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Percy Bysshe Shelley - Hellas: A Lyrical Drama
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MANTIS EIM ESQLWN AGWNWN
--Oedip. Colon.

TO HIS EXCELLENCY PRINCE ALEXANDER MAVROCORDATO LATE SECRETARY FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS TO THE HOSPODAR OF WALLACHIA THE DRAMA OF HELLAS IS INSCRIBED AS AN IMPERFECT TOKEN OF THE ADMIRATION, SYMPATHY, AND FRIENDSHIP OF THE AUTHOR. 

PROLOGUE TO HELLAS
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
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
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
Is yet withheld, clothèd 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
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
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...

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
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
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,
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,
The unaccomplished destiny...

Chorus.

The curtain of the Universe
  Is rent and shattered,
The splendour-wingèd worlds disperse
  Like wild doves scattered.

    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.
  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
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...
  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—
  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
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,
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,
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—
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,
Thy irrevocable child: let her descend,
A seraph-wingèd Victory [arrayed]
In tempest of the omnipotence of God
Which sweeps through all things.

From hollow leagues, from Tyranny which arms
Adverse miscreeds and emulous anarchies
To stamp, as on a wingèd 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
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
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,
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
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
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 sends thee forth, whate`er thy task,
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
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 wingèd hounds, Famine and Pestilence,
Shall wait on thee, the hundred-forkèd snake
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
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.
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!
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.
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
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
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.
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
       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,
    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;
  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.


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,
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.
    Breathe low—low
The words which, like secret fire, shall flow
Through the veins of the frozen earth—low, low!


Semichorus I.
Life may change, but it may fly not;
Hope may vanish, but can die not;
Truth be veiled, but still it burneth;
Love repulsed,—but it returneth!


Semichorus II.
Yet were life a charnel where
Hope lay coffined with Despair;
Yet were truth a sacred lie,
Love were lust—


Semichorus I.
                  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.


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,
  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,
  The springing Fire.—The wingèd glory
On Philippi half-alighted,
  Like an eagle on a promontory.
Its unwearied wings could fan
The 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,
Reassuming fiery flight,
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
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.


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
  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;
  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,
A Desert, or a Paradise:
  Let the beautiful and the brave
  Share her glory, or a grave.


Semichorus I.
With the gifts of gladness
  Greece did thy cradle strew;


Semichorus II.
With the tears of sadness
  Greece did thy shroud bedew!


Semichorus I.
With an orphan`s affection
  She followed thy bier through Time;


Semichorus II.
And at thy resurrection
  Reappeareth, like thou, sublime!


Semichorus I.
If Heaven should resume thee,
  To Heaven shall her spirit ascend;


Semichorus II.
If Hell should entomb thee,
  To Hell shall her high hearts bend.


Semichorus I.
If Annihilation—


Semichorus II.
  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!
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?
`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
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,
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,
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
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
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
To the winter wind:—but from his eye looks forth
A life of unconsumèd 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,
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
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
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
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,
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
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
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
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!
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.
Kings 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 ever
  From creation to decay,
Like the bubbles on a river
  Sparkling, bursting, borne away.
    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
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.


  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
    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;
    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
    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
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,
    Dispeopled of their dreams,
Their watèrs 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
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[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 sicklemen
Is as a grain to each.


Mahmud.
                        Then, take this signet,
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;
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!
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 cursèd 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 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,
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-wingèd cities of the sea,
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
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 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 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
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 from 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:
The Spirit that lifts the slave before his lord
Stalks through the capitals of armèd 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 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—


Hassan.
                       Ibrahim`s scimitar
Drew with its gleam swift victory from Heaven,
To burn before him in the night of battle—
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.
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
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,
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,
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 hyaenas 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 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;—
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 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 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,
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-wingèd 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—


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:
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
Chased by the wind, flies the insurgent banner!
Our wingèd 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!
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.


Hassan.
Latmos, and Ampelos, and Phanae saw
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:
Interpret thou their voice!


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.
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 crystàlline 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 wrapped
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 abhorrèd 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
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,
Stooped through the sulphurous battle-smoke and perched
Each on the weltering carcase that we loved,
Like its ill angel or its damnèd 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,
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 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.—


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!
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