sin, and Slavery came,Like bloodhounds mild and tame,Nor prey'd, until their Lord had taken flight; The moon of MahometArose, and it shall set:While blazon'd as on Heaven’s immortal noonThe cross leads generations on.

Swift as the radiant shapes of sleep From one whose dreams are ParadiseFly, 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 Fled from the folding-star of Bethlehem: Apollo, Pan, and Love,And even Olympian JoveGrew weak, for killing Truth had glared on them;Our hills and seas and streams,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 JanizarsClamour for pay.

Mahmud.:Go! bid them pay themselvesWith Christian blood! Are there no Grecian virginsWhose shrieks and spasms and tears they may enjoy?No infidel children to impale on spears?No hoary priests after that Patriarch (³)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 sicklemenIs as a grain to each.

Mahmud.Then, take this signet, Unlock the seventh chamber in which lieThe 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; 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 nightMore glorious than the day which it usurp'd!O, faith in God! O, power on earth! O, wordOf the great prophet, whose o’ershadowing wingsDarken'd the thrones and idols of the West,Now bright!—For thy sake cursed be the hour,Even as a father by an evil child, When the Orient moon of Islam roll'd in triumphFrom Caucasus to White Ceraunia!Ruin above, and anarchy below;Terror without, and treachery within;The Chalice of destruction full, and allThirsting to drink; and who among us daresTo 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 limitsOf utmost Asia, irresistiblyThrong, like full clouds at the Sairocco's cry;But not like them to weep their strength in tears:They bear destroying lightning, and their stepWakes earthquake to consume and overwhelm,And reign in ruin. Phrygian Olympus,Tmolus, and Latmos, and Mycale, roughenWith horrent arms; and lofty ships even now,Like vapours anchor'd to a mountain's edge,Freighted with fire and whirlwind, wait at ScalaThe convoy of the ever-veering wind.Samos is drunk with blood;—the Greek has paidBrief victory with swift loss and long despair.The false Moldavian serfs fled fast and far,When the fierce shout of Allah-illa-Allah!Rose like the war-cry of the northern windWhich kills the sluggish clouds, and leaves a flockOf wild swans struggling with the naked storm.So were the lost Greeks on the Danube's day!If night is mute, yet the returning sunKindles the voices of the morning birds;Nor at thy bidding less exultingly Than birds rejoicing in the golden day,The Anarchies of Africa unleashTheir tempest-winged cities of the sea,To speak in thunder to the rebel world.Like sulphurous clouds, half-shattered by the storm,They sweep the pale Ægean, while the QueenOf Ocean, bound upon her island-throne,Far in the West sits mourning that her sonsWho frown on Freedom spare a smile for thee:Russia still hovers, as an eagle mightWithin a cloud, near which a kite and craneHang tangled in inextricable fight,To stoop upon the victor;—for she fearsThe name of Freedom, even as she hates thine.But recreant Austria loves thee as the GraveLoves Pestilence, and her slow dogs of war,Flesh'd with the chase, come up from Italy,And howl upon their limits; for they seeThe panther, Freedom, fled to her old cover,Amid seas and mountains, and a mightier broodCrouch 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?Our arsenals and our armories are full;Our forts defy assault; ten thousand cannonLie ranged upon the beach, and hour by hour Their earth-convulsing wheels affright the city;The galloping of fiery steeds makes paleThe Christian merchant; and the yellow JewHides 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 chivalrySweep;—the far flashing of their starry lancesReverberates the dying light of day.We have one God, one King, one Hope, one Law;But many-headed Insurrection standsDivided in itself, and soon must fall.

Mahmud.Proud words, when deeds come short, are seasonable:Look, Hassan, on yon crescent moon, emblazon'dUpon that shatter'd flag of fiery cloudWhich leads the rear of the departing day;Wan-emblem of an empire fading now!See how it trembles in the blood-red air,And like a mighty lamp whose oil is spentShrinks on the horizon’s edge, while, from above,One star with insolent and victorious lightHovers above its fall, and with keen beams,Like arrows through a fainting antelope,Strikes its weak form to death.

