Of Mahmud; but like hounds of a base breed,
Gorge from a stranger's hand, and rend their master.
nassax.
Latmos, and Ampelos, and Phanae, saw
The wreck—
at AB atton.

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 then-
Thou darest to speak—senseless are the mountains;
Interpret thou their voice!

riassax.
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
Dash'd :—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 destroy'd 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 abhorr'd cross glimmer'd 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 beacond, 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 perish'd :
We met the vultures legion'd in the air,
Stemming the torrent of the tainted wind :
They, screaming from their cloudy mountain peak
Stoop'd through the sulphureous battle-smoke, and
perch'd -

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 unet night three hours to the west of Patmos,
And with night, tempest—

M. Essex Grott. Your Sublime Highness. That Christian hound, the Muscovite ambassador, Has left the city. If the rebel fleet Had anchord in the port, had victory Crown'd 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.m.An at Un. Is the grave not calmer still" Its ruins shall be mine. in Assax. 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 MEssexg Ea.

second Messex GEa. Nauplia, Tripolizzi, Mothon, Athens, Navarin, Artas, Mowen basia, Corinth and Thebes are carried by assault; And every Islamite who made his dogs Fat with the flesh of Galilean slaves, Pass'd at the edge of the sword: the lust of blood Which made our warriors drunk, is quench d in death But like a fiery plague breaks out anew, In deeds which makes 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 wither'd might, Holds our besieging army like a spell In prey to famine, pest, and mutiny: He, bastion'd in his citadel, looks forth Joyless upon the sapphire lake that mirrors The ruins of the city where he reign'd Childless and sceptreless. The Greek has reap'd The costly harvest his own blood matured,

'A Greek who had been Lord Byron's servant commanded the insurgents in Attica. This Greek, Lord Byron informs me, though a poet and an enthusiastic patriot, gave him rather the idea of a timid and uneaterprising person. It appears that circumstances make men what they are, and that we all contain the term efs degree of degradation or of greatness, whose connexion with our character is determined by events.

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

Fnter a Thiad Mess ENGER.

An A H M Ud.
What more 1
Th If D MESSENGErt.
The Cliristian tribes

Of Lebanon and the Syrian wilderness
Are in revolt;-Damascus, Hems, Aleppo,
Tremble;—the Arab menaces Medina;
The Ethiop has intrench d himself in Sennaar,
And keeps the Egyptian rebel well employ'd :
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 prophecyings horrible and new
Are heard among the crowd; that sea of men
Sleeps on the wrecks it made, breathless and still.
A Dervise, learn'd 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 blazon'd broadly on the noon-day sky;
One saw a red cross stamp'd upon the sun;
It has rain'd blood; and monstrous births declare
The 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 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
Ilave sicken'd, and—

M.A. ii Mud. And thou, pale ghost, dim chadow Of some untimely rumour, speak | Fou fath at ESSENGER. One comes Fainting with toil, cover'd with foam and blood; He stood, he says, upon Clelonites 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 unveil'd or hid Her boundless light, he saw two adverse fleets Stalk through the night in the horizon's glimmer, It is reported that this Messiah had arrived at a sea-port near Lacedaemon in an American brig. The association of names and

ideas is irresistibly ludicrous, but the prevalence of such a rumour strongly marks the state of popular enthusiasm in Greece.

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 Sirocco
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 dream'd 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—

Enter an ATTEND ANT. At TEN DANT.

Your Sublime Highness, The Jew, who——

MAHM oup. Could not come more seasonably: Bid him attend. I'll hear no more! too long We gaze on danger through the mist of fear, And multiply upon our shatter'd hopes The images of ruin. Come what will To-morrow and to-morrow are as lamps Set in our path to light us to the edge Through rough and smooth ; nor can we suffer aught Which he intlicts not in whose hand we are. [Exeunt. SEMichon US 1. Would I were the winged cloud Of a tempest swift and loud 1 I would scorn The smile of morn, And the wave where the moon-rise is born 1 I would leave The spirits of eve A shroud for the corpse of the day to weave From others' threads than mine ! Bask in the blue noon divine Who would, not I. SEMicho Rus ri. Whither to fly spoil cil on us 1. Where the rocks that gird the AEgean Echo to the battle paran Of the free— I would flee A tempestuous herald of victory! My golden rain For the Grecian slain

| Should mingle in tears with the bloody main;

And my solemn thunder-knell Should ring to the world the passing-bell Of tyranny! sf: Michorus il. Ah king ! wilt thou chain The 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 stamp'd these limbs with crime, These brows thy branding garland bear; But the free heart, the impassive soul, Scorn thy control!

semichorus r. Let there he light! said Liberty; And like sunrise from the sea, Athens arose 1–Around her born, Shone, like mountains in the morn, Glorious states;–and are they now Ashes, wrecks, oblivion ?

