The Revolt of Islam/Canto X

by Percy Bysshe Shelley

I.

  Was there a human spirit in the steed
  That thus with his proud voice, ere night was gone,
  He broke our linkèd rest? or do indeed
  All living things a common nature own,
  And thought erect an universal throne,
  Where many shapes one tribute ever bear?
  And Earth, their mutual mother, does she groan
  To see her sons contend? and makes she bare
Her breast that all in peace its drainless stores may share?

II.

  I have heard friendly sounds from many a tongue
  Which was not human; the lone nightingale
  Has answered me with her most soothing song,
  Out of her ivy bower, when I sate pale
  With grief, and sighed beneath; from many a dale
  The antelopes who flocked for food have spoken
  With happy sounds and motions that avail
  Like man's own speech; and such was now the token
Of waning night, whose calm by that proud neigh was broken.

III.

  Each night that mighty steed bore me abroad,
  And I returned with food to our retreat,
  And dark intelligence; the blood which flowed
  Over the fields had stained the courser's feet;
  Soon the dust drinks that bitter dew,—then meet
  The vulture, and the wild-dog, and the snake,
  The wolf, and the hyena gray, and eat
  The dead in horrid truce; their throngs did make
Behind the steed a chasm like waves in a ship's wake.

IV.

  For from the utmost realms of earth came pouring
  The banded slaves whom every despot sent
  At that throned traitor's summons; like the roaring
  Of fire, whose floods the wild deer circumvent
  In the scorched pastures of the south, so bent
  The armies of the leaguèd kings around
  Their files of steel and flame; the continent
  Trembled, as with a zone of ruin bound,
Beneath their feet—the sea shook with their Navies' sound.

V.

  From every nation of the earth they came,
  The multitude of moving heartless things,
  Whom slaves call men; obediently they came,
  Like sheep whom from the fold the shepherd brings
  To the stall, red with blood; their many kings
  Led them, thus erring, from their native land—
  Tartar and Frank, and millions whom the wings
  Of Indian breezes lull; and many a band
The Arctic Anarch sent, and Idumea's sand

VI.

  Fertile in prodigies and lies. So there
  Strange natures made a brotherhood of ill.
  The desert savage ceased to grasp in fear
  His Asian shield and bow when, at the will
  Of Europe's subtler son, the bolt would kill
  Some shepherd sitting on a rock secure;
  But smiles of wondering joy his face would fill,
  And savage sympathy; those slaves impure
Each one the other thus from ill to ill did lure.

VII.

  For traitorously did that foul Tyrant robe
  His countenance in lies; even at the hour
  When he was snatched from death, then o'er the globe,
  With secret signs from many a mountain tower,
  With smoke by day, and fire by night, the power
  Of Kings and Priests, those dark conspirators,
  He called; they knew his cause their own, and swore
  Like wolves and serpents to their mutual wars
Strange truce, with many a rite which Earth and Heaven abhors.

VIII.

  Myriads had come—millions were on their way;
  The Tyrant passed, surrounded by the steel
  Of hired assassins, through the public way,
  Choked with his country's dead; his footsteps reel
  On the fresh blood—he smiles. 'Ay, now I feel
  I am a King in truth!' he said, and took
  His royal seat, and bade the torturing wheel
  Be brought, and fire, and pincers, and the hook,
And scorpions, that his soul on its revenge might look.

IX.

 'But first, go slay the rebels—why return
  The victor bands?' he said, 'millions yet live,
  Of whom the weakest with one word might turn
  The scales of victory yet; let none survive
  But those within the walls—each fifth shall give
  The expiation for his brethren here.
  Go forth, and waste and kill!'—'O king, forgive
  My speech,' a soldier answered, 'but we fear
The spirits of the night, and morn is drawing near;

X.

 'For we were slaying still without remorse,
  And now that dreadful chief beneath my hand
  Defenceless lay, when on a hell-black horse
  An Angel bright as day, waving a brand
  Which flashed among the stars, passed.'—'Dost thou stand
  Parleying with me, thou wretch?' the king replied;
 'Slaves, bind him to the wheel; and of this band
  Whoso will drag that woman to his side
That scared him thus may burn his dearest foe beside;

XI.