Hassan.Even as that moonRenews itself———

Mahmud.Shall we be not renew'd!Far other bark than our's were needed nowTo stem the torrent of descending time:The Spirit that lifts the slave before his lordStalks 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;And the inheritors of the earth, like beastsWhen earthquake is unleashed, with ideot fearCower in their kingly dens—as I do now.What were Defeat when Victory must appal?Or Danger, when Security looks pale?— How said the messenger—who, from the fortIslanded in the Danube, saw the battleOf Bucharest?—that—

Hassan.Ibrahim’s scymitarDrew with its gleam swift victory from heaven,To burn before him in the night of battle—A light and a destruction.

Mahmud.Ay! the dayWas our's: but how?———

Hassan.The light Wallachians,The Arnaut, Servian, and Albanian alliesFled from the glance of our artilleryAlmost before the thunderstone alit.One half the Grecian army made a bridgeOf safe and slow retreat, with Moslem dead;The other—

Mahmud.:Speak—tremble not.—

Hassan.IslandedBy victor myriads, formed in hollow squareWith rough and steadfast front, and thrice flung backThe deluge of our foaming cavalry;Thrice their keen wedge of battle pierced our lines.Our baffled army trembled like one manBefore a host, and gave them space; but soon,From the surrounding hills, the batteries blazed,Kneading them down with fire and iron rain:Yet none approached; till, like a field of cornUnder the hook of the swart sickleman,The band, intrench'd in mounds of Turkish dead, Grew weak and few.—Then said the Pacha, "Slaves,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;But I to them, and to myself, remainConstant:"—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,Should'st thou pursue; there we shall meet again."Then held his breath, and, after a brief spasm,The indignant spirit cast its mortal garmentAmong the slain—dead earth upon the earth!So these survivors, each by different ways,Some strange, all sudden, none dishonourable,Met in triumphant death; and when our armyClosed in, while yet wonder, and awe, and shame,Held back the base hyenas of the battleThat feed upon the dead and fly the living,One rose out of the chaos of the slain:And if it were a corpse which some dread spiritOf the old saviours of the land we ruleHad lifted in its anger wandering by;—Or if there burn'd within the dying manUnquenchable disdain of death, and faith Creating what it feign'd;—I cannot tell—But he cried, "Phantoms of the free, we come!Armies of the Eternal, ye who strikeTo dust the citadels of sanguine kings,And shake the souls throned on their stony hearts,And thaw their frostwork diadems like dew;—O ye who float around this clime, and weaveThe garment of the glory which it wears,Whose fame, though earth betray the dust it clasp'd,Lies sepulchred in monumental thought;—Progenitors of all that yet is great,Ascribe to your bright senate, O acceptIn your high ministrations, us, your sons—Us first, and the more glorious yet to come!And ye, weak conquerors! giants who look paleWhen the crush'd worm rebels beneath your tread,The vultures and the dogs, your pensioners tame,Are overgorged; but, like oppressors, stillThey crave the relic of Destruction's feast.The exhalations and the thirsty windsAre sick with blood; the dew is foul with death;Heaven's light is quench'd in slaughter: thus, where'erUpon your camps, cities, or towers, or fleets,The obscene birds the reeking remnants castOf these dead limbs,—upon your streams and mountains,Upon your fields, your gardens, and your house-tops, Where'er the winds shall creep, or the clouds fly,Or the dews fall, or the angry sun look downWith poison'd light—Famine and Pestilence,And Panic, shall wage war upon our side!Nature from all her boundaries is movedAgainst ye: Time has found ye light as foam.The Earth rebels; and Good and Evil stakeTheir empire o'er the unborn world of menOn this one cast;—but ere the die be thrown,The renovated genius of our race,Proud umpire of the impious game, descendsA seraph-winged Victory, bestridingThe tempest of the Omnipotence of God,Which sweeps all things to their appointed doom,And you to oblivion!"——— More he would have said,But—

Mahmud.Died—as thou shouldst ere thy lips had paintedTheir 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:A spirit not my own wrench'd me within,And I have spoken words I fear and hate;Yet would I die for—

Mahmud.Live! O live! outliveMe and this sinking empire. But the fleet—

Hassan.Alas!———

Mahmud.The fleet which, like a flock of cloudsChased 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 empireBefore their centuries of servile fear!Death is awake! Repulsed on the waters,They own no more the thunder-bearing bannerOf Mahmud; but, like hounds of a base breed,Gorge from a stranger's hand, and rend their master.

Hassan.Latmos, and Ampelos, and Phanæ, sawThe wreck—

Mahmud.The caves of the Icarian islesHold 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;Interpret thou their voice!

