A life of unconsumed thought, which pierces
The present and the past, and the to-come
Some say that this is he whom the great prophet
Jesus, the son of Joseph, for his mockery,
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.

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 sun-set, 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

MAHMUD.

[A shout within.

CHORUS.

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,

169

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 blood-hounds 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 waters turned to blood, their dew to tears, Wailed for the golden years.

Enter MAHMUD, HASSAN, DAOOD, and others. MAHMUD.

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 rain. 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 of
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.

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—

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, Stooped through the sulphureous battle-smoke, 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.

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.

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,
In prey to famine, pest, and mutiny:
Holds our besieging army like a spell
He, bastioned in his citadel, looks forth
Joyless upon the sapphire lake that mirrors
The ruins of the city where he reigned
Childless and sceptreless. The Greck 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

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, llut 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—

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

Should mingle in tears with the bloody main; And my solemn thunder-knell

Should ring to the world the passing-bell Of tyranny!

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 I.

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

SEMICHORUS II.