SEMICHORUS II.

If Hell should entomb thee,

To Hell shall her high hearts bend.

SEMICHORUS I.

If Annihilation

SEMICHORUS II.

Dust let her glories be!
And a name and a nation

Be 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.

MAHMUD (starting from his sleep).

IIO

Man the Seraglio-guard! make fast the gate.
What! from a cannonade of three short hours?
'Tis false that breach towards the Bosphorus
Cannot be practicable yet-who stirs?
Stand to the match; that when the foe prevails
One spark may mix in reconciling ruin

The conqueror and the conquered! Heave the

tower

Into the gap-wrench off the roof.

Enter HASSAN.

120

Ha! what!

The truth of day lightens upon my dream,
And I am Mahmud still.

Is strangely moved.

HASSAN.

Your Sublime Highness

MAHMUD.

The times do cast strange shadows

On 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 me
As thus from sleep into the troubled day;
It shakes me as the tempest shakes the sea, 135
Leaving no figure upon memory's glass.
Would that-no matter. Thou didst say
knewest

A Jew, whose spirit is a chronicle

thou

Of strange and secret and forgotten things.
I bade thee summon him :-'tis said his tribe
Dream, and are wise interpreters of dreams.

HASSAN.

The Jew of whom I spake is old,—so old
He seems to have outlived a world's decay;
The hoary mountains and the wrinkled ocean
Seem younger still than he ;-his hair and beard
Are whiter than the tempest-sifted snow;
His cold pale limbs and pulseless arteries
Are like the fibres of a cloud instinct

141

With light, and to the soul that quickens them
Are as the atoms of the mountain-drift
To the winter wind:-but from his eye looks
forth

A life of unconsumèd thought which pierces
The present, and the past, and the to-come.
Some say that this is he whom the great prophet
Jesus, the son of Joseph, for his mockery
Mocked with the curse of immortality.
Some feign that he is Enoch: others dream
He was pre-adamite and has survived

150

Cycles of generation and of ruin.

The sage, in truth, by dreadful abstinence
And 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 science
Over those strong and secret things and thoughts
Which others fear and know not.

MAHMUD.

I would talk 161

With this old Jew.

HASSAN.

Thy will is even now

Made known to him, where he dwells in a sea

cavern

'Mid the Demonesi, less accessible

Than thou or God! He who would question him

Must sail alone at sunset, where the stream
Of Ocean sleeps around those foamless isles,
When the young moon is westering as now,
And evening airs wander upon the wave; 169
And when the pines of that bee-pasturing isle,
Green Erebinthus, quench the fiery shadow
Of his gilt prow within the sapphire water,
Then must the lonely 'helmsman cry aloud
Ahasuerus!" and the caverns round

66

Will answer " Ahasuerus! If his prayer
Be granted, a faint meteor will arise
Lighting him over Marmora, and a wind
Will rush out of the sighing pine-forest,
And with the wind a storm of harmony
Unutterably sweet, and pilot him
Through the soft twilight to the Bosphorus:
Thence at the hour and place and circumstance
Fit for the matter of their conference

180

The Jew appears. Few dare, and few who dare
Win, the desired communion-but that shout
Bodes--
(a shout within.)

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 yoked
He, I, and all things shall compel-enough. 190
Silence those mutineers-that drunken crew,
That crowd about the pilot in the storm.
Aye! strike the foremost shorter by a head!
They weary me, and I have need of rest.
Kings are like stars-they rise and set, they have
The worship of the world, but no repose.

CHORUS.

[Exeunt severally.

Worlds on worlds are rolling ever
From creation to decay,

Like the bubbles on a river

Sparkling, bursting, borne away.

But they are still immortal

Who, through birth's orient portal

200

And death's dark chasm hurrying to and fro, Clothe their unceasing flight

In the brief dust and light

Gathered 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 last On Death's bare ribs had cast.

A

power

from the unknown God,

A Promethean conqueror came;

Like a triumphal path he trod

The thorns of death and shame.
A mortal shape to him
Was like the vapour dim

Which the orient planet animates with light
Hell, Sin, and Slavery came,

Like blood-hounds mild and tame,

210

Nor preyed, until their Lord had taken flight; The moon of Mahomet

Arose, and it shall set:

221

While blazoned as on heaven's immortal noon The cross leads generations on.

Swift as the radiant shapes of sleep

From one whose dreams are Paradise Fly, 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 air

Fled from the folding star of Bethlehem :

Apollo, Pan, and Love,

And even Olympian Jove,

230

Grew 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.