 'And gold and glory shall be his. Go forth!'
  They rushed into the plain. Loud was the roar
  Of their career; the horsemen shook the earth;
  The wheeled artillery's speed the pavement tore;
  The infantry, file after file, did pour
  Their clouds on the utmost hills. Five days they slew
  Among the wasted fields; the sixth saw gore
  Stream through the City; on the seventh the dew
Of slaughter became stiff, and there was peace anew:

XII.

  Peace in the desert fields and villages,
  Between the glutted beasts and mangled dead!
  Peace in the silent streets! save when the cries
  Of victims, to their fiery judgment led,
  Made pale their voiceless lips who seemed to dread,
  Even in their dearest kindred, lest some tongue
  Be faithless to the fear yet unbetrayed;
  Peace in the Tyrant's palace, where the throng
Waste the triumphal hours in festival and song!

XIII.

  Day after day the burning Sun rolled on
  Over the death-polluted land. It came
  Out of the east like fire, and fiercely shone
  A lamp of autumn, ripening with its flame
  The few lone ears of corn; the sky became
  Stagnate with heat, so that each cloud and blast
  Languished and died; the thirsting air did claim
  All moisture, and a rotting vapor passed
From the unburied dead, invisible and fast.

XIV.

  First Want, then Plague, came on the beasts; their food
  Failed, and they drew the breath of its decay.
  Millions on millions, whom the scent of blood
  Had lured, or who from regions far away
  Had tracked the hosts in festival array,
  From their dark deserts, gaunt and wasting now
  Stalked like fell shades among their perished prey;
  In their green eyes a strange disease did glow—
They sank in hideous spasm, or pains severe and slow.

XV.

  The fish were poisoned in the streams; the birds
  In the green woods perished; the insect race
  Was withered up; the scattered flocks and herds
  Who had survived the wild beasts' hungry chase
  Died moaning, each upon the other's face
  In helpless agony gazing; round the City
  All night, the lean hyenas their sad case
  Like starving infants wailed—a woful ditty;
And many a mother wept, pierced with unnatural pity.

XVI.

  Amid the aërial minarets on high
  The Æthiopian vultures fluttering fell
  From their long line of brethren in the sky,
  Startling the concourse of mankind. Too well
  These signs the coming mischief did foretell.
  Strange panic first, a deep and sickening dread,
  Within each heart, like ice, did sink and dwell,
  A voiceless thought of evil, which did spread
With the quick glance of eyes, like withering lightnings shed.

XVII.

  Day after day, when the year wanes, the frosts
  Strip its green crown of leaves till all is bare;
  So on those strange and congregated hosts
  Came Famine, a swift shadow, and the air
  Groaned with the burden of a new despair;
  Famine, than whom Misrule no deadlier daughter
  Feeds from her thousand breasts, though sleeping there
  With lidless eyes lie Faith and Plague and Slaughter—
A ghastly brood conceived of Lethe's sullen water.

XVIII.

  There was no food; the corn was trampled down,
  The flocks and herds had perished; on the shore
  The dead and putrid fish were ever thrown;
  The deeps were foodless, and the winds no more
  Creaked with the weight of birds, but as before
  Those wingèd things sprang forth, were void of shade;
  The vines and orchards, autumn's golden store,
  Were burned; so that the meanest food was weighed
With gold, and avarice died before the god it made.

XIX.

  There was no corn—in the wide marketplace
  All loathliest things, even human flesh, was sold;
  They weighed it in small scales—and many a face
  Was fixed in eager horror then. His gold
  The miser brought; the tender maid, grown bold
  Through hunger, bared her scornèd charms in vain;
  The mother brought her eldest born, controlled
  By instinct blind as love, but turned again
And bade her infant suck, and died in silent pain.

XX.