Hassan.My presence boreA part in that day's shame. The Grecian fleetBore down at day-break from the North, and hungAs multitudinous on the ocean line,As cranes upon the cloudless Thracian wind.Our squadron, convoying ten thousand men,Was stretching towards Nauplia when the battleWas kindled.—First through the hail of our artilleryThe agile Hydriote barks with press of sailDashed:—ship to ship, cannon to cannon, manTo man were grappled in the embrace of war,Inextricable but by death or victory.The tempest of the raging fight convulsedTo its chrystalline depths that stainless sea,And shook Heaven's roof of golden morning clouds,Poised on an hundred azure mountain-isles.In the brief trances of the artilleryOne cry from the destroy'd and the destroyerRose, and a cloud of desolation wraptThe unforeseen event, till the north windSprung from the sea, lifting the heavy veilOf battle-smoke—then victory—victory!For, as we thought, three frigates from AlgiersBore down from Naxos to our aid, but soon The abhorred cross glimmered behind, before,Among, around us; and that fatal signDried with its beams the strength in Moslem hearts,As the sun drinks the dew.—What more? We fled!—Our noonday path over the sanguine foamWas beacon'd,—and the glare struck the sun paleBy our consuming transports: the fierce lightMade all the shadows of our sails blood-red,And every countenance blank. Some ships lay feedingThe ravening fire, even to the water's level;Some were blown up; some, settling heavily,Sunk; and the shrieks of our companions diedUpon the wind, that bore us fast and far,Even after they were dead. Nine thousand perish'd!We met the vultures legion'd in the airStemming the torrent of the tainted wind;They, screaming from their cloudy mountain peaks,Stooped through the sulphurous battle-smoke and perch'dEach on the weltering carcase that we loved,Like its ill angel or its damned soul,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 caveTo dwell with war, with us, and with despair. We met night three hours to the west of Patmos,And with night, tempest———

Mahmud.Cease!

(Enter a Messenger.)

Messenger.Your Sublime Highness,That Christian hound, the Muscovite Ambassador,Has left the city.—If the rebel fleetHad anchor'd in the port, had victoryCrowned 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 peaceIn Stamboul.—

Mahmud.Is the grave not calmer still? Its ruins shall be mine.

Hassan.Fear not the Russian:The tiger leagues not with the stag at bayAgainst the hunter.—Cunning, base, and cruel,He crouches, watching till the spoil be won,And must be paid for his reserve in blood.After the war is fought, yield the sleek Russian That which thou can'st not keep, his deserved portionOf 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!

(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 dogsFat with the flesh of Galilean slavesPassed at the edge of the sword: the lust of bloodWhich made our warriors drunk, is quench'd in death;But like a fiery plague breaks out anewIn deeds which make the Christian cause look pale In its own light. The garrison of PatrasHas store but for ten days, nor is there hopeBut from the Briton: at once slave and tyrantHis wishes still are weaker than his fears,Or he would sell what faith may yet remainFrom the oaths broke in Genoa and in Norway;And if you buy him not, your treasuryIs empty even of promises—his own coin.The freedman of a western poet chief (⁴)Holds Attica with seven thousand rebels,And has beat back the Pacha of Negropont: The aged Ali sits in YaninaA crownless metaphor of empire:His name, that shadow of his withered might,Holds our besieging army like a spellIn prey to famine, pest, and mutiny;He, bastion'd in his citadel, looks forthJoyless upon the sapphire lake that mirrorsThe ruins of the city where he reignedChildless and sceptreless. The Greek has reap'dThe costly harvest his own blood matured,Not the sower, Ali—who has bought a truceFrom Ypsilanti with ten camel loadsOf Indian gold.

(Enter a Third Messenger.)

Mahmud.What more?

Third Messenger.The Christian tribesOf Lebanon and the Syrian wildernessAre in revolt;—Damascus, Hems, AleppoTremble;—the Arab menaces Medina,The Ethiop has intrench'd himself in Sennaar,And keeps the Egyptian rebel well employ'd,Who denies homage, claims investitureAs price of tardy aid. Persia demandsThe cities on the Tigris, and the GeorgiansRefuse their living tribute. Crete and Cyprus, Like mountain-twins that from each other's veinsCatch the volcano-fire and earthquake spasm,Shake in the general fever. Through the city,Like birds before a storm, the Santons shriek,And prophecyings horrible and newAre heard among the crowd: that sea of menSleeps on the wrecks it made, breathless and still.A Dervise, learned in the Koran, preachesThat it is written how the sins of IslamMust raise up a destroyer even now.The Greeks expect a Saviour from the West, (⁵)Who shall not come, men say, in clouds and glory,But in the omnipresence of that spiritIn which all live and are. Ominous signsAre blazon'd broadly on the noonday sky:One saw a red cross stamp'd upon the sun;It has rain'd blood; and monstrous births declareThe secret wrath of Nature and her Lord.The army encamp'd 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 timeCast on the mirror of the night. While yetThe fight hung balanced, there arose a stormWhich 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.The last news from the camp is, that a thousandHave sickened, and———

