Sidebilder
PDF
ePub
[blocks in formation]

By victor myriads, form'd in hollow square
With rough and stedfast 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,
Kneading them down with fire and iron rain.
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, "Slaves,
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

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 ail 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
When the crush'd worm rebels beneath your tread-
The vultures, and the dogs, your pensioners tame,
Are overgorged; but, like oppressors, still
They crave the relie of destruction's feast.
The exhalations and the thirsty winds

Are sick with blood; the dew is foul with death-
Heaven's light is quench'd 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,
Upon your fields, your gardens, and your house-tops
Where'er the winds shall creep, or the clouds fly,
Or the dews fall, or the angry sun look down
With poison'd light-Famine, and Pestilence,
And Panic, shall wage war upon our side!
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,
The renovated genius of our race,
Proud umpire of this impious game, descends
A seraph-winged Victory, bestriding
The tempest of the Omnipotence of God,
Which sweeps all things to their appointed doom,
And you to Oblivion!"-More he would have said.
But-

MAHMUD.

Died-as thou shouldst ere 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:
A spirit not my own wrench'd me within,
And I have spoken words I fear and hate;
Yet would I die for-

MAHMUD.

Live! O live! outlive
Me and this sinking empire:-but the fleet-

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 dishonorable,
Met in triumphant death; and when our army,
Closed in, while yet in wonder, and awe, and shame, Alas!
Held back the base hyenas of the battle
That feed upon the dead and fly the living,
One rose out of the chaos of the slain;
And if it were a corpse which some dead spirit
Of the old saviors of the land we rule
Had lifted in its anger, wandering by;
Of if there burn'd within the dying man
Unquenchable disdain of death, and faith
Creating what it feign'd;-I cannot tell.

HASSAN.

MAHMUD.

The fleet which, like a flock of clouds
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!
Death is awake! Repulsed on the waters,
They own no more the thunder-bearing banner

[blocks in formation]

A part in that day's shame. The Grecian fleet
Bore down at day-break from the North, and hung,
As multitudinous on the ocean line

As cranes upon the cloudless Thracian wind.
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
Dash'd:-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,
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 destroy'd and the destroyer
Rose, and a cloud of desolation wrapt
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
The abhorred cross glimmer'd behind, before,
Among, around us; and that fatal sign
Dried with its beams the strength of Moslem hearts,
As the sun drinks the dew.-What more? We fled!
Our noonday path over the sanguine foam
Was beacon'd, and the glare struck the sun pale
By our consuming transports: the fierce light
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:
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 perish'd!
We met the vultures legion'd in the air,
Stemming the torrent of the tainted wind:
They, screaming from the cloudy mountain peak
Stoop'd through the sulphurous battle-smoke,

perch'd

Each on the weltering carcass that we loved,
Like its ill angel or its damned soul.
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.
We met night three hours to the west of Patmos,
And with night, tempest-

and

[merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small]

Nauplia, Tripolizzi, Mothon, Athens,
Navarin, Artas, Mowenbasia,

Corinth and Thebes are carried by assault;
And every Islamite who made his dogs
Fat with the flesh of Galilean slaves,
Pass'd at the edge of the sword: the lust of blood
Which made our warriors drunk, is quench'd in death,
But like a fiery plague breaks out anew,

In deeds which make the Christian cause look o
In its own light. The garrison of Patras
Has store but for ten days, nor is there hope
But from the Briton: at once slave and tyran,
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 Now) :
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,
The aged Ali sits in Yanina,

A crownless metaphor of empire;
His name, that shadow of his wither'd right,
Holds our besieging army like a spell
In prey to famine, pest, and mutiny:
He, bastion'd in his citadel, looks forth
Joyless upon the sapphire lake that mirrors
The ruins of the city where he reign'd
Childless and sceptreless. Tfie Greek has reap'd
The costly harvest his own blod matured,

A Greek who had been Lord Byron's servant commanded the insurgents in Attica. This Greek, Lord Byron informs me, though a poet and an enthusiastic patriot, gave him rather the idea of a timid and unenterprising person. It appears that circumstances make men what they are, and that we all contain the germ of a degree of degradation or of greatness, whose connexion with our character is determined by events.

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,
Tremble-the Arab menaces Medina ;
The Ethiop has intrench'd himself in Sennaar,
And keeps the Egyptian rebel well employ'd:
Who denies homage, claims investiture
As price of tardy aid. Persia demands
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,
Like birds before a storm the santons shriek,
And prophecyings horrible and new

Are heard among the crowd; that sea of men
Sleeps on the wrecks it made, breathless and still.
A Devise, learn'd in the koran, preaches
That it is written how the sins of Islam
Must raise up a destroyer even now.
The Greeks expect a Savior from the west,*

Who shall not come, men say, in clouds and glory,
But in the omnipresence of that spirit
In which all live and are. Ominous signs
Are blazon'd broadly on the noonday sky;
One saw a red cross stamp'd upon the sun;

It has rain'd blood; and monstrous births declare
The secret wrath of Nature and her Lord.
The army encamp'd 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
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.
The last news from the camp is, that a thousand
Have sicken'd, and-

Enter a FOURTH MESSENGER.

MAHMUD.

And thou, pale ghost, dim shadow

Of some untimely rumor, speak!

FOURTH MESSENGER.

One comes

Fainting with toil, cover'd with foam and blood;
He stood, he says, upon Clelonites'
Promontory, which o'erlooks the isles that groan
Under the Briton's frown, and all their waters
Then trembling in the splendor of the moon,
When as the wandering clouds unveil'd or hid
Her boundless light, he saw two adverse fleets
Stalk through the night in the horizon's glimmer,

It is reported that this Messiah had arrived at a seaport near Lacedæmon in an American brig. The association of names and ideas is irresistibly ludicrous, but the prevalence of such a rumor strongly marks the state of popular enthusiasm in Greece.