  Then fell blue Plague upon the race of man.
 'Oh, for the sheathèd steel, so late which gave
  Oblivion to the dead when the streets ran
  With brothers' blood! Oh, that the earthquake's grave
  Would gape, or Ocean lift its stifling wave!'
  Vain cries—throughout the streets thousands pursued
  Each by his fiery torture howl and rave
  Or sit in frenzy's unimagined mood
Upon fresh heaps of dead—a ghastly multitude.

XXI.

  It was not hunger now, but thirst. Each well
  Was choked with rotting corpses, and became
  A cauldron of green mist made visible
  At sunrise. Thither still the myriads came,
  Seeking to quench the agony of the flame
  Which raged like poison through their bursting veins;
  Naked they were from torture, without shame,
  Spotted with nameless scars and lurid blains—
Childhood, and youth, and age, writhing in savage pains.

XXII.

  It was not thirst, but madness! Many saw
  Their own lean image everywhere—it went
  A ghastlier self beside them, till the awe
  Of that dread sight to self-destruction sent
  Those shrieking victims; some, ere life was spent,
  Sought, with a horrid sympathy, to shed
  Contagion on the sound; and others rent
  Their matted hair, and cried aloud, 'We tread
On fire! the avenging Power his hell on earth has spread.'

XXIII.

  Sometimes the living by the dead were hid.
  Near the great fountain in the public square,
  Where corpses made a crumbling pyramid
  Under the sun, was heard one stifled prayer
  For life, in the hot silence of the air;
  And strange 't was 'mid that hideous heap to see
  Some shrouded in their long and golden hair,
  As if not dead, but slumbering quietly,
Like forms which sculptors carve, then love to agony.

XXIV.

  Famine had spared the palace of the King;
  He rioted in festival the while,
  He and his guards and Priests; but Plague did fling
  One shadow upon all. Famine can smile
  On him who brings it food, and pass, with guile
  Of thankful falsehood, like a courtier gray,
  The house-dog of the throne; but many a mile
  Comes Plague, a wingèd wolf, who loathes alway
The garbage and the scum that strangers make her prey.

XXV.

  So, near the throne, amid the gorgeous feast,
  Sheathed in resplendent arms, or loosely dight
  To luxury, ere the mockery yet had ceased
  That lingered on his lips, the warrior's might
  Was loosened, and a new and ghastlier night
  In dreams of frenzy lapped his eyes; he fell
  Headlong, or with stiff eyeballs sate upright
  Among the guests, or raving mad did tell
Strange truths—a dying seer of dark oppression's hell.

XXVI.

  The Princes and the Priests were pale with terror;
  That monstrous faith wherewith they ruled mankind
  Fell, like a shaft loosed by the bowman's error,
  On their own hearts; they sought and they could find
  No refuge—'t was the blind who led the blind!
  So, through the desolate streets to the high fane,
  The many-tongued and endless armies wind
  In sad procession; each among the train
To his own idol lifts his supplications vain.

XXVII.

 'O God!' they cried, 'we know our secret pride
  Has scorned thee, and thy worship, and thy name;
  Secure in human power, we have defied
  Thy fearful might; we bend in fear and shame
  Before thy presence; with the dust we claim
  Kindred; be merciful, O King of Heaven!
  Most justly have we suffered for thy fame
  Made dim, but be at length our sins forgiven,
Ere to despair and death thy worshippers be driven!

XXVIII.

 'O King of Glory! Thou alone hast power!
  Who can resist thy will? who can restrain
  Thy wrath when on the guilty thou dost shower
  The shafts of thy revenge, a blistering rain?
  Greatest and best, be merciful again!
  Have we not stabbed thine enemies, and made
  The Earth an altar, and the Heavens a fane,
  Where thou wert worshipped with their blood, and laid
Those hearts in dust which would thy searchless works have weighed?

XXIX.

 'Well didst thou loosen on this impious City
  Thine angels of revenge! recall them now;
  Thy worshippers abased here kneel for pity,
  And bind their souls by an immortal vow.
  We swear by thee—and to our oath do thou
  Give sanction from thine hell of fiends and flame—
  That we will kill with fire and torments slow
  The last of those who mocked thy holy name
And scorned the sacred laws thy prophets did proclaim.'

