Time: Sunset

SCENE:

We strew these opiate flowersOn thy restless pillow,--They were stripped from Orient bowers,By the Indian billow.Be thy sleepCalm and deep,Like theirs who fell--not ours who weep!

INDIAN:Away, unlovely dreams!Away, false shapes of sleepBe his, as Heaven seems,Clear, and bright, and deep!Soft as love, and calm as death,Sweet as a summer night without a breath.

CHORUS:Sleep, sleep! our song is ladenWith the soul of slumber;It was sung by a Samian maiden,Whose lover was of the numberWho now keepThat calm sleepWhence none may wake, where none shall weep.

INDIAN:I touch thy temples pale!I breathe my soul on thee!And could my prayers avail,All my joy should beDead, and I would live to weep,So thou mightst win one hour of quiet sleep.

CHORUS:Breathe low, lowThe spell of the mighty mistress now!When Conscience lulls her sated snake,And Tyrants sleep, let Freedom wake.Breathe low--lowThe words which, like secret fire, shall flowThrough the veins of the frozen earth--low, low!

Life may change, but it may fly not;Hope may vanish, but can die not;Truth be veiled, but still it burneth;Love repulsed,--but it returneth!

Yet were life a charnel whereHope lay coffined with Despair;Yet were truth a sacred lie,Love were lust--

If LibertyLent not life its soul of light,Hope its iris of delight,Truth its prophet's robe to wear,Love its power to give and bear.

CHORUS:In the great morning of the world,The Spirit of God with might unfurledThe flag of Freedom over Chaos,And all its banded anarchs fled,Like vultures frighted from Imaus,Before an earthquake's tread.--So from Time's tempestuous dawnFreedom's splendour burst and shone:--Thermopylae and MarathonCaught like mountains beacon-lighted,The springing Fire.--The winged gloryOn Philippi half-alighted,Like an eagle on a promontory.Its unwearied wings could fanThe quenchless ashes of Milan.From age to age, from man to man,It lived; and lit from land to landFlorence, Albion, Switzerland.

Then night fell; and, as from night,Reassuming fiery flight,From the West swift Freedom came,Against the course of Heaven and doom.A second sun arrayed in flame,To burn, to kindle, to illume.From far Atlantis its young beamsChased the shadows and the dreams.France, with all her sanguine steams,Hid, but quenched it not; againThrough clouds its shafts of glory rainFrom utmost Germany to Spain.As an eagle fed with morningScorns the embattled tempest's warning,When she seeks her aerie hangingIn the mountain-cedar's hair,And her brood expect the clangingOf her wings through the wild air,Sick with famine:--Freedom, soTo what of Greece remaineth nowReturns; her hoary ruins glowLike Orient mountains lost in day;Beneath the safety of her wingsHer renovated nurslings prey,And in the naked lighteningsOf truth they purge their dazzled eyes.Let Freedom leave--where'er she flies,A Desert, or a Paradise:Let the beautiful and the braveShare her glory, or a grave.

With the gifts of gladnessGreece did thy cradle strew;

With the tears of sadnessGreece did thy shroud bedew!

With an orphan's affectionShe followed thy bier through Time;

And at thy resurrectionReappeareth, like thou, sublime!

If Heaven should resume thee,To Heaven shall her spirit ascend;

If Hell should entomb thee,To Hell shall her high hearts bend.

If Annihilation--

Dust let her glories be!And a name and a nationBe forgotten, Freedom, with thee!

INDIAN:His brow grows darker--breathe not--move not!He starts--he shudders--ye that love not,With your panting loud and fast,Have awakened him at last.

Man the Seraglio-guard! make fast the gate!What! from a cannonade of three short hours?'Tis false! that breach towards the BosphorusCannot be practicable yet--who stirs?Stand to the match; that when the foe prevailsOne spark may mix in reconciling ruinThe conqueror and the conquered! Heave the towerInto the gap--wrench off the roof!Ha! what!The truth of day lightens upon my dreamAnd I am Mahmud still.

HASSAN:Your Sublime HighnessIs strangely moved.