(Enter a Fourth Messenger.)

Mahmud.And thou, pale ghost, dim shadowOf some untimely rumour, speak!

Fourth Messenger.One comesFainting with toil, covered with foam and blood:He stood, he says, on Clelonite'sPromontory, which o'erlooks the isles that groanUnder the Briton's frown, and all their watersThen trembling in the splendour of the moon,When as the wandering clouds unveil'd or hidHer boundless light, he saw two adverse fleets Stalk through the night in the horizon's glimmer,Mingling fierce thunders and sulphureous gleams,And smoke which strangled every infant windThat soothed the silver clouds through the deep air.At length the battle slept, but the Sirocco Awoke, and drove his flock of thunder-cloudsOver the sea-horizon, blotting outAll objects—save that in the faint moon-glimpseHe saw, or dream'd he saw, the Turkish admiral And two the loftiest of our ships of war, With the bright image of that Queen of HeavenWho hid, perhaps, her face for grief, reversed;And the abhorred cross—

(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 longWe gaze on danger through the mist of fear,And multiply upon our shatter'd hopesThe images of ruin. Come what will!To-morrow and to-morrow are as lampsSet in our path to light us to the edgeThrough rough and smooth, nor can we suffer aughtWhich he inflicts not in whose hand we are.(Exeunt. 

Semichorus 1st.Would I were the winged cloudOf a tempest swift and loud!I would scornThe smile of mornAnd the wave where the moon rise is born! I would leaveThe spirits of eveA shroud for the corpse of the day to weaveFrom other threads than mine!Bask in the blue noon divine.Who would? Not I.

Semichorus 2d.Whither to fly?

Semichorus 1st.Where the rocks that gird th' Ægean Echo to the battle pæanOf the free—I would fleeA tempestuous herald of victory!My golden rainFor the Grecian slainShould mingle in tears with the bloody main,And my solemn thunder knellShould ring to the world the passing bellOf Tyranny!

Semichorus 2d.Ah king! wilt thou chainThe rack and the rain?Wilt thou fetter the lightning and hurricane?The storms are free,But we—

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 Scorn thy control!

Semichorus 1st.Let there be light! said Liberty,And like sunrise from the sea,Athens arose!—Around her born,Shone like mountains in the mornGlorious states;—and are they nowAshes, wrecks, oblivion?

Semichorus 2d.Go,Where Thermæ and Asopus swallow'dPersia, as the sand does foam.Deluge upon deluge follow'd, Discord, Macedon, and Rome:And lastly thou!

Semichorus 1st.Temples and towers,Citadels and marts, and theyWho live and die there, have been ours,And may be thine, and must decay; But Greece and her foundations areBuilt below the tide of war,Based on the crystalline seaOf thought and its eternity;Her citizens, imperial spirits,Rule the present from the past,On all this world of men inheritsTheir seal is set.

Semichorus 2d.Hear ye the blast,Whose Orphic thunder thrilling callsFrom ruin her Titanian walls?Whose spirit shakes the sapless bonesOf Slavery? Argos, Corinth, CreteHear, and from their mountain thronesThe dæmons and the nymphs repeatThe harmony.

Semichorus 1st.I hear! I hear!

Semichorus 2d.The world's eyeless charioteer,Destiny, is hurrying by!What faith is crushed, what empire bleedsBeneath her earthquake-footed steeds?What eagle-winged victory sitsAt her right hand? what shadow flits Before? what splendour rolls behind?Ruin and renovation cryWho but We?

Semichorus 1st.I hear! I hear!The hiss as of a rushing wind,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 callingMercy! mercy!—How they thrill!Then a shout of "kill! kill! kill!"And then a small still voice, thus—

Semichorus 2d.ForRevenge and wrong bring forth their kind,The foul cubs like their parents are,Their den is in the guilty mind,And Conscience feeds them with despair.

