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MAHMUD.

Then take this signet, Unlock the seventh chamber, in which lie The treasures of victorious Solyman. An empire's spoils 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.

Oh! miserable dawn, after a night
More glorious than the day which it usurped!
O, faith in God! O, power on earth! O, word
Of the great Prophet, whose overshadowing 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,

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
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
Of utmost Asia, irresistibly

Throng, like full clouds at the Scirocco's cry,
But not like them to weep their strength in tears;
They have destroying lightning, and their step
Wakes earthquake, to consume and overwhelm,
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
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!
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
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,
To speak in thunder to the rebel world.

Like sulphureous clouds half-shattered by the storm,
They sweep the pale Ægean, while the Queen
Of Ocean, bound upon her island throne,
Far in the West, sits mourning that her sons,
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
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
The panther Freedom fled to her old cover,
Amid seas and mountains, and a mightier brood
Crouch around. 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 assaults; 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
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
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.

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!
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,
Like arrows through a fainting antelope,
Strikes its weak form to death.

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Shall we be not renewed ! Far other bark than ours were needed now To stem the torrent of descending time: The spirit that lifts the slave before its 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; And the inheritors of 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 ? How said the messenger-who from the fort Islanded in the Danube, saw the battle Of Bucharest ?-that

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HASSAN.

The light Wallachians, The Arnaut, Servian, and Albanian allies, Fled from the glance of our artillery Almost before the thunder-stone alit; 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
The deluge of our foaming cavalry; [back
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,
Kneading them down with fire and iron rain.
Yet none approached; till, like a field of corn
Under the hook of the swart sickle-man,

The bands, intrenched 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 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."
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,
Met in triumphant death; and when our army
Closed in, while yet wonder, and awe, and shame
Held back the base hyenas of the battle
That 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 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
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,
And thaw their frost-work diadems like dew ;-
O ye who float around this clime, and weave
The garment of the glory which it wears;

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

Are sick with blood; the dew is foul with deathHeaven'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 moun-
tains,

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!
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,
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,
And you to oblivion!"-More he would have said,
But-

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Whose fame, though earth betray the dust it clasped, Latmos, and Ampelos, and Phanae, saw

Lies sepulchred in monumental thought;—
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
When the crushed worm rebels beneath your
tread-

The wreck

MAHMUD.

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

HASSAN.

My presence bore

A part in that day's shame. The Grecian fleet
Bore down at day-break from the North, and hung
As multitudinous on the ocean line

As cranes upon the cloudless Thracian wind.
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
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,
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 wrapt
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
The abhorred cross glimmered behind, before,
Among, around us; and that fatal sign
Dried with its beams the strength of Moslem hearts,
As the sun drinks the dew.-What more? We fled!
Our noonday path over the sanguine foam
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:
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,
Stemming the torrent of the tainted wind:
They, screaming from their cloudy mountain peaks,

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 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.
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!
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,

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
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;
And if you buy him not, your treasury
Is empty even of promises his own coin.
The freeman of a western poet chief
Holds Attica with seven thousand rebels,
And has beat back the Pacha of Negropont;
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 :

Stooped through the sulphureous battle-smoke, He, bastioned in his citadel, looks forth

and perched

Each 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-cave
To dwell with war, with us, and with despair.
We met night three hours to the west of Patmos,
As 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 fleet
Had anchored in the port, had victory
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.-

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,
Not the sower, Ali-who has bought a truce
From Ypsilanti, with ten camel-loads
Of Indian gold.

Enter a Third Messenger.

MAHMUD.

What more!

THIRD MESSENGER.

The Christian tribes

Of Lebanon and the Syrian wilderness
Are in revolt ;-Damascus, Hems, Aleppo,
Tremble;-the Arab menaces Medina ;
The Ethiop has intrenched himself in Sennaar,
And keeps the Egyptian rebel well employed,
Who denies homage, claims investiture
As price of tardy aid. Persia demands
The cities on the Tigris, and the Georgians
Refuse their living tribute. Crete and Cyprus,
Like mountain-twins that from each other's veins

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Catch the volcano-fire and earthquake spasm,
Shake in the general fever. Through the city,
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
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
In which all live and are. Ominous signs
Are blazoned broadly on the noon-day 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.
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
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.

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, upon Clelonit's
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
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 Scirocco
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,
With the bright image of that Queen of Heaven,
Who hid, perhaps, her face for grief, reversed ;
And the abhorred cross-

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Where Therma and Asopus swallowed
Persia, as the sand does foam.
Deluge upon deluge followed,
Discord, Macedon, and Rome:
And, lastly, thou!

SEMICHORUS I.

Temples and towers, Citadels and marts, and they Who live and die there, have been ours, And may be thine, and must decay;

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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
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.
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 apprehend not
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!
Thou art as God, whom thou contemplatest.

AHASUERUS.

Disdain thee?—not the worm beneath my 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
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
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
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
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 it feels itself to be.

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, 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
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, Empires, and superstitions. What has thought

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