MAHMUD:The times do cast strange shadowsOn those who watch and who must rule their course,Lest they, being first in peril as in glory,Be whelmed in the fierce ebb:--and these are of them.Thrice has a gloomy vision hunted meAs thus from sleep into the troubled day;It shakes me as the tempest shakes the sea,Leaving no figure upon memory's glass.Would that--no matter. Thou didst say thou knewestA Jew, whose spirit is a chronicleOf strange and secret and forgotten things.I bade thee summon him:--'tis said his tribeDream, and are wise interpreters of dreams.

HASSAN:The Jew of whom I spake is old,--so oldHe seems to have outlived a world's decay;The hoary mountains and the wrinkled oceanSeem younger still than he;--his hair and beardAre whiter than the tempest-sifted snow;His cold pale limbs and pulseless arteriesAre like the fibres of a cloud instinctWith light, and to the soul that quickens themAre as the atoms of the mountain-driftTo the winter wind:--but from his eye looks forthA life of unconsumed thought which piercesThe Present, and the Past, and the To-come.Some say that this is he whom the great prophetJesus, the son of Joseph, for his mockery,Mocked with the curse of immortality.Some feign that he is Enoch: others dreamHe was pre-adamite and has survivedCycles of generation and of ruin.The sage, in truth, by dreadful abstinenceAnd conquering penance of the mutinous flesh,Deep contemplation, and unwearied study,In years outstretched beyond the date of man,May have attained to sovereignty and scienceOver those strong and secret things and thoughtsWhich others fear and know not.

MAHMUD:I would talkWith this old Jew.

HASSAN:Thy will is even nowMade known to him, where he dwells in a sea-cavern'Mid the Demonesi, less accessibleThan thou or God! He who would question himMust sail alone at sunset, where the streamOf Ocean sleeps around those foamless isles,When the young moon is westering as now,And evening airs wander upon the wave;And when the pines of that bee-pasturing isle,Green Erebinthus, quench the fiery shadowOf his gilt prow within the sapphire water,Then must the lonely helmsman cry aloud'Ahasuerus!' and the caverns roundWill answer 'Ahasuerus!' If his prayerBe granted, a faint meteor will ariseLighting him over Marmora, and a windWill rush out of the sighing pine-forest,And with the wind a storm of harmonyUnutterably sweet, and pilot himThrough the soft twilight to the Bosphorus:Thence at the hour and place and circumstanceFit for the matter of their conferenceThe Jew appears. Few dare, and few who dareWin the desired communion--but that shoutBodes--

MAHMUD:Evil, doubtless; Like all human sounds.Let me converse with spirits.

HASSAN:That shout again.

MAHMUD:This Jew whom thou hast summoned--

HASSAN:Will be here--

MAHMUD:When the omnipotent hour to which are yokedSilence those mutineers--that drunken crew,That crowd about the pilot in the storm.Ay! strike the foremost shorter by a head!They weary me, and I have need of rest.Kinks are like stars--they rise and set, they haveThe worship of the world, but no repose.

CHORUS:Worlds on worlds are rolling everFrom creation to decay,Like the bubbles on a riverSparkling, bursting, borne away.But they are still immortalWho, through birth's orient portalAnd death's dark chasm hurrying to and fro,Clothe their unceasing flightIn the brief dust and lightGathered around their chariots as they go;New shapes they still may weave,New gods, new laws receive,Bright or dim are they as the robes they lastOn Death's bare ribs had cast.

A power from the unknown God,A Promethean conqueror, came;Like a triumphal path he trodThe thorns of death and shame.A mortal shape to himWas like the vapour dimWhich the orient planet animates with light;Like bloodhounds mild and tame,Nor preyed, until their Lord had taken flight;The moon of MahometArose, and it shall set:While blazoned as on Heaven's immortal noonThe cross leads generations on.

Swift as the radiant shapes of sleepFrom one whose dreams are ParadiseFly, when the fond wretch wakes to weep,And Day peers forth with her blank eyes;So fleet, so faint, so fair,The Powers of earth and airFled from the folding-star of Bethlehem:Apollo, Pan, and Love,And even Olympian JoveGrew weak, for killing Truth had glared on them;Our hills and seas and streams,Dispeopled of their dreams,Their waters turned to blood, their dew to tears,Wailed for the golden years.

MAHMUD:More gold? our ancestors bought gold with victory,And shall I sell it for defeat?

DAOOD:The JanizarsClamour for pay.

