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
280Wakes 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,
285Freighted 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
290When the fierce shout of Allah-illah-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!
295If 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
300Their tempest-winged 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
305Far 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,
310To 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
315And howl upon their limits, for they see
The panther Freedom fled to her old cover
’Mid 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,
320Whose 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;
325The 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
330Swift 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
335Divided 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,
340Wan 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
345Hovers above its fall, and with keen beams
Like arrows through a fainting antelope
Strikes its weak form to death.
Hassan
Even as that moon
Renews itself——
Mahmud
Shall we be not renewed!
Far other bark than ours were needed now
350To stem the torrent of descending time;
The spirit that lifts the slave before his lord
Stalks through the capitals of armed kings
And spreads his ensign in the wilderness,
Exults in chains, and when the rebel falls
355Cries 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?
360Or 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 scymitar
Drew with its gleam swift victory from heaven,
365To burn before him in the night of battle,
A light and a destruction——
Mahmud
Aye! the day
Was ours—but how?——
Hassan
The light Wallachians,
The Arnaut, Servian, and Albanian allies
Fled from the glance of our artillery
370Almost 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
375With 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
380From 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,
385Grew 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!
390Another—‘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
395Should’st 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,
400Some 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,
405One 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
410Unquenchable 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,
415And 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,
420Lies 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!
425And 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;
430The 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
435Of 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
440And 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
445On 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
450Which 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!
455Your 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! O live! outlive
Me and this sinking Empire.—But the fleet?—
Hassan
460Alas!——
Mahmud
The fleet which like a flock of clouds
Chased by the wind flies the insurgent banner.
Our winged castles from their merchant ships!
Our myriads before their weak pirate bands!
Our arms before their chains! our years of Empire
465Before 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
470Latmos, 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,—
475Thou 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
480As 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
485The 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
490To its chrystalline depths that stainless sea
And shook Heaven’s roof of golden morning clouds
Poised on a hundred azure mountain-isles.
In the brief trances of the artillery
One cry from the destroyed and the destroyer
495Rose, 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
500Bore 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 in Moslem hearts,
As the sun drinks the dew—what more? We fled!—
505Our 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
510The 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!
515We 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
520Like 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
525To 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
530Had 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
535In 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
540And must be paid for his reserve in blood.
After the war is fought yield the sleek Russian
That which thou can’st not keep, his deserved portion
Of blood, which shall not flow through streets and fields,
Rivers and seas, like that w
hich we may win,
545But 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
550Fat 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
555In 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
560From 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 freedman of a western poet chief
Holds Attica with seven thousand rebels
565And 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
570In prey to Famine, Pest, and Mutiny;
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 Greek has reaped
575The 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
580Are in revolt—Damascus, Hems, Aleppo
Tremble—the Arab menaces Medina,
The Ethiop has intrenched himself in Senaar
And keeps the Egyptian rebel well employed
Who denies homage, claims investiture
585As 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,
590Shake in the general fever. Through the city
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