Percy Bysshe Shelley
Page 121
Made all the shadows of our sails blood-red,
And every countenance blank. Some ships lay feeding
The ravening fire, even to the water’s level; 510
Some were blown up; some, settling heavily,
Sunk; and the shrieks of our companions died
Upon the wind, that bore us fast and far,
Even after they were dead. Nine thousand perished!
We met the vultures legioned in the air 515
Stemming the torrent of the tainted wind;
They, screaming from their cloudy mountain-peaks,
Stooped through the sulphurous battle-smoke and perched
Each on the weltering carcase that we loved,
Like its ill angel or its damned soul, 520
Riding upon the bosom of the sea.
We saw the dog-fish hastening to their feast.
Joy waked the voiceless people of the sea,
And ravening Famine left his ocean cave
To dwell with War, with us, and with Despair. 525
We met night three hours to the west of Patmos,
And with night, tempest —
MAHMUD:
Cease!
[ENTER A MESSENGER.]
MESSENGER:
Your Sublime Highness,
That Christian hound, the Muscovite Ambassador,
Has left the city. — If the rebel fleet
Had anchored in the port, had victory 530
Crowned the Greek legions in the Hippodrome,
Panic were tamer. — Obedience and Mutiny,
Like giants in contention planet-struck,
Stand gazing on each other. — There is peace
In Stamboul. —
MAHMUD:
Is the grave not calmer still? 535
Its ruins shall be mine.
HASSAN:
Fear not the Russian:
The tiger leagues not with the stag at bay
Against the hunter. — Cunning, base, and cruel,
He crouches, watching till the spoil be won,
And must be paid for his reserve in blood. 540
After the war is fought, yield the sleek Russian
That which thou canst not keep, his deserved portion
Of blood, which shall not flow through streets and fields,
Rivers and seas, like that which we may win,
But stagnate in the veins of Christian slaves! 545
[ENTER SECOND MESSENGER.]
SECOND MESSENGER:
Nauplia, Tripolizza, Mothon, Athens,
Navarin, Artas, Monembasia,
Corinth, and Thebes are carried by assault,
And every Islamite who made his dogs
Fat with the flesh of Galilean slaves 550
Passed at the edge of the sword: the lust of blood,
Which made our warriors drunk, is quenched in death;
But like a fiery plague breaks out anew
In deeds which make the Christian cause look pale
In its own light. The garrison of Patras 555
Has store but for ten days, nor is there hope
But from the Briton: at once slave and tyrant,
His wishes still are weaker than his fears,
Or he would sell what faith may yet remain
From the oaths broke in Genoa and in Norway; 560
And if you buy him not, your treasury
Is empty even of promises — his own coin.
The freedman of a western poet-chief
Holds Attica with seven thousand rebels,
And has beat back the Pacha of Negropont: 565
The aged Ali sits in Yanina
A crownless metaphor of empire:
His name, that shadow of his withered might,
Holds our besieging army like a spell
In prey to famine, pest, and mutiny; 570
He, bastioned in his citadel, looks forth
Joyless upon the sapphire lake that mirrors
The ruins of the city where he reigned
Childless and sceptreless. The Greek has reaped
The costly harvest his own blood matured, 575
Not the sower, Ali — who has bought a truce
From Ypsilanti with ten camel-loads
Of Indian gold.
[ENTER A THIRD MESSENGER.]
MAHMUD:
What more?
THIRD MESSENGER:
The Christian tribes
Of Lebanon and the Syrian wilderness
Are in revolt; — Damascus, Hems, Aleppo 580
Tremble; — the Arab menaces Medina,
The Aethiop has intrenched himself in Sennaar,
And keeps the Egyptian rebel well employed,
Who denies homage, claims investiture
As price of tardy aid. Persia demands 585
The cities on the Tigris, and the Georgians
Refuse their living tribute. Crete and Cyprus,
Like mountain-twins that from each other’s veins
Catch the volcano-fire and earthquake-spasm,
Shake in the general fever. Through the city, 590
Like birds before a storm, the Santons shriek,
And prophesyings horrible and new
Are heard among the crowd: that sea of men
Sleeps on the wrecks it made, breathless and still.
A Dervise, learned in the Koran, preaches 595
That it is written how the sins of Islam
Must raise up a destroyer even now.
The Greeks expect a Saviour from the West,
Who shall not come, men say, in clouds and glory,
But in the omnipresence of that Spirit 600
In which all live and are. Ominous signs
Are blazoned broadly on the noonday sky:
One saw a red cross stamped upon the sun;
It has rained blood; and monstrous births declare
The secret wrath of Nature and her Lord. 605
The army encamped upon the Cydaris
Was roused last night by the alarm of battle,
And saw two hosts conflicting in the air,
The shadows doubtless of the unborn time
Cast on the mirror of the night. While yet 610
The fight hung balanced, there arose a storm
Which swept the phantoms from among the stars.