MAHMUD:Go! bid them pay themselvesWith Christian blood! Are there no Grecian virginsWhose shrieks and spasms and tears they may enjoy?No infidel children to impale on spears?No hoary priests after that PatriarchWho bent the curse against his country's heart,Which clove his own at last? Go! bid them kill,Blood is the seed of gold.

DAOOD:It has been sown,And yet the harvest to the sicklemenIs as a grain to each.

MAHMUD:Then, take this signet,Unlock the seventh chamber in which lieThe treasures of victorious Solyman,--An empire's spoil stored for a day of ruin.O spirit of my sires! is it not come?The prey-birds and the wolves are gorged and sleep;But these, who spread their feast on the red earth,Hunger for gold, which fills not.--See them fed;Then, lead them to the rivers of fresh death.O miserable dawn, after a nightMore glorious than the day which it usurped!O faith in God! O power on earth! O wordOf the great prophet, whose o'ershadowing wingsDarkened the thrones and idols of the West,Now bright!--For thy sake cursed be the hour,Even as a father by an evil child,When the orient moon of Islam rolled in triumphFrom Caucasus to White Ceraunia!Ruin above, and anarchy below;Terror without, and treachery within;The Chalice of destruction full, and allThirsting to drink; and who among us daresTo dash it from his lips? and where is Hope?

HASSAN:The lamp of our dominion still rides high;One God is God--Mahomet is His prophet.Four hundred thousand Moslems, from the limitsOf utmost Asia, irresistiblyThrong, like full clouds at the Sirocco's cry;But not like them to weep their strength in tears:They bear destroying lightning, and their stepWakes earthquake to consume and overwhelm,And reign in ruin. Phrygian Olympus,Tmolus, and Latmos, and Mycale, roughenWith horrent arms; and lofty ships even now,Like vapours anchored to a mountain's edge,Freighted with fire and whirlwind, wait at ScalaThe convoy of the ever-veering wind.Samos is drunk with blood;--the Greek has paidBrief victory with swift loss and long despair.The false Moldavian serfs fled fast and farWhen the fierce shout of 'Allah-illa-Allah!'Rose like the war-cry of the northern windWhich kills the sluggish clouds, and leaves a flockOf wild swans struggling with the naked storm.So were the lost Greeks on the Danube's day!If night is mute, yet the returning sunKindles the voices of the morning birds;Nor at thy bidding less exultinglyThan birds rejoicing in the golden day,The Anarchies of Africa unleashTheir tempest-winged cities of the sea,To speak in thunder to the rebel world.Like sulphurous clouds, half-shattered by the storm,They sweep the pale Aegean, while the QueenOf Ocean, bound upon her island-throne,Far in the West, sits mourning that her sonsWho frown on Freedom spare a smile for thee:Russia still hovers, as an eagle mightWithin a cloud, near which a kite and craneHang tangled in inextricable fight,To stoop upon the victor;--for she fearsThe name of Freedom, even as she hates thine.But recreant Austria loves thee as the GraveLoves Pestilence, and her slow dogs of warFleshed with the chase, come up from Italy,And howl upon their limits; for they seeThe panther, Freedom, fled to her old cover,Amid seas and mountains, and a mightier broodCrouch round. What Anarch wears a crown or mitre,Or bears the sword, or grasps the key of gold,Whose friends are not thy friends, whose foes thy foes?Our arsenals and our armouries are full;Our forts defy assault; ten thousand cannonLie ranged upon the beach, and hour by hourTheir earth-convulsing wheels affright the city;The galloping of fiery steeds makes paleThe Christian merchant; and the yellow JewHides his hoard deeper in the faithless earth.Like clouds, and like the shadows of the clouds,Over the hills of Anatolia,Swift in wide troops the Tartar chivalrySweep;--the far flashing of their starry lancesReverberates the dying light of day.We have one God, one King, one Hope, one Law;But many-headed Insurrection standsDivided in itself, and soon must fall.

MAHMUD:Proud words, when deeds come short, are seasonable:Look, Hassan, on yon crescent moon, emblazonedUpon that shattered flag of fiery cloudWhich leads the rear of the departing day;Wan emblem of an empire fading now!See how it trembles in the blood-red air,And like a mighty lamp whose oil is spentShrinks on the horizon's edge, while, from above,One star with insolent and victorious lightHovers above its fall, and with keen beams,Like arrows through a fainting antelope,Strikes its weak form to death.