semiciion US 11. Go Where Therma, and Asopus swallow'd Persia, as the sand does foam, Deluge upon deluge follow'd, Discord, Macedon, and Rome: And, lastly, thou!

sexiction us 1. Temples and towers, Citadels and marts, and they Who live and die there, have been ours, And may be thine, and must decay; But Greece and her foundations are Built below the tide of war, Based on the crystalline sea Of thought and its eternity; Her citizens' imperial spirits Rule the present from the past; On all this world of men inherits Their seal is set. SEMichon Us il. Hear ye the blast, Whose Orphic thunder thrilling calls From ruin her Titanian walls? Whose spirit shakes the sapless bones Of Slavery? Argos, Corinth, Crete, Hear, and from their mountain thrones The daemons and the nymphs repeat The harmony. sexti chorus I. I hear ! I hear! sewitch onus it. The world's eyeless charioteer, Destiny, is hurrying by : What faith is crush'd, what empire bleeds Beneath her earthquake-footed steeds? what eagle-winged victory sits At her right hand? what shadow slits Before? what splendour rolls behind Ruin and Renovation cry, Who but we ? semilchorus i. 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 calling Mercy! Mercy —How they thrill Then a shout of w Kill! kill ! kill!n And then a small still voice, thus—

sexiichorus 11. For Revenge and wrong bring forth their kind, The foul cubs like their parents are, Their den is in their guilty mind, And Conscience feeds them with despair.

sEMictionus r. In sacred Athens, near the fane of 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 Man Mud and Anasu Eats.

MA in Mui). Thou art a man, thousagest, even as weAhasuerus. No more MAthmud.

But raised above thy fellow-men

By thought, as I by power. AHAsu enus. Thou sayest so. MAumud. Thou art an adept in the difficult lore Of Greek and Frank philosophy; thou numb-rest The slowers, 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 Northou, 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. Ahasuen us. Disdain thee?—not the worm beneath my feet! The Fathomless has care for meaner things Than thou canst dream, and has made pride for thoWho 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 undying. Earth and ocean, Space, and the isles of life or light that gen The sapphire floods of interstellar air, This firmament pavilion'd upon chaos, With all its cressets of immortal fire, Whose outwalls, bastion'd 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 flower. 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. MARMud.

What meanest thout thy words stream like a tomp-st 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.
All Ast Etius.
Mistake me not! All is contain'd 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
To do with time, or place, or circumstance?
Wouldst thou behold the future?—ask and have '
Knock and it shall be open'd—look, and lo!
The coming age is shadow'd on the past
As on a glass.
MAdMud.
Wild, wilder thoughts convulse
My spirit—Did not Mahomet the Second
Win Stamboul ?
AHAsy Emus.
Thou wouldst ask that giant spirit
The written fortunes of thy house and faith.
Thou wouldst cite one out of the grave to tell
How what was born in blood must die.
MAnniuin.

Thy words Have power on me! I see—

' For the vision of Mahmud of the taking of Constantinople in * {{5, see Ginnox's Decline and Full of the stoman Empire, vol. xii, p. 213.

The manner of the invocation of the spirit of Mahomet the Socond will be censured as overdrawn. I could easily have made the jew a regular conjuror, and the phantom an ordinary ghost. I have preferred to represent the jew as disclaiming all pretension, or even belies, in supernatural agency, and as tempting Mahmud to that state of mind in which ideas may he supposed to assume the force of sensations, through the confusion of thought with the objects of thought, and the excess of passion animating the creatious of imagnation.

it is a sort of natural magic, susceptible of being exercised in a degree by auy one who should have made himself master of the secret associations of another's thoughts.