Semichorus 1st.In sacred Athens, near the faneOf Wisdom, Pity's altar stood:Serve not the unknown God in vain,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 menBy thought, as I by power.

Ahasuerus.Thou sayest so.

Mahmud.Thou art an adept in the difficult loreOf Greek and Frank philosophy; thou numberestThe flowers, and thou measurest the stars;Thou severest element from element;Thy spirit is present in the past, and seesThe birth of this old world through all its cyclesOf desolation and of loveliness,And when man was not, and how man becameThe monarch and the slave of this low sphere,And all its narrow circles—it is much—I honour thee, and would be what thou artWere I not what I am; but the unborn hour,Cradled in fear and hope, conflicting storms,Who shall unveil? Nor thou, nor I, nor anyMighty or wise. I apprehended not What thou hast taught me, but I now perceiveThat 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; Thou art as God, whom thou contemplatest.

Ahasuerus.Disdain thee?—not the worm beneath thy feet!The Fathomless has care for meaner thingsThan thou canst dream, and has made pride for thoseWho would be what they may not, or would seem That which they are not. Sultan! talk no moreOf thee and me, the future and the past;But look on that which cannot change—the OneThe unborn and the undying. Earth and ocean,Space, and the isles of life or light that gem The sapphire floods of interstellar air,This firmament pavilion'd upon chaos,With all its cressets of immortal fire,Whose outwall, bastioned impregnablyAgainst the escape of boldest thoughts, repels them As Calpe the Atlantic clouds—this WholeOf suns, and worlds, and men, and beasts, and flowers,With all the silent or tempestuous workingsBy which they have been, are, or cease to be,Is but a vision;—all that it inherits Are motes of a sick eye, bubbles and dreams;Thought is its cradle and its grave, nor lessThe Future and the past are idle shadowsOf thought's eternal flight—they have no being:Nought is but that which feels itself to be.

Mahmud.What meanest thou? Thy words stream like a tempestOf dazzling mist within my brain—they shakeThe earth on which I stand, and hang like nightOn Heaven above me. What can they avail?They cast on all things surest, brightest, best,Doubt, insecurity, astonishment.

Ahasuerus.Mistake me not! All is contained in each.Dodona's forest to an acorn's cupIs that which has been, or will be, to thatWhich is—the absent to the present. ThoughtAlone, and its quick elements, Will, Passion,Reason, Imagination, cannot die;They are, what that which they regard appears,The stuff whence mutability can weaveAll that it hath dominion o'er, worlds, worms,Empires, and superstitions. What has thoughtTo do with time, or place, or circumstance?Would'st thou behold the future?—ask and have! Knock and it shall be opened—look and, lo!The coming age is shadowed on the pastAs on a glass.

Mahmud.Wild, wilder thoughts convulseMy spirit—Did not Mahomet the SecondWin Stamboul?

Ahasuerus.Thou would'st ask that giant spiritThe written fortunes of thy house and faith.Thou would'st cite one out of the grave to tellHow what was born in blood must die.

Mahmud.Thy wordsHave power on me! I see ———

Ahasuerus.What hearest thou?

Mahmud.A far whisper———Terrible silence.

Ahasuerus.What succeeds?

Mahmud.The sound (⁶)As of the assault of an imperial city, The hiss of inextinguishable fire,The roar of giant cannon; the earthquakingFall of vast bastions and precipitous towers,The shock of crags shot from strange engin'ry,The clash of wheels, and clang of armed hoofs,And crash of brazen mail as of the wreckOf adamantine mountains—the mad blastOf trumpets, and the neigh of raging steeds,The shrieks of women whose thrill jars the blood,And one sweet laugh, most horrible to hear,As of a joyous infant waked and playingWith its dead mother's breast, and now more loudThe mingled battle-cry,—ha! hear I notΕν τουτῶ νικη. Allah-illa-Allah!

Ahasuerus.The sulphurous mist is raised—thou see'st—

Mahmud.A chasm,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 dustGlimmers a kingless diadem, and oneOf regal port has cast himself beneathThe stream of war. Another proudly cladIn golden arms spurs a Tartarian barb Into the gap, and with his iron maceDirects the torrent of that tide of men,And seems—he is—Mahomet!