HASSAN:Even as that moonRenews itself--

MAHMUD:Shall we be not renewed!Far other bark than ours were needed nowTo stem the torrent of descending time:The Spirit that lifts the slave before his lordStalks through the capitals of armed kings,And spreads his ensign in the wilderness:Exults in chains; and, when the rebel falls,Cries like the blood of Abel from the dust;And the inheritors of the earth, like beastsWhen earthquake is unleashed, with idiot fearCower in their kingly dens--as I do now.What were Defeat when Victory must appal?Or Danger, when Security looks pale?--How said the messenger--who, from the fortIslanded in the Danube, saw the battleOf Bucharest?--that--

HASSAN:Ibrahim's scimitarDrew with its gleam swift victory from Heaven,To burn before him in the night of battle--A light and a destruction.

MAHMUD:Ay! the dayWas ours: but how?--

HASSAN:The light Wallachians,The Arnaut, Servian, and Albanian alliesFled from the glance of our artilleryAlmost before the thunderstone alit.One half the Grecian army made a bridgeOf safe and slow retreat, with Moslem dead;The other--

MAHMUD:Speak--tremble not.--

HASSAN:IslandedBy victor myriads, formed in hollow squareWith rough and steadfast front, and thrice flung backThe deluge of our foaming cavalry;Thrice their keen wedge of battle pierced our lines.Our baffled army trembled like one manBefore 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 approached; till, like a field of cornUnder the hook of the swart sickleman,The band, intrenched in mounds of Turkish dead,Grew weak and few.--Then said the Pacha, 'Slaves,Render yourselves--they have abandoned 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, remainConstant:'--he bowed his head, and his heart burst.A third exclaimed, 'There is a refuge, tyrant,Where thou darest not pursue, and canst not harmShouldst thou pursue; there we shall meet again.'Then held his breath, and, after a brief spasm,The indignant spirit cast its mortal garmentAmong the slain--dead earth upon the earth!So these survivors, each by different ways,Some strange, all sudden, none dishonourable,Met in triumphant death; and when our armyClosed in, while yet wonder, and awe, and shameHeld back the base hyaenas of the battleThat 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 dread spiritOf the old saviours of the land we ruleHad lifted in its anger, wandering by;--Or if there burned within the dying manUnquenchable disdain of death, and faithCreating what it feigned;--I cannot tell--But he cried, 'Phantoms of the free, we come!Armies of the Eternal, ye who strikeTo dust the citadels of sanguine kings,And shake the souls throned on their stony hearts,And thaw their frostwork diadems like dew;--O ye who float around this clime, and weaveThe garment of the glory which it wears,Whose fame, though earth betray the dust it clasped,Lies sepulchred in monumental thought;--Progenitors of all that yet is great,Ascribe to your bright senate, O acceptIn your high ministrations, us, your sons--Us first, and the more glorious yet to come!And ye, weak conquerors! giants who look paleWhen the crushed worm rebels beneath your tread,The vultures and the dogs, your pensioners tame,Are overgorged; but, like oppressors, stillThey crave the relic of Destruction's feast.The exhalations and the thirsty windsAre sick with blood; the dew is foul with death;Heaven's light is quenched in slaughter: thus, where'erUpon your camps, cities, or towers, or fleets,The obscene birds the reeking remnants castOf these dead limbs,--upon your streams and mountains,Upon your fields, your gardens, and your housetops,Where'er the winds shall creep, or the clouds fly,Or the dews fall, or the angry sun look downWith poisoned light--Famine, and Pestilence,And Panic, shall wage war upon our side!Nature from all her boundaries is movedAgainst ye: Time has found ye light as foam.The Earth rebels; and Good and Evil stakeTheir empire o'er the unborn world of menOn this one cast;--but ere the die be thrown,The renovated genius of our race,Proud umpire of the impious game, descends,A seraph-winged Victory, bestridingThe 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 ore thy lips had paintedTheir 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 wrenched me within,And I have spoken words I fear and hate;Yet would I die for--

MAHMUD:Live! oh live! outliveMe and this sinking empire. But the fleet--