XXX.

  Thus they with trembling limbs and pallid lips
  Worshipped their own hearts' image, dim and vast,
  Scared by the shade wherewith they would eclipse
  The light of other minds; troubled they passed
  From the great Temple; fiercely still and fast
  The arrows of the plague among them fell,
  And they on one another gazed aghast,
  And through the hosts contention wild befell,
As each of his own god the wondrous works did tell.

XXXI.

  And Oromaze, Joshua, and Mahomet,
  Moses, and Buddh, Zerdusht, and Brahm, and Foh,
  A tumult of strange names, which never met
  Before, as watchwords of a single woe,
  Arose; each raging votary 'gan to throw
  Aloft his armèd hands, and each did howl
 'Our God alone is God!' and slaughter now
  Would have gone forth, when from beneath a cowl
A voice came forth which pierced like ice through every soul.

XXXII.

 'T was an Iberian Priest from whom it came,
  A zealous man, who led the legioned West,
  With words which faith and pride had steeped in flame,
  To quell the unbelievers; a dire guest
  Even to his friends was he, for in his breast
  Did hate and guile lie watchful, intertwined,
  Twin serpents in one deep and winding nest;
  He loathed all faith beside his own, and pined
To wreak his fear of Heaven in vengeance on mankind.

XXXIII.

  But more he loathed and hated the clear light
  Of wisdom and free thought, and more did fear,
  Lest, kindled once, its beams might pierce the night,
  Even where his Idol stood; for far and near
  Did many a heart in Europe leap to hear
  That faith and tyranny were trampled down,—
  Many a pale victim, doomed for truth to share
  The murderer's cell, or see with helpless groan
The Priests his children drag for slaves to serve their own.

XXXIV.

  He dared not kill the infidels with fire
  Or steel, in Europe; the slow agonies
  Of legal torture mocked his keen desire;
  So he made truce with those who did despise
  The expiation and the sacrifice,
  That, though detested, Islam's kindred creed
  Might crush for him those deadlier enemies;
  For fear of God did in his bosom breed
A jealous hate of man, an unreposing need.

XXXV.

 'Peace! Peace!' he cried, 'when we are dead, the Day
  Of Judgment comes, and all shall surely know
  Whose God is God; each fearfully shall pay
  The errors of his faith in endless woe!
  But there is sent a mortal vengeance now
  On earth, because an impious race had spurned
  Him whom we all adore,—a subtle foe,
  By whom for ye this dread reward was earned,
And kingly thrones, which rest on faith, nigh overturned.

XXXVI.

 'Think ye, because ye weep and kneel and pray,
  That God will lull the pestilence? It rose
  Even from beneath his throne, where, many a day,
  His mercy soothed it to a dark repose;
  It walks upon the earth to judge his foes,
  And what art thou and I, that he should deign
  To curb his ghastly minister, or close
  The gates of death, ere they receive the twain
Who shook with mortal spells his undefended reign?

XXXVII.

 'Ay, there is famine in the gulf of hell,
  Its giant worms of fire forever yawn,—
  Their lurid eyes are on us! those who fell
  By the swift shafts of pestilence ere dawn
  Are in their jaws! they hunger for the spawn
  Of Satan, their own brethren, who were sent
  To make our souls their spoil. See, see! they fawn
  Like dogs, and they will sleep, with luxury spent,
When those detested hearts their iron fangs have rent!

XXXVIII.

 'Our God may then lull Pestilence to sleep.
  Pile high the pyre of expiation now!
  A forest's spoil of boughs; and on the heap
  Pour venomous gums, which sullenly and slow,
  When touched by flame, shall burn, and melt, and flow,
  A stream of clinging fire—and fix on high
  A net of iron, and spread forth below
  A couch of snakes, and scorpions, and the fry
Of centipedes and worms, earth's hellish progeny!

XXXIX.

 'Let Laon and Laone on that pyre,
  Linked tight with burning brass, perish!—then pray
  That with this sacrifice the withering ire
  Of Heaven may be appeased.' He ceased, and they
  A space stood silent, as far, far away
  The echoes of his voice among them died;
  And he knelt down upon the dust, alway
  Muttering the curses of his speechless pride,
Whilst shame, and fear, and awe, the armies did divide.