Ahasuerus.What thou see'stIs but the ghost of thy forgotten dream.A dream itself, yet less, perhaps, than thatThou call'st reality. Thou may'st beholdHow cities, on which Empire sleeps enthroned,Bow their tower'd crests to mutability.Poised by the flood, e'en on the height thou holdest,Thou may'st now learn how the full tide of powerEbbs to its depths.—Inheritor of glory,Conceived in darkness, born in blood, and nourished With tears and toil, thou see'st the mortal throesOf that whose birth was but the same. The PastNow stands before thee like an IncarnationOf the To-come; yet would'st thou commune withThat portion of thyself which was ere thou Didst start for this brief race whose crown is death,Dissolve with that strong faith and fervent passionWhich called it from the uncreated deep,Yon cloud of war, with its tempestuous phantomsOf raging death; and draw with mighty willThe imperial shade hither.(Exit Ahasuerus. 

Mahmud.Approach!

Phantom.I comeThence whither thou must go! The grave is fitterTo take the living than give up the dead;Yet has thy faith prevail'd, and I am here.The heavy fragments of the power which fellWhen I arose, like shapeless crags and clouds,Hang round my throne on the abyss, and voicesOf strange lament soothe my supreme repose,Wailing for glory never to return.—A later Empire nods in its decay:The autumn of a greener faith is come,And wolfish change, like winter, howls to stripThe foliage in which Fame, the eagle, builtHer aiëry, while Dominion whelped below.The storm is in its branches, and the frostIs on its leaves, and the blank deep expectsOblivion on oblivion, spoil on spoil,Ruin on ruin:—Thou art slow, my son;The Anarchs of the world of darkness keepA throne for thee, round which thine empire liesBoundless 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!—Stript of their mortal strength, as thou of thine.Islam must fall, but we will reign togetherOver its ruins in the world of death:—And if the trunk be dry, yet shall the seedUnfold itself even in the shape of that Which gathers birth in its decay. Woe! woe!To the weak people tangled in the graspOf its last spasms.

Mahmud.Spirit, woe to all!Woe to the wronged and the avenger! WoeTo the destroyer, woe to the destroyed! 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, When, how, by whom, Destruction must accomplishHer consummation!

Phantom.Ask the cold pale Hour,Rich in reversion of impending death,When he shall fall upon whose ripe grey hairsSit Care, and Sorrow, and Infirmity— The weight which Crime, whose wings are plumed with years,Leaves in his flight from ravaged heart to heartOver the heads of men, under which burthenThey bow themselves unto the grave: fond wretch!He leans upon his crutch, and talks of yearsTo come, and how in hours of youth renewedHe will renew lost joys, and ———

Voice without,Victory! Victory!

(The Phantom vanishes. 

Mahmud.What sound of the importunate earth has brokenMy mighty trance?

Voice without,Victory! Victory!

Mahmud.Weak lightning before darkness! poor faint smile Of dying Islam! Voice which art the responseOf 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? It matters not!—for nought we see or dreamPossess, or lose, or grasp at, can be worthMore than it gives or teaches. Come what may The future must become the past, and IAs they were to whom once this present hour,This gloomy crag of time to which I cling,Seemed an Elysian isle of peace and joyNever to be attained.—I must rebukeThis drunkenness of triumph ere it die,And dying, bring despair. Victory! poor slaves! (Exit Mahmud. 

Voice without.Shout in the jubilee of death! The GreeksAre as a brood of lions in the netRound which the kingly hunters of the earthStand smiling. Anarchs, ye whose daily foodAre curses, groans, and gold, the fruit of death,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 1st.Victorious Wrong, with vulture scream,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 layIn visions of the dawning undelight.Who shall impede her flight?Who rob her of her prey?

Voice without.Victory! Victory! Russia's famish'd eaglesDare not to prey beneath the crescent's light.Impale the remnant of the Greeks! despoil!Violate! make their flesh cheaper than dust!

Semichorus 2d.Thou voice which artThe herald of the ill in splendour hid!Thou echo of the hollow heartOf monarchy, bear me to thine abode When desolation flashes o'er a world destroyed:Oh, bear me to those isles of jagged cloudWhich float like mountains on the earthquake, midThe momentary oceans of the lightning,Or to some toppling promontory proud Of solid tempest whose black pyramid,Riven, overhangs the founts intensely brightningOf those dawn-tinted deluges of fireBefore their waves expire,When heaven and earth are light, and only lightIn the thunder-night!

