Percy Bysshe Shelley
Page 119
Which interpenetrating all the …
it rolls from realm to realm
And age to age, and in its ebb and flow 25
Impels the generations
To their appointed place,
Whilst the high Arbiter
Beholds the strife, and at the appointed time
Sends His decrees veiled in eternal… 30
Within the circuit of this pendent orb
There lies an antique region, on which fell
The dews of thought in the world’s golden dawn
Earliest and most benign, and from it sprung
Temples and cities and immortal forms 35
And harmonies of wisdom and of song,
And thoughts, and deeds worthy of thoughts so fair.
And when the sun of its dominion failed,
And when the winter of its glory came,
The winds that stripped it bare blew on and swept 40
That dew into the utmost wildernesses
In wandering clouds of sunny rain that thawed
The unmaternal bosom of the North.
Haste, sons of God, … for ye beheld,
Reluctant, or consenting, or astonished, 45
The stern decrees go forth, which heaped on Greece
Ruin and degradation and despair.
A fourth now waits: assemble, sons of God,
To speed or to prevent or to suspend,
If, as ye dream, such power be not withheld, 50
The unaccomplished destiny.
…
CHORUS:
The curtain of the Universe
Is rent and shattered,
The splendour-winged worlds disperse
Like wild doves scattered. 55
Space is roofless and bare,
And in the midst a cloudy shrine,
Dark amid thrones of light.
In the blue glow of hyaline
Golden worlds revolve and shine. 60
In … flight
From every point of the Infinite,
Like a thousand dawns on a single night
The splendours rise and spread;
And through thunder and darkness dread 65
Light and music are radiated,
And in their pavilioned chariots led
By living wings high overhead
The giant Powers move,
Gloomy or bright as the thrones they fill. 70
…
A chaos of light and motion
Upon that glassy ocean.
…
The senate of the Gods is met,
Each in his rank and station set;
There is silence in the spaces — 75
Lo! Satan, Christ, and Mahomet
Start from their places!
CHRIST:
Almighty Father!
Low-kneeling at the feet of Destiny
…
There are two fountains in which spirits weep 80
When mortals err, Discord and Slavery named,
And with their bitter dew two Destinies
Filled each their irrevocable urns; the third
Fiercest and mightiest, mingled both, and added
Chaos and Death, and slow Oblivion’s lymph, 85
And hate and terror, and the poisoned rain
…
The Aurora of the nations. By this brow
Whose pores wept tears of blood, by these wide wounds,
By this imperial crown of agony,
By infamy and solitude and death, 90
For this I underwent, and by the pain
Of pity for those who would … for me
The unremembered joy of a revenge,
For this I felt — by Plato’s sacred light,
Of which my spirit was a burning morrow — 95
By Greece and all she cannot cease to be.
Her quenchless words, sparks of immortal truth,
Stars of all night — her harmonies and forms,
Echoes and shadows of what Love adores
In thee, I do compel thee, send forth Fate, 100
Thy irrevocable child: let her descend,
A seraph-winged Victory [arrayed]
In tempest of the omnipotence of God
Which sweeps through all things.
From hollow leagues, from Tyranny which arms 105
Adverse miscreeds and emulous anarchies
To stamp, as on a winged serpent’s seed,
Upon the name of Freedom; from the storm
Of faction, which like earthquake shakes and sickens
The solid heart of enterprise; from all 110
By which the holiest dreams of highest spirits
Are stars beneath the dawn…
She shall arise
Victorious as the world arose from Chaos!
And as the Heavens and the Earth arrayed
Their presence in the beauty and the light 115
Of Thy first smile, O Father, — as they gather
The spirit of Thy love which paves for them
Their path o’er the abyss, till every sphere
Shall be one living Spirit, — so shall Greece —
SATAN:
Be as all things beneath the empyrean, 120
Mine! Art thou eyeless like old Destiny,
Thou mockery-king, crowned with a wreath of thorns?
Whose sceptre is a reed, the broken reed
Which pierces thee! whose throne a chair of scorn;
For seest thou not beneath this crystal floor 125
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.
&n
bsp; …
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 d
idst 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.]