Enter MAHMUD, HASSAN, DAOOD, and others.
Mah. More gold? Our ancestors bought gold with
And shall I sell it for defeat?
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 the 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.
And yet the harvest to the sickle-men
Is as a grain to each.
Unlock the seventh chamber, in which lie
The treasures of victorious Solyman.
An empire's spoils 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.
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 usurp'd!
O faith in God! O power on earth! O word
Of the great Prophet, whose o'ershadowing wings
Darken'd the thrones and idols of the west,
Now bright!-For thy sake cursed be the hour,
Even as a father by an evil child,
When the orient moon of Islam roll'd in triumph
From Caucasus to white Ceraunia!
Ruin above, and anarchy below:
*The Greek Patriarch, after having been compelled to fulminate an anathema against the insurgents, was put to death by the Turks.
Terror without, and treachery within:
The chalice of destruction full, and all
Thirsting to drink; and who among us dares
To dash it from his lips? and where is Hope?
Has. The lamp of our dominion still rides high;
One God is God-Mahomet is his Prophet.
Four hundred thousand Moslems from the limits
Of utmost Asia irresistibly
Throng, like full clouds at the Sirocco's cry,
But not like them to weep their strength in tears;
They have destroying lightning, and their step
Wakes earthquake, to consume and overwhelm,
And reign in ruin. Phrygian Olympus,
Tymolus, and Latmos, and Mycale, roughen
With horrent arms, and lofty ships, even now
Like vapours anchor'd to a mountain's edge,
Freighted with fire and whirlwind, wait at Scala
The convoy of the ever-veering wind.
Lamos is drunk with blood;-the Greek has paid
Brief victory with swift loss and long despair.
The false Moldavian serfs fled fast and far
When the fierce shout of Allah-illa-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!
If 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
Their tempest-winged cities of the sea,
To speak in thunder to the rebel world.
Like sulphureous clouds half-shatter'd by the storm
They sweep the pale gean, while the Queer
Of Ocean, bound upon her island throne,
Far 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,
To 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,
Flesh'd with the chase, come up from Italy,
And howl upon their limits; for they see
The panther Freedom fled to her old cover
Amid seas and mountains, and a mightier brood
Crouch around. What anarch wears a crown or mitre, Or bears the sword, or grasps the key of gold,
Whose friends are not thy friends, whose foes thy foes?
Our arsenals and our armories are full;
Our forts defy assaults; ten thousand cannon
Lie ranged upon the beach, and hour by hour
Their earth-convulsing wheels affright the city:
The 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,
Swift 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
Divided in itself, and soon must fall.
Mah. Proud words, when deeds come short, are sea sonable:
Look, Hassan, on yon crested moon, emblazon'd
Upon that shatter'd flag of fiery cloud
Which leads the rear of the departing day,
Wan 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
Hovers above its fall, and with keen beams,
Like arrows through a fainting antelope,
Strikes its weak form to death.
Mah.
Shall we be not renew'd?
Far other bark than ours were needed now
To stem the torrent of descending time:
The spirit that lifts the slave before its lord
Stalks through the capitals of armed kings,
And spreads his ensign in the wilderness;
Exults in chains; and, when the rebel falls,
Cries like the blood of Abel from the dust;
And the inheritors of earth, like beasts
When earthquake is unleash'd, with idiot fear
Cower in their kingly dens-as I do now.
What were defeat, when Victory must appal?
Or Danger, when Security looks pale?
How said the messenger, who, from the fort
Islanded in the Danube, saw the battle
Of Bucharest ?-that-
Drew with its gleam swift victory from heaven,
To burn before him in the night of battle-
A light and a destruction.
The Arnaut, Servian, and Albanian allies,
Fled from the glance of our artillery
Almost before the thunder-stone alit;
One half the Grecian army made a bridge
Of safe and slow retreat with Moslem dead;
The other-
By victor myriads, form'd in hollow square
With 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,
From the surrounding hills, the batteries blazed,
Yet none approach'd: till, like a field of corn
Under the hook of the swart sickle man,
The bands intrench'd in mounds of Turkish dead
Grew weak and few.-Then, said the Pacha,
Render yourselves!-They have abandon'd 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!
Another-" God, and man, and hope, abandon me;
But I to them and to myself remain
Constant;"-he bow'd his head, and his heart burst.
A third exclaim'd, "There is a refuge, tyrant,
Where thou darest not pursue, and canst not harm,
Shouldst 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,
Some strange, all sudden, none dishonourable,
Met in triumphant death; and when our army,
Closed in, while yet in wonder, awe, and shame,
Held back the base hyenas of the battle
That feed upon the dead and fly the living,
One rose out of the choas 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 burn'd within the dying man
Unquenchable disdain of death, and faith
Creating what it feign'd, 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,
And shake the souls throned on their stony hearts,
And thaw their frost-work 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 clasp'd,
Lies 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!
And ye, weak conquerors! giants who look pale
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