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 130
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 tends thee forth, whate’er thy task, 135
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 140
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 winged hounds, Famine and Pestilence,
Shall wait on thee, the hundred-forked snake 145
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 150
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. 155
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! 160
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. 165
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 170
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 175
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.
DRAMATIS PERSONAE:
MAHMUD. HASSAN. DAOOD. AHASUERUS, A JEW. CHORUS OF GREEK CAPTIVE WOMEN. [THE PHANTOM OF MAHOMET II. (OMITTED, EDITION 1822.)] MESSENGERS, SLAVES, AND ATTENDANTS.
SCENE: CONSTANTINOPLE.
TIME: SUNSET.
SCENE: A TERRACE ON THE SERAGLIO. MAHMUD SLEEPING, AN INDIAN SLAVE SITTING BESIDE HIS COUCH.
HELLAS
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 5
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, 10
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; 15
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. 20
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, 25
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. 30
Breathe low — low
The words which, like secret fire, shall flow
Through the veins of the frozen earth — low, low!
SEMICHORUS 1:
Life may change, but it may fly not;
Hope may vanish, but can die not; 35
Truth be veiled, but still it burneth;
Love repulsed, — but it returneth!
SEMICHORUS 2:
Yet were life a charnel where
Hope lay coffined with Despair;
Yet were truth a sacred lie, 40
Love were lust —
SEMICHORUS 1:
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. 45
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, 50
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, 55
The springing Fire. — The winged glory
On Philippi half-alighted,
Like an eagle on a promontory.
Its unwearied wings could fan
The quenchless ashes of Milan. 60
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, 65
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 70
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. 75
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 80
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; 85
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, 90
A Desert, or a Paradise:
Let the beautiful and the
brave
Share her glory, or a grave.
SEMICHORUS 1:
With the gifts of gladness
Greece did thy cradle strew; 95
SEMICHORUS 2:
With the tears of sadness
Greece did thy shroud bedew!
SEMICHORUS 1:
With an orphan’s affection
She followed thy bier through Time;
SEMICHORUS 2:
And at thy resurrection 100
Reappeareth, like thou, sublime!
SEMICHORUS 1:
If Heaven should resume thee,
To Heaven shall her spirit ascend;
SEMICHORUS 2:
If Hell should entomb thee,
To Hell shall her high hearts bend. 105
SEMICHORUS 1:
If Annihilation —
SEMICHORUS 2:
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! 110
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? 115
‘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 120
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, 125
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, 130
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 135
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 140
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 145
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
Jesus, the son of Joseph, for his mockery, 150
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 155
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 160
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 165
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, 170
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 175
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 180
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 185
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! 190
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.
Kinks are like stars — they rise and set, they have 195
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
Sparkling, bursting, borne away. 200
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 205
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. 210
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 215
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; 220
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 225
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 fain
t, so fair,
The Powers of earth and air 230
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, 235
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,
And shall I sell it for defeat?
DAOOD:
The Janizars 240
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 245
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, 250
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; 255
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! 260
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,
Even as a father by an evil child, 265
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 270
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 275
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, 280
Percy Bysshe Shelley - Delphi Poets Series Page 119