At the third watch the Spirit of the Plague
Was heard abroad flapping among the tents;
Those who relieved watch found the sentinels dead. 615
The last news from the camp is, that a thousand
Have sickened, and —
[ENTER A FOURTH MESSENGER.]
MAHMUD:
And thou, pale ghost, dim shadow
Of some untimely rumour, speak!
FOURTH MESSENGER:
One comes
Fainting with toil, covered with foam and blood:
He stood, he says, on Chelonites’ 620
Promontory, which o’erlooks the isles that groan
Under the Briton’s frown, and all their waters
Then trembling in the splendour of the moon,
When as the wandering clouds unveiled or hid
Her boundless light, he saw two adverse fleets 625
Stalk through the night in the horizon’s glimmer,
Mingling fierce thunders and sulphureous gleams,
And smoke which strangled every infant wind
That soothed the silver clouds through the deep air.
At length the battle slept, but the Sirocco 630
Awoke, and drove his flock of thunder-clouds
Over the sea-horizon, blotting out
All objects — save that in the faint moon-glimpse
He saw, or dreamed he saw, the Turkish admiral
And two the loftiest of our ships of war, 635
With the bright image of that Queen of Heaven,
Who hid, perhaps, her face for grief, reversed;
And the abhorred cross —
620 on Chelon
ites’]on Chelonites “Errata”;
upon Clelonite’s edition 1822;
upon Clelonit’s editions 1839.
[ENTER AN ATTENDANT.]
ATTENDANT:
Your Sublime Highness,
The Jew, who —
MAHMUD:
Could not come more seasonably:
Bid him attend. I’ll hear no more! too long 640
We gaze on danger through the mist of fear,
And multiply upon our shattered hopes
The images of ruin. Come what will!
To-morrow and to-morrow are as lamps
Set in our path to light us to the edge 645
Through rough and smooth, nor can we suffer aught
Which He inflicts not in whose hand we are.
[EXEUNT.]
SEMICHORUS 1:
Would I were the winged cloud
Of a tempest swift and loud!
I would scorn 650
The smile of morn
And the wave where the moonrise is born!
I would leave
The spirits of eve
A shroud for the corpse of the day to weave 655
From other threads than mine!
Bask in the deep blue noon divine.
Who would? Not I.
SEMICHORUS 2:
Whither to fly?
SEMICHORUS 1:
Where the rocks that gird th’ Aegean 660
Echo to the battle paean
Of the free —
I would flee
A tempestuous herald of victory!
My golden rain
For the Grecian slain 665
Should mingle in tears with the bloody main,
And my solemn thunder-knell
Should ring to the world the passing-bell
Of Tyranny! 670
SEMICHORUS 2:
Ah king! wilt thou chain
The rack and the rain?
Wilt thou fetter the lightning and hurricane?
The storms are free,
But we — 675
CHORUS:
O Slavery! thou frost of the world’s prime,
Killing its flowers and leaving its thorns bare!
Thy touch has stamped these limbs with crime,
These brows thy branding garland bear,
But the free heart, the impassive soul 680
Scorn thy control!
SEMICHORUS 1:
Let there be light! said Liberty,
And like sunrise from the sea,
Athens arose! — Around her born,
Shone like mountains in the morn 685
Glorious states; — and are they now
Ashes, wrecks, oblivion?
SEMICHORUS 2:
Go,
Where Thermae and Asopus swallowed
Persia, as the sand does foam:
Deluge upon deluge followed, 690
Discord, Macedon, and Rome:
And lastly thou!
SEMICHORUS 1:
Temples and towers,
Citadels and marts, and they
Who live and die there, have been ours,
And may be thine, and must decay; 695
But Greece and her foundations are
Built below the tide of war,
Based on the crystalline sea
Of thought and its eternity;
Her citizens, imperial spirits, 700
Rule the present from the past,
On all this world of men inherits
Their seal is set.
SEMICHORUS 2:
Hear ye the blast,
Whose Orphic thunder thrilling calls
From ruin her Titanian walls? 705
Whose spirit shakes the sapless bones
Of Slavery? Argos, Corinth, Crete
Hear, and from their mountain thrones
The daemons and the nymphs repeat
The harmony.
SEMICHORUS 1:
I hear! I hear! 710
SEMICHORUS 2:
The world’s eyeless charioteer,
Destiny, is hurrying by!
What faith is crushed, what empire bleeds
Beneath her earthquake-footed steeds?
What eagle-winged victory sits 715
At her right hand? what shadow flits
Before? what splendour rolls behind?
Ruin and renovation cry
‘Who but We?’
SEMICHORUS 1:
I hear! I hear!
The hiss as of a rushing wind, 720
The roar as of an ocean foaming,
The thunder as of earthquake coming.
I hear! I hear!
