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 faint, 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
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,
Freighted with fire and whirlwind, wait at Scala 285
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
When the fierce shout of ‘Allah-illa-Allah!’ 290
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 295
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, 300
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,
Far in the West, sits mourning that her sons 305
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 310
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,
And howl upon their limits; for they see 315
The panther, Freedom, fled to her old cover,
Amid 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,
Whose friends are not thy friends, whose foes thy foes? 320
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;
The galloping of fiery steeds makes pale 325
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 330
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. 335
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;
Wan emblem of an empire fading now! 340
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, 345
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
To stem the torrent of descending time: 350
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,
Cries like the blood of Abel from the dust; 355
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?
Or Danger, when Security looks pale? — 360
How said the messenger — who, from the fort
Islanded in the Danube, saw the battle
Of Bucharest? — that —
HASSAN:
Ibrahim’s scimitar
Drew with its gleam swift victory from Heaven,
To burn before him in the night of battle — 365
A light and a destruction.
MAHMUD:
Ay! the day
Was ours: but how? —
HASSAN:
The light Wallachians,
The Arnaut, Servian, and Albanian allies
Fled from the glance of our artillery
Almost before the thunderstone alit. 370
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
With rough and steadfast front, and thrice flung back 375
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, 380
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,
Grew weak and few. — Then said the Pacha, ‘Slaves, 385
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!
Another—’God, and man, and hope abandon me; 390
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
Shouldst thou pursue; there we shall meet again.’ 395
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, 400
Met in triumphant death; and when our army
Closed in, while yet wonder, and awe, and shame
Held back the base hyaenas of the battle
That feed upon the dead and fly the living,
One rose out of the chaos of the slain: 405
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
Unquenchable disdain of death, and faith 410
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,
And shake the souls throned on their stony hearts, 415
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,
Lies sepulchred in monumental thought; — 420
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 425
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.
The exhalations and the thirsty winds 430
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
Of these dead limbs, — upon your streams and mountains, 435
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,
And Panic, shall wage war upon our side! 440
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
On this one cast; — but ere the die be thrown, 445
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,
Which sweeps all things to their appointed doom, 450
And you to oblivion!’ — More he would have said,
But —
MAHMUD:
Died — as thou shouldst ore thy lips had painted
Their ruin in the hues of our success.
A rebel’s crime, gilt with a rebel’s tongue!
Your heart is Greek, Hassan.
HASSAN:
It may be so: 455
A spirit not my own wrenched me within,
And I have spok
en words I fear and hate;
Yet would I die for —
MAHMUD:
Live! oh live! outlive
Me and this sinking empire. But the fleet —
HASSAN:
Alas! —
MAHMUD:
The fleet which, like a flock of clouds 460
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
Before their centuries of servile fear! 465
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:
Latmos, and Ampelos, and Phanae saw 470
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, —
Thou darest to speak — senseless are the mountains: 475
Interpret thou their voice!
HASSAN:
My presence bore
A part in that day’s shame. The Grecian fleet
Bore down at daybreak from the North, and hung
As multitudinous on the ocean line,
As cranes upon the cloudless Thracian wind. 480
Our squadron, convoying ten thousand men,
Was stretching towards Nauplia when the battle
Was kindled. —
First through the hail of our artillery
The agile Hydriote barks with press of sail 485
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
To its crystalline depths that stainless sea, 490
And shook Heaven’s roof of golden morning clouds,
Poised on an hundred azure mountain-isles.
In the brief trances of the artillery
One cry from the destroyed and the destroyer
Rose, and a cloud of desolation wrapped 495
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
Bore down from Naxos to our aid, but soon 500
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! —
Our noonday path over the sanguine foam 505
Was beaconed, — and the glare struck the sun pale, —
By our consuming transports: the fierce light
Percy Bysshe Shelley Page 120
