Her aërie, while Dominion whelped below.
The storm is in its branches, and the frost
Is on its leaves, and the blank deep expects
Oblivion on oblivion, spoil on spoil,

Ruin on ruin :-Thou art slow, my son;
The Anarchs of the world of darkness keep
A throne for thee, round which thine empire lies
Boundless and mute; and for thy subjects

thou,

881

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 together
Over its ruins in the world of death:-

890

And if the trunk be dry, yet shall the seed
Unfold itself even in the shape of that
Which gathers birth in its decay. Woe! woe!
To the weak people tangled in the grasp
Of its last spasms.

MAHMUD.

Spirit, woe to all!

Woe to the wronged and the avenger! Woe
To 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
Imperial shadow of the thing I am,
When, how, by whom, Destruction must accom-

plish

Her consummation?

say,

900

PHANTOM.

Ask the cold pale Hour,

Rich in reversion of impending death,
When he shall fall upon whose ripe grey hairs
Sit Care, and Sorrow, and Infirmity—

The weight which Crime, whose wings are plumed with years,

Leaves in his flight from ravaged heart to heart Over the heads of men, under which burthen They bow themselves unto the grave: fond wretch!

He leans upon his crutch, and talks of years 910 To come, and how in hours of youth renewed He will renew lost joys, and

VOICE without.

Victory! Victory! [The Phantom vanishes.

MAHMUD.

What sound of the importunate earth has

broken

My mighty trance.

VOICE without.

Victory! Victory!

MAHMUD.

Weak lightning before darkness! poor faint smile

Of dying Islam! Voice which art the response Of 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? 920

It matters not!—for naught we see or dream,
Possess, or lose, or grasp at, can be worth
More than it gives or teaches. Come what may,
The future must become the past, and I
As they were to whom once this present hour,
This gloomy crag of time to which I cling,
Seemed an Elysian isle of peace and joy
Never to be attained.-I must rebuke
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

929

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, 940 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! 950 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 earthquake, 'mid

The momentary oceans of the lightning,
Or to some toppling promontory proud 960
Of solid tempest whose black pyramid,
Riven, overhangs the founts intensely bright-
'ning

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,

970

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,
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,

980

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

990

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,
She knew not pain or guilt;