Alas!

HASSAN.

MAHMUD.

The fleet which, like a flock of clouds1
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! Repulsèd on the waters,2
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 Phanæ, saw

The wreck

1 Although the opening of this speech of Mahmud, which is here pointed according to the first edition, might seem at first sight to be an accidentally unfinished sentence, I do not think there is really any imper fection; nor should I take it to be what Mr. Rossetti makes it (the first of the series of exclamatory sentences), by substituting a note of admiration for a full-stop after banner. It seems to me that Mahmud begins to draw Hassan to speak of the fleet,—that when he says 'But the fleet" he means "But what do you say about the fleet?"-and that, on Hassan's exclaiming "Alas!"-he finishes his own question with an amplifying affirmation in lines 460 and 461, and then, knowing something about the matter, bursts out in angry exclamations, to come back at last in line 476 to his demand on Hassan as narrator.

66

2 This passage is of course punctuated as in Shelley's edition; but Mr. Rossetti substitutes a note of exclama

460

465

470

tion for a comma after waters,—thus, as he says, “making the phrase follow on along with the exclamatory sentences which precede it." He adds that, with the original punctuation, "the only sense which can be attached to the clause is- We being repulsed on the waters, they [the waters] own no more the thunder-bearing_banner of Mahmud.' But," he proceeds," this sense, if intended, is expressed with a total defiance of syntax: and it seems to me a good deal safer to understand the meaning as I have given it." This is another case of making out Shelley's grammar laxer than it is; and it is also incorrect to say that the "only sense which can be attached" to Shelley's version is that expounded by Mr. Rossetti. Another sense, to me perfectly obvious, is "They [the waters] own no more the thunder-bearing banner of Mahmud, [that banner being] repulsed on the waters." Surely there can be no serious doubt that that is the meaning.

MAHMUD.

The caves of the Icarian isles

Hold each to the other in loud mockery,1

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:2 475 Interpret thou their voice!

HASSAN.

My presence bore

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

480

The agile Hydriote barks with press of sail
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 crystalline3 depths that stainless sea,

And shook Heaven's roof of golden morning clouds,

435

490

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 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 glimmered behind, before,
Among, around us; and that fatal sign

Dried with its beams the strength in1 Moslem hearts,
As the sun drinks the dew.-What more?

495

500

We fled !—

Our noonday path over the sanguine foam
Was beaconed, -and the glare struck the sun pale,-2
By our consuming transports: the fierce light
Made all the shadows of our sails blood-red,

505

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 perished!
We met the vultures legioned in the air
Stemming the torrent of the tainted wind;

510

515

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 damnèd soul,3

1 So in Shelley's edition; but of in Mrs. Shelley's and Mr. Rossetti's editions.

2 In Shelley's edition and Mrs. Shelley's two editions of 1839 there is no stop whatever after pale,-clearly an accidental omission of the stop corres

520

ponding with that after beaconed. In some of Mrs. Shelley's later editions there is a comma at beaconed and a comma at pale.

3 In Shelley's edition there is a comma here, and a full-stop at the end of line 521. Mrs. Shelley trans

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.1
We met night three hours to the west of Patmos,
And with night, tempest

525

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
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.—

530

HASSAN.

Fear not the Russian :

540

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.
After the war is fought, yield the sleek Russian
That which thou canst1 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!

(Enter second Messenger.)

SECOND MESSENGER.

Nauplia, Tripolizza, Mothon, Athens,

Navarin, Artas, Monembasia,

Corinth and Thebes are carried by assault,

545

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.

1 In Shelley's edition can'st.