MAHMUD

But raised above thy fellow-men

By thought, as I by power.

AHASUERUS

Thou sayest so.

MAHMUD

Thou art an adept in the difficult lore

Of Greek and Frank philosophy; thou number

est

The flowers, and thou measurest the stars;

Thou severest element from element;

Thy spirit is present in the past, and sees

The birth of this old world through all its cycles
Of desolation and of loveliness,

And when man was not, and how man became
The monarch and the slave of this low sphere,
And all its narrow circles—it is much.

I honor thee, and would be what thou art
Were I not what I am; but the unborn hour,
Cradled in fear and hope, conflicting storms,
Who shall unveil? Nor thou, nor I, nor any
Mighty or wise. I apprehended not

What thou hast taught me, but I now perceive
That thou art no interpreter of dreams;
Thou dost not own that art, device, or God,
Can make the future present - let it come!
Moreover thou disdainest us and ours!
Thou art as God, whom thou contemplatest.

755 apprehended, Shelley Errata, Williams transcript | appre hend, Shelley, 1822.

Disdain thee?

AHASUERUS

not the worm beneath thy feet!

The Fathomless has care for meaner things

Than thou canst dream, and has made pride for those

Who would be what they may not, or would seem
That which they are not. Sultan! talk no more
Of thee and me, the future and the past;
But look on that which cannot change-the One,
The unborn and the undying. Earth and Ocean,
Space, and the isles of life or light that gem
The sapphire floods of interstellar air,
This firmament pavilioned upon chaos,

With all its cressets of immortal fire,
Whose outwall, bastionèd impregnably

Against the escape of boldest thoughts, repels them
As Calpe the Atlantic clouds - this Whole
Of suns, and worlds, and men, and beasts, and
flowers,

With all the silent or tempestuous workings

By which they have been, are, or cease to be,

Is but a vision; all that it inherits

Are motes of a sick eye, bubbles, and dreams ;
Thought is its cradle and its grave, nor less
The future and the past are idle shadows
Of thought's eternal flight — they have no being ;
Nought is but that which feels itself to be.

MAHMUD

What meanest thou? thy words stream like a

tempest

Of dazzling mist within my brain — they shake

The earth on which I stand, and hang like night On Heaven above me. What can they avail? They cast on all things, surest, brightest, best, Doubt, insecurity, astonishment.

Mistake me not!

AHASUERUS

All is contained in each.

Dodona's forest to an acorn's cup

Is that which has been or will be, to that

Which is the absent to the present. Thought

Alone, and its quick elements, Will, Passion,
Reason, Imagination, cannot die ;

They are what that which they regard appears,
The stuff whence mutability can weave

All that it hath dominion o'er

worlds, worms,

Empires, and superstitions. What has thought To do with time, or place, or circumstance?

Wouldst thou behold the future? ask and have!

Knock and it shall be opened — look, and lo!

The coming age is shadowed on the past

As on a glass.

MAHMUD

Wild, wilder thoughts convulse

My spirit. Did not Mahomet the Second
Win Stamboul?

AHASUERUS

Thou wouldst ask that giant spirit

The written fortunes of thy house and faith.
Thou wouldst cite one out of the grave to tell
How what was born in blood must die.

MAHMUD

Thy words

Have

power on

me! I see

As of the assault of an imperial city,
The hiss of inextinguishable fire,

The roar of giant cannon; the earth-quaking
Fall of vast bastions and precipitous towers,
The shock of crags shot from strange enginery,
The clash of wheels, and clang of armèd hoofs
And crash of brazen mail, as of the wreck
Of adamantine mountains; the mad blast
Of trumpets, and the neigh of raging steeds,
And shrieks of women whose thrill jars the blood,
And one sweet laugh, most horrible to hear,
As of a joyous infant waked, and playing
With its dead mother's breast; and now more loud
The mingled battle-cry-ha! hear I not
'EV TOUTO VÍKη.

Allah-illah-Allah!

AHASUERUS

The sulphurous mist is raised - thou seest

MAHMUD

A chasm,

As of two mountains, in the wall of Stamboul;

And in that ghastly breach the Islamites,
Like giants on the ruins of a world,
Stand in the light of sunrise. In the dust
Glimmers a kingless diadem, and one
Of regal port has cast himself beneath
The stream of war. Another proudly clad
In golden arms spurs a Tartarian barb
Into the gap, and with his iron mace
Directs the torrent of that tide of men,

And seems

he is

Mahomet!

AHASUERUS

What thou seest

Is but the ghost of thy forgotten dream;
A dream itself, yet less, perhaps, than that
Thou call'st reality. Thou mayst behold
How cities, on which empire sleeps enthroned,
Bow their towered crests to mutability.

Poised by the flood, e'en on the height thou holdest,
Thou mayst now learn how the full tide of power
Ebbs to its depths. Inheritor of glory

Conceived in darkness, born in blood, and nourished
With tears and toil, thou seest the mortal throes
Of that whose birth was but the same. The Past
Now stands before thee like an Incarnation
Of the To-come; yet wouldst thou commune with
That portion of thyself which was ere thou
Didst start for this brief race whose crown is death,
Dissolve with that strong faith and fervent passion,
Which called it from the uncreated deep,
Yon cloud of war with its tempestuous phantoms
Of raging death; and draw with mighty will
The imperial shade hither.

[Exit AHASUERUS.