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, These chains are light, fitter for slaves and poisonersThan Greeks. Kill! plunder! burn! let none remain.

Semichorus 1st.Alas! for Liberty!If numbers, wealth, or unfulfilling years,Or fate, can quell the free!Alas! for Virtue, whenTorments, or contumely, or the sneersOf erring judging menCan break the heart where it abides.Alas! if Love, whose smile makes this obscure world splendid,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 mirrorBefore the dazzled eyes of Error,Alas for thee! Image of the Above.

Semichorus 2d.Repulse, with plumes from conquest torn,Led the ten thousand from the limits of the mornThrough many an hostile Anarchy!At length they wept aloud, and cried, "the Sea! the Sea!"Through exile, persecution, and despair,Rome was, and young Atlantis shall becomeThe wonder, or the terror, or the tomb Of all whose step wakes power lulled in her savage lair:But Greece was as a hermit child,Whose fairest thoughts and limbs were builtTo woman's growth, by dreams so mild,She knew not pain or guilt;And now, O Victory, blush! and Empire trembleWhen ye desert the free—If Greece must beA wreck, yet shall its fragments re-assemble,And build themselves again impregnablyIn a diviner clime,To Amphionic music on some Cape sublime,Which frowns above the idle foam of Time.

Semichorus 1st.Let the tyrants rule the desert they have made;Let the free possess the paradise they claim;Be the fortune of our fierce oppressors weighed With our ruin, our resistance, and our name!

Semichorus 2d.Our dead shall be the seed of their decay,Our survivors be the shadow of their pride,Our adversity a dream to pass away—Their dishonour a remembrance to abide!

Voice without.Victory! Victory! The bought Briton sendsThe keys of ocean to the Islamite.— Now shall the blazon of the cross be veil'd,And British skill directing Othman might,Thunder-strike rebel victory. Oh, keep holyThis jubilee of unrevenged blood—Kill! crush! despoil! Let not a Greek escape!

Semichorus 1st.Darkness has dawn'd in the EastOn the noon of time:The death-birds descend to their feast,From the hungry clime.Let Freedom and Peace flee farTo a sunnier strand,And follow Love's folding starTo the Evening land!

Semichorus 2d.The young moon has fedHer exhausted horn,With the sunset's fire:The weak day is dead,But the night is not born;And, like loveliness panting with wild desireWhile it trembles with fear and delight,Hesperus flies from awakening night,And pants in its beauty and speed with lightFast flashing, soft, and bright.Thou beacon of love! thou lamp of the free! Guide us far, far away,To climes where now veil'd by the ardour of dayThou art hiddenFrom waves on which weary noon,Faints in her summer swoon,Between Kingless continents sinless as Eden,Around mountains and islands inviolablyPrankt on the sapphire sea.

Semichorus 1st.Through the sunset of hope,Like the shapes of a dream,What Paradise islands of glory gleam!Beneath Heaven's cope,Their shadows more clear float by—The sound of their oceans, the light of their sky,The music and fragrance their solitudes breatheBurst, like morning on dream, or like Heaven on death,Through the walls of our prison;And Greece, which was dead, is arisen!

Chorus.The world's great age begins anew,(⁷)The golden years return,The earth doth like a snake renewHer winter weeds outworn:Heaven smiles, and faiths and empires gleam,Like wrecks of a dissolving dream.

A brighter Hellas rears its mountainsFrom waves serener far;A new Peneus rolls his fountainsAgainst the morning-star.Where fairer Tempes bloom, there sleepYoung Cyclads on a sunnier deep.A loftier Argos cleaves the main,Fraught with a later prize;Another Orpheus sings again,And loves, and weeps, and dies.A new Ulysses leaves once moreCalypso for his native shore.

O, write no more the tale of Troy,If earth Death's scroll must be!Nor mix with Laian rage the joyWhich dawns upon the free:Although a subtler Sphinx renewRiddles of death Thebes never knew.

Another Athens shall arise,And to remoter timeBequeath, like sunset to the skies,The splendour of its prime.And leave, if nought so bright may live,All earth can take or Heaven can give.

Saturn and Love their long repose (⁸)Shall burst,********** *****Not gold, not blood, their altar dowersBut votive tears and symbol flowers.

O cease! must hate and death return?Cease! must men kill and die?Cease! drain not to its dregs the urnOf bitter prophecy.The world is weary of the past,O might it die or rest at last!

 

THE END

 

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