SEMICHORUS II. If Hell should entomb thee, To Hell shall her high hearts bend. SEMICHORUS I. If Annihilation SEMICHORUS II. Dust let her glories be! Be forgotten, Freedom, with thee! INDIAN. His brow grows darker-breathe not-move not! He starts-he shudders-ye that love not, MAHMUD (starting from his sleep). I10 Man the Seraglio-guard! make fast the gate. The conqueror and the conquered! Heave the tower Into the gap-wrench off the roof. Enter HASSAN. 120 Ha! what! The truth of day lightens upon my dream, Is strangely moved. HASSAN. Your Sublime Highness MAHMUD. The times do cast strange shadows On 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. 135 Thrice has a gloomy vision hunted me A Jew, whose spirit is a chronicle Of strange and secret and forgotten things. 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 Are whiter than the tempest-sifted snow; His cold pale limbs and pulseless arteries Are like the fibres of a cloud instinct 141 With light, and to the soul that quickens them Are as the atoms of the mountain-drift To the winter wind:-but from his eye looks forth A life of unconsumèd thought which pierces 150 Cycles of generation and of ruin. The sage, in truth, by dreadful abstinence MAHMUD. I would talk 161 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 66 him 169 Must sail alone at sunset, where the stream 66 180 The Jew appears. Few dare, and few who dare MAHMUD. Evil, doubtless, like all human sounds Let me converse with spirits. When the omnipotent hour to which are yoked CHORUS. [Exeunt severally. Worlds on worlds are rolling ever 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 New gods, new laws receive, Bright or dim are they as the robes they last On Death's bare ribs had cast. A power from the unknown God, The thorns of death and shame. Which the orient planet animates with light Like blood-hounds mild and tame, 210 Nor preyed, until their Lord had taken flight; The moon of Mahomet Arose, and it shall set : 221 While blazoned as on heaven's immortal noon The cross leads generations on. 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, The Powers of earth and air Fled from the folding star of Bethlehem : Apollo, Pan, and Love, And even Olympian Jove, 230 Grew weak, for killing Truth had glared on them; Our hills and seas and streams Dispeopled of their dreams, Their waters turned to blood, their dew to tears, Wailed for the golden years. |