Selected Poems and Prose
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.
595A Dervise learned in the Koran preaches
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:
600But in the omnipresence of that spirit
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
605The secret wrath of Nature and her Lord.
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
610Cast on the mirror of the night;—while yet
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;
615Those who relieved watch found the sentinels dead.
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:
620He stood, he says, on Chelonite’s
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
625Her boundless light, he saw two adverse fleets
Stalk through the night in the horizon’s glimmer,
Mingling fierce thunders and sulphurious gleams,
And smoke which strangled every infant wind
That soothed the silver clouds through the deep air.
630At length the battle slept, but the Sirocco
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
635And two the loftiest of our ships of war
With the bright image of that Queen of Heaven
Who hid, perhaps, her face for grief, reversed;
And the abhorred cross—
[Enter an ATTENDANT.
Attendant
Your sublime highness,
The Jew, who—
Mahmud
Could not come more seasonably:
640Bid him attend— I’ll hear no more! too long
We gaze on danger through the mist of fear,
And multiply upon our shattered hopes
The images of ruin—come what will!
Tomorrow and tomorrow are as lamps
Set in our path to light us to the edge
645Through rough and smooth, nor can we suffer aught
Which he inflicts not in whose hand we are.
[exeunt.
Semichorus I
Would I were the winged cloud
Of a tempest swift and loud,
650 I would scorn
The smile of morn
And the wave where the moon rise is born!
I would leave
The spirits of eve
655 A shroud for the corpse of the day to weave
From other threads than mine!
Bask in the deep blue noon divine
Who would,—not I.
Semichorus II
Whither to fly?
Semichorus I
660Where the rocks that gird th’ Aegean
Echo to the battle paean
Of the free—
I would flee,
A tempestuous herald of Victory,
665 My golden rain
For the Grecian slain
Should mingle in tears with the bloody main
And my solemn thunder knell
Should ring to the world the passing bell
670 Of Tyranny!
Semichorus II
Ha king! wilt thou chain
The rack and the rain,
Wilt thou fetter the lightning and hurricane?
The storms are free
675 But we?
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,
680 But the free heart, the impassive soul
Scorn thy controul!
Semichorus I
Let there be light! said Liberty,
And like sunrise from the sea,
Athens arose!—around her born,
685Shone like mountains in the morn
Glorious States,—and are they now
Ashes, wrecks, oblivion?
Semichorus II
Go,
Where Thermae and Asopus swallowed
Persia, as the sand does foam.
690Deluge upon deluge followed,—
Discord, Macedon and Rome:
And lastly Thou!
Semichorus I
Temples and towers,
Citadels and marts and they
Who live and die there, have been ours
695And may be thine, and must decay,
But Greece and her foundations are
Built below the tide of war,
Based on the chrystalline sea
Of thought and its eternity;
700Her citizens, imperial spirits,
Rule the present from the past,
On all this world of men inherits
Their seal is set—
Semichorus II
Hear ye the blast
Whose Orphic thunder thrilling calls
705 From ruin her Titanian walls?
Whose spirit shakes the sapless bones
Of Slavery? Argos, Corinth, Crete
Hear, and from their mountain thrones
The daemons and the nymphs repeat
710The harmony.
Semichorus I
I hear! I hear!
Semichorus II
The world’s eyeless charioteer,
Destiny, is hurrying by!
What faith is crushed, what empire bleeds
Beneath her earthquake-footed steeds?
715What eagle-winged victory sits
At her right hand? what shadow flits
Before? what splendour rolls behind?
Ruin and Renovation cry
‘Who but we?’
Semichorus I
I hear! I hear.
720 The hiss as of a rushing wind,
The roar as of an ocean foaming,
The thunder as of earthquake coming.
I hear! I hear!
The crash as of an empire falling,
725The shrieks as of a people calling
‘Mercy? Mercy!’ how they thrill!
Then a shout of ‘Kill! Kill! Kill!’
And then a small still voice, thus—
Semichorus II
For
Revenge and wrong bring forth their kind,
730 The foul cubs like their parents are,
Their den is in the guilty mind
And Conscience feeds them with despair.—
Semichorus I
In sacred Athens, near the fane
Of Wisdom, Pity’s altar stood.—
&
nbsp; 735Serve not the unknown God in vain,
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
740By thought, as I by power.
Ahasuerus
Thou sayest so.
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;
745Thy spirit is present in the past, and sees
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,
750And all its narrow circles—it is much—
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
755Mighty or wise. I apprehended not
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!