The mingled battle-cry—ha! hear I not Ew routó, wizn. Allah, Illah, Allah! An Asuraus. The sulphureous mist is raised—thou see'st— MAHMud. A chasm, As of two mountains, in the wall of Stamhoul; And in that ghastly breach the Islamites, Like giants on the ruins of a world, Stand in the light of sunrise. In the dust Glimmers a kingless diadem, and one of regal port has cast himself beneath The stream of war. Another, proudly clad In golden arms, spurs a Tartarian barb Into the gap, and with his iron mace Directs the torrent of that tide of men, And seems—he is—-Mahonet. AHAsue. It Us. What thou seest Is but the ghost of thy forgotten dream; A dream itself, yet less, perhaps, than that Thou call'st reality. Thou mayst behold How cities, on which empire sleeps enthroned, Bow their tower'd crests to mutability. Poised by the flood, een on the height thou holdest, Thou mayst now learn how the full tide of power Ebbs to its depths.-Inheritor of glory, Conceived in darkness, born in blood, and nourish'd With tears and toil, thou seest the mortal throes Of that whose birth was but the same. The Past Now stands before thee like an Incarnation Of the To-come; yet wouldst thou commune with That portion of thyself which was ere thou Didst start for this brief race whose crown is death ; Dissolve with that strong faith and fervent passion Which call'd it from the uncreated deep, Yon cloud of war, with its tempestuous phantoms Of raging death; and draw with mighty will The imperial shade hither. [Exit Ah Asuraus. MAHMud. Approach ph Antoni. I come Thence whither thou must go! The grave is fitter To 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 fell When I arose, like shapeless crags and clouds, Hang round my throne on the abyss, and voices Of 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 strip The foliage in which Fame, the eagle, built sler aery, while Dominion whelp'd below. The storm is in its branches, and the frost Is on its leaves, and the blank deep expects Oblivion on oblivion, spoil on spoil, Ruin on ruin : thou art slow, my son; The anarchs of the world of darkness keep A throne for thee, round which thine empire lics Boundless and mute; and for thy subjects thou, Like us, shall rule the ghosts of murder'd 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 together, Over its ruins in the world of death :— And if the trunk be dry, yet shall the seed Unfold itself even in the shape of that Which gathers birth in its decay. Woe! woe! To the weak people tangled in the grasp Of its last spasms. MAdMud. Spirit, woe to all! Woe to the wrong'd and the avenger! Woe To the destroyer, woe to the destroy'd : Woe to the dupe, and woe to the deceiver! Woe to the oppress'd, 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 accomplish Her consummation? ph A.N.Toni. Ask the cold pale Hour, Rich in reversion of impending death, When he shall fall upon whose ripe grey hairs Sit care, and sorrow, and infirmity— The weight which crime, whose wings are plumed with years, Leaves in his flight from ravaged heart to heart Over the heads of men, under which burthen They bow themselves unto the grave; fond wretch! He leans upon his crutch, and talks of years To come, and how in hours of youth renew'd He will renew lost joys, and—— voice without". Victory! victory! [The phantom vanishes. MAHMUD. What sound of the importunate earth has broken My mighty trance? voice without. Victory! victory ! MA fixi Ud. Wenk lightning before darkness! poor faint smile Of dying Islam! Voice which art the response Of hollow weakness! Do I wake and live? Were there such things? or may the unquiet brain, Wex'd 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 dream, Possess, or lose, or grasp at, can be worth More than it gives or teaches. Come what may, The future must become the past, and I As they were to whom once this present hour, This gloomy crag of time to which I cling, Seem'd an Elysian isle of peace and joy Never to be attain'd.—I must rebuke This drunkenness of triumph ere it die, And dying, bring despair.—Victory!—poor slaves! [Exit MAHMud. voice without. i Shout in the jubilee of death ! The Greeks Are as a brood of lions in the net, Round which the kingly hunters of the earth Stand smiling. Anarchs, ye whose daily food Are curses, groans, and gold, the fruit of deat From Thule to the girdle of the world, Come, feast! the board groans with th

The cup is foaming with a nation's blood,
Famine and thirst await:—eat, drink, and die!
sexiichonus i.
Victorious Wrong, with vulture scream,
Salutes the risen 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 pavilion'd sy
In visions of the dawning undelight.
Who shall impede her flight?
Who rob her of her prey?
voice withouT.
Victory! victory' Russia's famish'd eagles
Dare not to prey beneath the crescent's light.
impale the remnant of the Greeks' despoil
Violate make their flesh cheaper than dust!
seat icuo Rus it.
Thou voice which art
The herald of the ill in splendour hid t
Thou echo of the hollow heart
Of monarchy, bear me to thine abode
When desolation flashes o'er a world destroyd.
Oh bear me to those isles of jagged cloud
Which floatlike mountains on the earthquakes, usu
The momentary oceans of the lightning;
Or to some toppling promontory proud
Of solid tempest, whose black pyramid,
Riven, overhangs the founts intensely brightering
Of those dawn-tinted deluges of fire
Before their waves expire,
When heaven and earth are light, and only light
In 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 poisoners
Than Greeks. Kill! plunder! burn let none remain.
sexitch on us 1.
Alas for Liberty!
If numbers, wealth, or unfulfilling years,
Or fate, can quell the free;
Alas for Wirtue! when
Torments, or contumely, or the sncers
Of erring judging men
Can break the heart where it abides.
Alas! if Love, whose smile makes this obscure more
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 mirror
Before the dazzled eyes of error.
Alas for thee! Image of the above.

se:Micholaus it. Repulse, with plumes from conquest torn, Led the ten thousand from the limits of the morn Through 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 become The wonder, or the terror, or the tomb whose step wakes power lull'd in her savage lair. Greece was as a hermit child,