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
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 dream'd he saw the Turkish admiral
And two the loftiest of our ships of war,
With the bright image of the queen of heaven,
Who hid, perhaps, her face for grief, reversed;
And the abhorred cross-

[blocks in formation]

O Slavery thou frost of the world's prime,

Killing its flowers and leaving its thorns bare Thy touch has stamp'd these limbs with crime, These brows thy branding garland bear; But the free heart, the impassive soul, Scorn thy control!

[blocks in formation]

Citadels and marts, and they

Who live and die there, have been ours, And may be thine, and must decay;

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

Rule the present from the past;
On all this world of men inherits
Their seal is set.

SEMICHORUS IL

Hear ye the blast, Whose Orphic thunder thrilling calls From ruin her Titanian walls? Whose spirit shakes the sapless bones

Of Slavery? Argos, Corinth, Crete, Hear, and from their mountain thrones The demons and the nymphs repeat The harmony.

SEMICHORUS I. I hear! I hear!

SEMICHORUS II.

The world's eyeless charioteer,
Destiny, is hurrying by!

What faith is crush'd, what empire bleeds
Beneath her earthquake-footed steeds?
What eagle-winged victory sits

At her right hand? what shadow flits
Before? what splendor rolls behind?
Ruin and Renovation cry,
Who but we?

SEMICHORUS 1.

I hear! I hear!

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,
The 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, The foul cubs like their parents are, Their den is in their guilty mind,

And Conscience feeds them with despair.

But raised above thy fellow-men

By 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;

Thy 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,
And all its narrow circles-it is much.

I honor 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 apprehend 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!
Moreover, thou disdainest us and ours;
Thou art as God, whom thou contemplatest.

AHASUERUS.

Disdain thee?-not the worm beneath my 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
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 undying. Earth and ocean,
Space, and the isles of life or light that gem
The sapphire floods of interstellar air,
This firmament pavilion'd upon chaos,
With all its cressets of immortal fire,
Whose outwalls, bastion'd impregnably
Against 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,
Is 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;
Naught is but that it 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 ?
They cast on all things, surest, brightest, best,
Doubt, insecurity, astonishment.

AHASUERUS.

Mistake me not! All is contain'd 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
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,
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 open'd-look, and lo!
The coming age is shadow'd on the past
As on a glass.

MAHMUD.

Wild, wilder thoughts convulse
My spirit-Did not Mahomet the Second
Win Stamboul?

AHASUERUS.

The mingled battle-cry-ha! hear I not
EV TOUT VIKη. Allah, Illah, Allah!

AHASUERUS.

The 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
Glimmers 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
Directs the torrent of that tide of men,
And seems he is-Mahomet.

AHASUERUS.

What thou seest

Is but the ghost of thy forgotten dream;

A dream itself, yet less, perhaps, than that
Thou call'st reality. Thou mayst behold
How cities, on which empire sleeps enthroned,
Bow their tower'd crests to mutability.

Thou wouldst ask that giant spirit Poised by the flood, e'en on the height thou holdest

The written fortunes of thy house and faith.
Thou wouldst cite one out of the grave to tell
How what was born in blood must die.

MAHMUD.

Have power on me! I see

AHASUERUS.

MAHMUD.

A far whisper

Terrible silence.

What hearest thou?

AHASUERUS.

What succeeds?

Thou mayst now learn how the full tide of power
Ebbs to its depths.--Inheritor of glory,

Conceived in darkness, born in blood, and nourish'd
With tears and toil, thou seest the mortal throes
Thy words Of that whose birth was but the same. The Past
Now stands before thee like an Incarnation
Of the To-come; yet wouldst thou commune with
That 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 call'd it from the uncreated deep,
Yon cloud of war, with its tempestuous phantoms
Of raging death; and draw with mighty will
The imperial shade hither.

MAHMUD.

The sound

As of the asault 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 enginery,
The 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,
And one sweet laugh, most horrible to hear,
As of a joyous infant waked and playing

[Exil AHASUERUS.

MAHMUD.

Approach!

PHANTOM.

I come

Thence whither thou must go! The grave is fitter
To take the living, than give up the dead;
Yet has thy faith prevail'd, and I am here.
The 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.-

A later empire nods in its decay;

With its dead mother's breast; and now more loud The autumn of a greener faith is come,

vol. xii. p. 223.

* For the vision of Mahmud of the taking of Constantinople in 1445, see Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, The manner of the invocation of the spirit of Mahomet the Second will be censured as overdrawn. I could easily have made the Jew a regular conjuror, and the phantom an ordinary host. I have preferred to represent the Jew as disclaiming all pretension, or even belief, in supernatural agency, and as tempting Mahmud to that state of mind in which ideas may be supposed to assume the force of sensations, through the confusion of thought with the objects of thought, and the excess of passion animating the creations of imagination.

It is a sort of natural magic, susceptible of being exercised in

a degree by any one who should have made himself master of the secret associations of another's thoughts.

And wolfish change, like winter, howls to strip
The foliage in which Fame, the eagle, built
Her aëry, while Dominion whelp'd below.
The 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
A throne for thee, round which thine empire lies
Boundless and mute; and for thy subjects thou,
Like us, shall rule the ghosts of murder'd life,
The phantoms of the powers who rule thee now-
Mutinous passions, and conflicting fears,

« ForrigeFortsett »