760Moreover thou disdainest us and ours;
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
765Who would be what they may not, or would seem
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,
770Space and the isles of life or light that gem
The sapphire floods of interstellar air,
This firmament pavilioned upon chaos,
With all its cressets of immortal fire
Whose outwall bastioned impregnably
775Against the escape of boldest thoughts, repels them
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,
780Is but a vision—all that it inherits
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.
785Nought is but that which feels itself to be.
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?
790They cast on all things surest, brightest, best,
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
795Which is—the absent to the present. Thought
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
800All that it hath dominion o’er, worlds, worms,
Empires and superstitions—what has thought
To do with time or place or circumstance?
Would’st thou behold the future?—ask and have!
Knock and it shall be opened—look and, lo!
805The coming age is shadowed on the past
As on a glass.
Mahmud
Wild—wilder thoughts convulse
My spirit—did not Mahomet the Second
Win Stamboul?
Ahasuerus
Thou would’st ask that giant spirit
The written fortunes of thy house and faith—
810Thou would’st cite one out of the grave to tell
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
815As of the assault of an imperial city——
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 engin’ry,
820The clash of wheels, and clang of armed hoofs
And crash of brazen mail as of the wreck
Of adamantine mountains—the mad blast
Of trumpets, and the neigh of raging steeds,
And shrieks of women whose thrill jars the blood
825And one sweet laugh most horrible to hear
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
‘Ἐν τούτῳ νίκη’—‘Allah-Illah-Allah!’
Ahasuerus
830The sulphurous mist is raised—thou see’st—
Mahmud
A chasm
As of two mountains in the wall of Stamboul
And in that ghastly breach the Islamites
Like giants on the ruins of a world
Stand in the light of sunrise. In the dust
835Glimmers a kingless diadem, and one
Of regal port has cast himself beneath
The stream of war: another proudly clad
In golden arms spurs a Tartarian barb
Into the gap and with his iron mace
840Directs the torrent of that tide of men
And seems—he is, Mahomet!
Ahasuerus
What thou see’st
Is but the ghost of thy forgotten dream.
A dream itself, yet, less, perhaps, than that
Thou callest reality. Thou mayest behold
845How cities, on which empire sleeps enthroned,
Bow their tower’d crests to Mutability.
Poised by the flood, e’en on the height thou holdest,
Thou may’st now learn how the full tide of power
Ebbs to its depths.—Inheritor of glory
850Conceived in darkness, born in blood, and nourished
With tears and toil, thou see’st the mortal throes
Of that whose birth was but the same. The Past
Now stands before thee like an Incarnation
Of the To-come; yet would’st thou commune with
855That portion of thyself which was ere thou
Didst start for this brief race whose crown is death,
Dissolve with that strong faith and fervent passion
Which called it from the uncreated deep
Yon cloud of war with its tempestuous phantoms
860Of raging death; and draw with mighty will
The imperial shade hither—
[Exit AHASUERUS.
Mahmud
Approach!
Phantom
I come
Thence whither thou must go! the grave is fitter
To take t
he living than give up the dead;
Yet has thy faith prevailed and I am here.
865The heavy fragments of the power which fell
When I arose like shapeless crags and clouds
Hang round my throne on the abyss, and voices
Of strange lament soothe my supreme repose,
Wailing for glory never to return.——
870 A later Empire nods in its decay:
The autumn of a greener faith is come,
And wolfish Change, like winter, howls to strip
The foliage in which Fame, the eagle, built
Her aiëry, while Dominion whelped below.
875The storm is in its branches, and the frost
Is on its leaves, and the blank deep expects
Oblivion on oblivion, spoil on spoil,
Ruin on ruin—thou art slow my son;
The Anarchs of the world of darkness keep
880A throne for thee round which thine empire lies
Boundless and mute, and for thy subjects thou,
Like us, shalt rule the ghosts of murdered life,
The phantoms of the powers who rule thee now—
Mutinous passions, and conflicting fears
885And hopes that sate themselves on dust and die,
Stript of their mortal strength, as thou of thine.
Islam must fall, but we will reign together
Over its ruins in the world of death—
And if the trunk be dry, yet shall the seed
890Unfold itself even in the shape of that
Which gathers birth in its decay—Woe! woe!
To the weak people tangled in the grasp
Of its last spasms.
Mahmud
Spirit, woe to all!—
Woe to the wronged and the avenger! woe
895To the destroyer; woe to the destroyed!
Woe to the dupe; and woe to the deceiver!
Woe to the oppressed; and woe to the oppressor!
Woe both to those that suffer and inflict,
Those who are born and those who die! but say,
900Imperial shadow of the thing I am,
When, how, by whom, Destruction must accomplish
Her consummation?
Phantom