XL.

  His voice was like a blast that burst the portal
  Of fabled hell; and as he spake, each one
  Saw gape beneath the chasms of fire immortal,
  And Heaven above seemed cloven, where, on a throne
  Girt round with storms and shadows, sate alone
  Their King and Judge. Fear killed in every breast
  All natural pity then, a fear unknown
  Before, and with an inward fire possessed
They raged like homeless beasts whom burning woods invest.

XLI.

 'T was morn.—At noon the public crier went forth,
  Proclaiming through the living and the dead,—
 'The Monarch saith that his great empire's worth
  Is set on Laon and Laone's head;
  He who but one yet living here can lead,
  Or who the life from both their hearts can wring,
  Shall be the kingdom's heir—a glorious meed!
  But he who both alive can hither bring
The Princess shall espouse, and reign an equal King.'

XLII.

  Ere night the pyre was piled, the net of iron
  Was spread above, the fearful couch below;
  It overtopped the towers that did environ
  That spacious square; for Fear is never slow
  To build the thrones of Hate, her mate and foe;
  So she scourged forth the maniac multitude
  To rear this pyramid—tottering and slow,
  Plague-stricken, foodless, like lean herds pursued
By gadflies, they have piled the heath and gums and wood.

XLIII.

  Night came, a starless and a moonless gloom.
  Until the dawn, those hosts of many a nation
  Stood round that pile, as near one lover's tomb
  Two gentle sisters mourn their desolation;
  And in the silence of that expectation
  Was heard on high the reptiles' hiss and crawl—
  It was so deep, save when the devastation
  Of the swift pest with fearful interval,
Marking its path with shrieks, among the crowd would fall.

XLIV.

  Morn came.—Among those sleepless multitudes,
  Madness, and Fear, and Plague, and Famine, still
  Heaped corpse on corpse, as in autumnal woods
  The frosts of many a wind with dead leaves fill
  Earth's cold and sullen brooks; in silence still,
  The pale survivors stood; ere noon the fear
  Of Hell became a panic, which did kill
  Like hunger or disease, with whispers drear,
As 'Hush! hark! come they yet?—Just Heaven, thine hour is near!'

XLV.

  And Priests rushed through their ranks, some counterfeiting
  The rage they did inspire, some mad indeed
  With their own lies. They said their god was waiting
  To see his enemies writhe, and burn, and bleed,—
  And that, till then, the snakes of Hell had need
  Of human souls; three hundred furnaces
  Soon blazed through the wide City, where, with speed,
  Men brought their infidel kindred to appease
God's wrath, and, while they burned, knelt round on quivering knees.

XLVI.

  The noontide sun was darkened with that smoke;
  The winds of eve dispersed those ashes gray.
  The madness, which these rites had lulled, awoke
  Again at sunset. Who shall dare to say
  The deeds which night and fear brought forth, or weigh
  In balance just the good and evil there?
  He might man's deep and searchless heart display,
  And cast a light on those dim labyrinths where
Hope near imagined chasm is struggling with despair.

XLVII.

 'T is said a mother dragged three children then
  To those fierce flames which roast the eyes in the head,
  And laughed, and died; and that unholy men,
  Feasting like fiends upon the infidel dead,
  Looked from their meal, and saw an angel tread
  The visible floor of Heaven, and it was she!
  And, on that night, one without doubt or dread
  Came to the fire, and said, 'Stop, I am he!
Kill me!'—They burned them both with hellish mockery.

XLVIII.

  And, one by one, that night, young maidens came,
  Beauteous and calm, like shapes of living stone
  Clothed in the light of dreams, and by the flame,
  Which shrank as overgorged, they laid them down,
  And sung a low sweet song, of which alone
  One word was heard, and that was Liberty;
  And that some kissed their marble feet, with moan
  Like love, and died, and then that they did die
With happy smiles, which sunk in white tranquillity.