The crash as of an empire falling,
The shrieks as of a people calling 725
‘Mercy! mercy!’ — How they thrill!
Then a shout of ‘kill! kill! kill!’
And then a small still voice, thus —
SEMICHORUS 2:
For
Revenge and Wrong bring forth their kind,
The foul cubs like their parents are, 730
Their den is in the guilty mind,
And Conscience feeds them with despair.
SEMICHORUS 1:
In sacred Athens, near the fane
Of Wisdom, Pity’s altar stood:
Serve not the unknown God in vain. 735
But pay that broken shrine again,
Love for hate and tears for blood.
[ENTER MAHMUD AND AHASUERUS.]
MAHMUD:
Thou art a man, thou sayest, even as we.
AHASUERUS:
No more!
MAHMUD:
But raised above thy fellow-men
By thought, as I by power.
AHASUERUS:
Thou sayest so. 740
MAHMUD:
Thou art an adept in the difficult lore
Of Greek and Frank philosophy; thou numberest
The flowers, and thou measurest the stars;
Thou severest element from element;
Thy spirit is present in the Past, and sees 745
The birth of this old world through all its cycles
Of desolation and of loveliness,
And when man was not, and how man became
The monarch and the slave of this low sphere,
And all its narrow circles — it is much — 750
I honour thee, and would be what thou art
Were I not what I am; but the unborn hour,
Cradled in fear and hope, conflicting storms,
Who shall unveil? Nor thou, nor I, nor any
Mighty or wise. I apprehended not 755
What thou hast taught me, but I now perceive
That thou art no interpreter of dreams;
Thou dost not own that art, device, or God,
Can make the Future present — let it come!
Moreover thou disdainest us and ours; 760
Thou art as God, whom thou contemplatest.
AHASUERUS:
Disdain thee? — not the worm beneath thy feet!
The Fathomless has care for meaner things
Than thou canst dream, and has made pride for those
Who would be what they may not, or would seem 765
That which they are not. Sultan! talk no more
Of thee and me, the Future and the Past;
But look on that which cannot change — the One,
The unborn and the undying. Earth and ocean,
Space, and the isles of life or light that gem 770
The sapphire floods of interstellar air,
This firmament pavilioned upon chaos,
With all its cressets of immortal fire,
Whose outwall, bastioned impregnably
Against the escape of boldest thoughts, repels them 775
As Calpe the Atlantic clouds — this Whole
Of suns, and worlds, and men, and beasts, and flowers,
With all the silent or tempestuous workings
By which they have been, are,
or cease to be,
Is but a vision; — all that it inherits 780
Are motes of a sick eye, bubbles and dreams;
Thought is its cradle and its grave, nor less
The Future and the Past are idle shadows
Of thought’s eternal flight — they have no being:
Nought is but that which feels itself to be. 785
MAHMUD:
What meanest thou? Thy words stream like a tempest
Of dazzling mist within my brain — they shake
The earth on which I stand, and hang like night
On Heaven above me. What can they avail?
They cast on all things surest, brightest, best, 790
Doubt, insecurity, astonishment.
AHASUERUS:
Mistake me not! All is contained in each.
Dodona’s forest to an acorn’s cup
Is that which has been, or will be, to that
Which is — the absent to the present. Thought 795
Alone, and its quick elements, Will, Passion,
Reason, Imagination, cannot die;
They are, what that which they regard appears,
The stuff whence mutability can weave
All that it hath dominion o’er, worlds, worms, 800
Empires, and superstitions. What has thought
To do with time, or place, or circumstance?
Wouldst thou behold the Future? — ask and have!
Knock and it shall be opened — look, and lo!
The coming age is shadowed on the Past 805
As on a glass.
MAHMUD:
Wild, wilder thoughts convulse
My spirit — Did not Mahomet the Second
Win Stamboul?
AHASUERUS:
Thou wouldst ask that giant spirit
The written fortunes of thy house and faith.
Thou wouldst cite one out of the grave to tell 810
How what was born in blood must die.
MAHMUD:
Thy words
Have power on me! I see —
AHASUERUS:
What hearest thou?
MAHMUD:
A far whisper —
Terrible silence.
AHASUERUS:
What succeeds?
MAHMUD:
The sound
As of the assault of an imperial city, 815
The hiss of inextinguishable fire,
The roar of giant cannon; the earthquaking
Fall of vast bastions and precipitous towers,
The shock of crags shot from strange enginery,
The clash of wheels, and clang of armed hoofs, 820
And crash of brazen mail as of the wreck
Of adamantine mountains — the mad blast
Of trumpets, and the neigh of raging steeds,
The shrieks of women whose thrill jars the blood,
And one sweet laugh, most horrible to hear, 825
As of a joyous infant waked and playing
With its dead mother’s breast, and now more loud
The mingled battle-cry, — ha! hear I not
‘En touto nike!’ ‘Allah-illa-Allah!’?
AHASUERUS: