Mahmud: Approach!

PHANTOM:I comeThence whither thou must go! The grave is fitterTo take the living than give up the dead;Yet has thy faith prevailed, and I am here.The heavy fragments of the power which fellWhen I arose, like shapeless crags and clouds,Hang round my throne on the abyss, and voicesOf strange lament soothe my supreme repose,Wailing for glory never to return.--A later Empire nods in its decay:The autumn of a greener faith is come,And wolfish change, like winter, howls to stripThe foliage in which Fame, the eagle, builtHer aerie, while Dominion whelped below.The storm is in its branches, and the frostIs on its leaves, and the blank deep expectsOblivion on oblivion, spoil on spoil,Ruin on ruin:--Thou art slow, my son;The Anarchs of the world of darkness keepA throne for thee, round which thine empire liesBoundless 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,And hopes that sate themselves on dust, and die!--Stripped of their mortal strength, as thou of thine.Islam must fall, but we will reign togetherOver its ruins in the world of death:--And if the trunk be dry, yet shall the seedUnfold itself even in the shape of thatWhich gathers birth in its decay. Woe! woe!To the weak people tangled in the graspOf its last spasms.

MAHMUD:Spirit, woe to all!Woe to the wronged and the avenger! WoeTo 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,Imperial shadow of the thing I am,When, how, by whom, Destruction must accomplishHer consummation!

PHANTOM:Ask the cold pale Hour,Rich in reversion of impending death,When HE shall fall upon whose ripe gray hairsSit Care, and Sorrow, and Infirmity--The weight which Crime, whose wings are plumed with years,Leaves in his flight from ravaged heart to heartOver the heads of men, under which burthenThey bow themselves unto the grave: fond wretch!He leans upon his crutch, and talks of yearsTo come, and how in hours of youth renewedHe will renew lost joys, and--

MAHMUD:Weak lightning before darkness! poor faint smileOf dying Islam! Voice which art the responseOf hollow weakness! Do I wake and live?Were there such things, or may the unquiet brain,Vexed by the wise mad talk of the old Jew,Have shaped itself these shadows of its fear?It matters not!--for nought we see or dream,Possess, or lose, or grasp at, can be worthMore than it gives or teaches. Come what may,The Future must become the Past, and IAs they were to whom once this present hour,This gloomy crag of time to which I cling,Seemed an Elysian isle of peace and joyNever to be attained.--I must rebukeThis drunkenness of triumph ere it die,And dying, bring despair. Victory! poor slaves!

Shout in the jubilee of death! The GreeksAre as a brood of lions in the netRound which the kingly hunters of the earthStand smiling. Anarchs, ye whose daily foodAre curses, groans, and gold, the fruit of death,From Thule to the girdle of the world,Come, feast! the board groans with the flesh of men;The cup is foaming with a nation's blood,Famine and Thirst await! eat, drink, and die!

Victorious Wrong, with vulture scream,Salutes the rising sun, pursues the flying day!I saw her, ghastly as a tyrant's dream,Perch on the trembling pyramid of night,Beneath which earth and all her realms pavilioned layIn visions of the dawning undelight.Who shall impede her flight?Who rob her of her prey?

Victory! Victory! Russia's famished eaglesDare not to prey beneath the crescent's light.Impale the remnant of the Greeks! despoil!Violate! make their flesh cheaper than dust!

Thou voice which artThe herald of the ill in splendour hid!Thou echo of the hollow heartOf monarchy, bear me to thine abodeWhen desolation flashes o'er a world destroyed:Oh, bear me to those isles of jagged cloudWhich float like mountains on the earthquake, midThe momentary oceans of the lightning,Or to some toppling promontory proudOf solid tempest whose black pyramid,Riven, overhangs the founts intensely bright'ningOf those dawn-tinted deluges of fireBefore their waves expire,When heaven and earth are light, and only lightIn the thunder-night!

Victory! Victory! Austria, Russia, England,And that tame serpent, that poor shadow, France,Cry peace, and that means death when monarchs speak.Ho, there! bring torches, sharpen those red stakes,These chains are light, fitter for slaves and poisonersThan Greeks. Kill! plunder! burn! let none remain.

Alas! for Liberty!If numbers, wealth, or unfulfilling years,Or fate, can quell the free!Alas! for Virtue, whenTorments, or contumely, or the sneersOf erring judging menCan break the heart where it abides.Alas! if Love, whose smile makes this obscure world splendid,Can change with its false times and tides,Like hope and terror,--Alas for Love!And Truth, who wanderest lone and unbefriended,If thou canst veil thy lie-consuming mirrorBefore the dazzled eyes of Error,Alas for thee! Image of the Above.

Repulse, with plumes from conquest torn,Led the ten thousand from the limits of the mornThrough many an hostile Anarchy!At length they wept aloud, and cried, 'The Sea! the Sea!'Through exile, persecution, and despair,Rome was, and young Atlantis shall becomeThe wonder, or the terror, or the tombOf all whose step wakes Power lulled in her savage lair:But Greece was as a hermit-child,Whose fairest thoughts and limbs were builtTo woman's growth, by dreams so mild,She knew not pain or guilt;And now, O Victory, blush! and Empire, trembleWhen ye desert the free--If Greece must beA wreck, yet shall its fragments reassemble,And build themselves again impregnablyIn a diviner clime,To Amphionic music on some Cape sublime,Which frowns above the idle foam of Time.

Let the tyrants rule the desert they have made;Let the free possess the Paradise they claim;Be the fortune of our fierce oppressors weighedWith our ruin, our resistance, and our name!

Our dead shall be the seed of their decay,Our survivors be the shadow of their pride,Our adversity a dream to pass away--Their dishonour a remembrance to abide!

Victory! Victory! The bought Briton sendsThe keys of ocean to the Islamite.--Now shall the blazon of the cross be veiled,And British skill directing Othman might,Thunder-strike rebel victory. Oh, keep holyThis jubilee of unrevenged blood!Kill! crush! despoil! Let not a Greek escape!

Darkness has dawned in the EastOn the noon of time:The death-birds descend to their feastFrom the hungry clime.Let Freedom and Peace flee farTo a sunnier strand,And follow Love's folding-starTo the Evening land!

The young moon has fedHer exhausted hornWith the sunset's fire:The weak day is dead,But the night is not born;And, like loveliness panting with wild desireWhile it trembles with fear and delight,Hesperus flies from awakening night,And pants in its beauty and speed with lightFast-flashing, soft, and bright.Thou beacon of love! thou lamp of the free!Guide us far, far away,To climes where now veiled by the ardour of dayThou art hiddenFrom waves on which weary NoonFaints in her summer swoon,Between kingless continents sinless as Eden,Around mountains and islands inviolablyPranked on the sapphire sea.

Through the sunset of hope,Like the shapes of a dream.What Paradise islands of glory gleam!Beneath Heaven's cope,Their shadows more clear float by--The sound of their oceans, the light of their sky,The music and fragrance their solitudes breatheBurst, like morning on dream, or like Heaven on death,Through the walls of our prison;And Greece, which was dead, is arisen!

CHORUS:The world's great age begins anew,The golden years return,The earth doth like a snake renewHer winter weeds outworn:Heaven smiles, and faiths and empires gleam,Like wrecks of a dissolving dream.

A brighter Hellas rears its mountainsFrom waves serener far;A new Peneus rolls his fountainsAgainst the morning star.Where fairer Tempes bloom, there sleepYoung Cyclads on a sunnier deep.

A loftier Argo cleaves the main,Fraught with a later prize;Another Orpheus sings again,And loves, and weeps, and dies.A new Ulysses leaves once moreCalypso for his native shore.

Oh, write no more the tale of Troy,If earth Death's scroll must be!Nor mix with Laian rage the joyWhich dawns upon the free:Although a subtler Sphinx renewRiddles of death Thebes never knew.

Another Athens shall arise,And to remoter timeBequeath, like sunset to the skies,The splendour of its prime;And leave, if nought so bright may live,All earth can take or Heaven can give.

Saturn and Love their long reposeShall burst, more bright and goodThan all who fell, than One who rose,Than many unsubdued:Not gold, not blood, their altar dowers,But votive tears and symbol flowers.

Oh, cease! must hate and death return?Cease! must men kill and die?Cease! drain not to its dregs the urnOf bitter prophecy.The world is weary of the past,Oh, might it die or rest at last!