This drunkenness of triumph ere it die,

And, dying, bring despair.-"Victory!"--Poor slaves

[Exit MAHMUD.

Voice without. Shout in the jubilee of death! The Greeks

Are as a brood of lions in the net,

Round which the kingly hunters of the earth
Stand smiling! Anarchs, ye whose daily food
Are 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!

SEMICHORUS I.

Victorious Wrong with vulture scream

Salutes the risen 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 lay
In visions of the dawning undelight.

Who shall impede her flight?

Who rob her of her prey?

Voice without. Victory! victory! Russia's famished eagles
Dare not to prey beneath the crescent's light!--

Impale the remnant of the Greeks! despoil!
Violate! make their flesh cheaper than dust!

SEMICHORUS II.

Thou voice which art

The herald of the ill in splendour hid!
Thou echo of the hollow heart

Of Monarchy! bear me to thine abode
When desolation flashes o'er a world destroyed.
Oh bear me to those isles of jagged cloud
Which float like mountains on the earthquakes 'mid
The momentary oceans of the lightning;

Or to some toppling promontory proud

Of solid tempest, whose black pyramid,

Riven, overhangs the founts intensely brightening

Of those dawn-tinted deluges of fire,

Before their waves expire,

When heaven and earth are light, and only light,
In the thunder-night!

Voice without. 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 poisoners
Than Greeks!-Kill! plunder! burn! let none remain!
SEMICHORUS I.

Alas for Liberty,

If numbers, wealth, or unfulfilling years,

D

Or fate, can quell the free!
Alas for Virtue, when

Torments, or contumely, or the sneers

Of erring-judging men,

Can 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 mirror
Before the dazzled eyes of Error,
Alas for thee, image of the Above!

SEMICHORUS II.

Repulse, with plumes from Conquest torn,
Led the Ten-thousand from the limits of the morn
Through 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 become-
The wonder, or the terror, or the tomb,

Of all whose step wakes Power lulled in her savage lair.
But Greece was as a hermit child

Whose fairest thoughts and limbs were built
To woman's growth by dreams so mild

And now

She knew not pain or guilt.

O Victory, blush! and Empire, tremble!
When ye desert the free.

If Greece must be

A wreck, yet shall its fragments re-assemble,
And build themselves again impregnably
In a diviner clime,

To Amphionic music, on some cape sublime
Which frowns above the idle foam of time.

SEMICHORUS I.

Let the tyrants rule the desert they have made;
Let the free possess the paradise they claim;
Be the fortune of our fierce oppressors weighed
With our ruin, our resistance, and our name!
SEMICHORUS II.

Our dead shall be the seed of their decay,
Our survivors be the shadows of their pride;
Our adversity a dream to pass away,
Their dishonour a remembrance to abide.

Voice without. Victory! victory! The bought Briton sends
The 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 holy
This jubilee of unrevenged blood!

Kill! crush! despoil! Let not a Greek escape!

SEMICHORUS I.

Darkness has dawned in the east
On the noon of time:

The death-birds descend to their feast.
From the hungry clime.

Let Freedom and Peace flee far

To a sunnier strand,

And follow Love's folding-star

To the evening land.

SEMICHORUS II.

The young moon has fed

Her exhausted horn

With the sunset's fire

The weak day is dead,

;

But the night is not born;

And, like loveliness panting with wild desire
While it trembles with fear and delight,

Hesperus flies from awakening night,

And pants in its beauty and speed with light
Fast-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 day,
Thou art hidden

From waves on which weary noon
Faints in her summer swoon,

Between kingless continents sinless as Eden,
Around mountains and islands inviolably
Pranked on the sapphire sea.

SEMICHORUS I.

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 breathe,
Burst 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 renew
Her winter weeds outworn:

Heaven smiles, and faiths and empires gleam
Like wrecks of a dissolving dream.

A brighter Hellas rears its mountains
From waves serener far;

A new Peneus rolls his fountains
Against the morning star;

Where fairer Tempes bloom, there sleep
Young 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 more
Calypso 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 joy
Which dawns upon the free,
Although a subtler Sphinx renew
Riddles of death Thebes never knew.
Another Athens shall arise,

And to remoter time

Bequeath, 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 repose

Shall burst, more bright and good
Than 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 urn
Of bitter prophecy !

The world is weary of the past,-
Oh might it die or rest at last!

.

1. OH! there are spirits in the air,

And genii of the evening breeze,
And gentle ghosts with eyes as fair

As starbeams among twilight trees:-
Such lovely ministers to meet

Oft hast thou turned from men thy lonely feet.

2. With mountain winds, and babbling springs, And moonlight seas, that are the voice Of these inexplicable things,

Thou didst hold commune, and rejoice When they did answer thee. But they Cast like a worthless boon thy love away.

3. And thou hast sought in starry eyes

Beams that were never meant for thine,
Another's wealth;-tame sacrifice

To a fond faith! Still dost thou pine?
Still dost thou hope that greeting hands,
Voice, looks, or lips, may answer thy demands?