Selected Poems and Prose
Page 57
The English permit their own oppressors to act according to their natural sympathy with the Turkish tyrant, and to brand upon their name the indelible blot of an alliance with the enemies of domestic happiness, of Christianity and civilization.
Russia desires to possess not to liberate Greece, and is contented to see the Turks, its natural enemies, and the Greeks, its intended slaves, enfeeble each other until one or both fall into its net. The wise and generous policy of England would have consisted in establishing the independence of Greece, and in maintaining it both against Russia and the Turk;—but when was the oppressor generous or just?
Should the English people ever become free they will reflect upon the part which those who presume to represent their will, have played in the great drama of the revival of liberty, with feelings which it would become them to anticipate. This is the age of the war of the oppressed against the oppressors, and every one of those ringleaders of the privileged gangs of murderers and swindlers called Sovereigns, look to each other for aid against the common enemy, and suspend their mutual jealousies in the presence of a mightier fear. Of this holy alliance all the despots of the earth are virtual members. But a new race has arisen throughout Europe, nursed in the abhorrence of the opinions which are its chains, and she will continue to produce fresh generations to accomplish that destiny which tyrants foresee and dread.
The Spanish peninsula is already free. France is tranquil in the enjoyment of a partial exemption from the abuses which its unnatural and feeble government are vainly attempting to revive. The seed of blood and misery has been sown in Italy and a more vigorous race is arising to go forth to the harvest. The world waits only the news of a revolution of Germany to see the Tyrants who have pinnacled themselves on its supineness precipitated into the ruin from which they shall never arise. Well do these destroyers of mankind know their enemy when they impute the insurrection in Greece to the same spirit before which they tremble throughout the rest of Europe, and that enemy well knows the power and the cunning of its opponents, and watches the moment of their approaching weakness and inevitable division to wrest the bloody sceptre from their grasp.—
DRAMATIS PERSONAE
MAHMUD
HASSAN
DAOOD
AHASUERUS, a Jew
Chorus of Greek Captive Women
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 stript from Orient bowers,
By the Indian billow.
5 Be thy sleep
Calm and deep,
Like theirs who fell, not ours who weep!
Indian
Away, unlovely dreams!
Away, false shapes of sleep!
10 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
15 With the soul of slumber;
It was sung by a Samian maiden
Whose lover was of the number
Who now keep
That calm sleep
20Whence 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
25Dead, and I would live to weep,
So thou might’st win one hour of quiet sleep.
Chorus
Breathe low, low!
The spell of the mighty mistress now
When Conscience lulls her sated snake
30 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;
35Hope 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;
40Yet 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,
45Love 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
50Like Vultures frighted from Imaus
Before an Earthquake’s tread.—
So from Time’s tempestuous dawn
Freedom’s splendour burst and shone.—
Thermopylae and Marathon
55Caught, like mountains beacon-lighted,
The springing Fire.—The winged Glory
On Philippi half-alighted,
Like an Eagle on a promontory.
Its unwearied wings could fan
60The quenchless ashes of Milan.
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
65Re-assuming 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.
70From far Atlantis its young beams
Chased the shadows and the dreams;
France with all her sanguine streams
Hid but quenched it not; again
Through clouds its shafts of glory rain
75 From utmost Germany to Spain.
As an eagle fed with morning
Scorns the embattled tempest’s warning
When she seeks her aiëry hanging
In the mountain-cedar’s hair
80And 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
85Like orient mountains lost in day.
Beneath the safety of her wings
Her renovated nurslings prey,
And in the naked lightnings
Of truth they purge their dazzled eyes.
90Let Freedom leave, where’er she flies,
A Desart, or a Paradise;
Let the beautiful and the brave
Share her glory, or a grave.
Semichorus I
With the gifts of gladness
95 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
100And at thy resurrection
Reappeareth, like thou, sublime!
Semichorus I
If Heaven should resume thee,
To Heaven shall her spirits ascend;
Semichorus II
If Hell should entomb thee,
105 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, wit
h thee!
Indian
110His 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.
115What! 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
120The 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
125On 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;
130It 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.
135I 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
140Seem 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
145Are as the atoms of the mountain-drift
To the winter wind—but from his eye looks forth
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
150Jesus, the Son of Joseph, for his mockery
Mocked with the curse of immortality.—
Some feign that he is Enoch—others dream
He was preadamite and has survived
Cycles of generation and of ruin.
155The 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
160Over 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
165Than 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;
170And 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
175Will 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
180Unutterably 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
185Win the desired communion—but that shout
[a shout within
Bodes——
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
190He, I, and all things shall compel—Enough.
Silence those mutineers—that drunken crew,
That crowd about the pilot in the storm.
Aye! strike the foremost shorter by a head.—
They weary me and I have need of rest.
195Kings are like stars—they rise and set, they have
The worship of the world but no repose.
[Exeunt severally.
Chorus
Worlds on worlds are rolling ever
From creation to decay,
Like the bubbles on a river
200 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
205 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
210 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.
215 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,
220Nor 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.
225 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,
230 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;
235 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
More gold? our ancestors bought gold with victory,
240And 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?
24
5No hoary priests after that Patriarch
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
250Is 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?
255The 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
260More 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 cursed be the hour,
265Even as a father by an evil child,
When th’ orient moon of Islam roll’d in triumph
From Caucasus to white Ceraunia!
Ruin above, and anarchy below;
Terror without, and treachery within;
270The 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.
275Four hundred thousand Moslems, from the limits