Enter MAHMUD, HASSAN, DAOOD, and others.

Go! bid them pay themselves

With Christian blood! Are there no Grecian

virgins

Whose shrieks and spasms and tears they may enjoy?

No infidel children to impale on spears?

No hoary priests after that Patriarch

Who bent the curse against his country's heart, Which clove his own at last? Go! bid them

It has been sown,

And yet the harvest to the sicklemen

Is as a grain to each.

MAHMUD.

Then, take this signet, 250

Unlock the seventh chamber in which lie
The 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. [Exit DAOOD.

259

O! miserable dawn, after a night
More glorious than the day which it usurped!
O, faith in God! O, power on earth! O, word
Of the great prophet, whose o'ershadowing

wings

Darkened the thrones and idols of the West, Now bright!-For thy sake cursèd be the hour, Even as a father by an evil child,

When the Orient moon of Islam rolled in triumph

From Caucasus to White Ceraunia!

Ruin above, and anarchy below;

Terror without, and treachery within;

270

The Chalice of destruction full, and all Thirsting to drink; and who among us dares To 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 limits Of utmost Asia, irresistibly

Throng, like full clouds at the Scirocco's cry; But not like them to weep their strength in

tears:

281

They bear destroying lightning, and their step Wakes earthquake to consume and overwhelm, And reign in ruin. Phrygian Olympus, Tmolus, and Latmos, and Mycale, roughen With horrent arms; and lofty ships even now, Like vapours anchored to a mountain's edge, Freighted with fire and whirlwind, wait at Scala

The convoy of the ever-veering wind.

Samos is drunk with blood;-the Greek has

paid

Brief victory with swift loss and long despair.
The false Moldavian serfs fled fast and far, 289
When the fierce shout of " Allah-illa-Allah!"
Rose like the war-cry of the northern wind
Which kills the sluggish clouds, and leaves a
flock

Of wild swans struggling with the naked storm.
So were the lost Greeks on the Danube's day!
If night is mute, yet the returning sun
Kindles the voices of the morning birds;
Nor at thy bidding less exultingly
Than birds rejoicing in the golden day,
The Anarchies of Africa unleash
Their tempest-winged cities of the sea,
To speak in thunder to the rebel world.
Like sulphurous clouds, half-shattered by the
storm,

300

310

They sweep the pale Ægean, while the Queen
Of Ocean, bound upon her island-throne,
Far in the West sits mourning that her sons
Who frown on Freedom spare a smile for thee:
Russia still hovers, as an eagle might
Within a cloud, near which a kite and crane
Hang tangled in inextricable fight,
To stoop upon the victor;-for she fears
The name of Freedom, even as she hates thine.
But recreant Austria loves thee as the Grave
Loves Pestilence, and her slow dogs of war,
Fleshed with the chase, come up from Italy,
And howl upon their limits; for they see
The panther, Freedom, fled to her old cover,
Amid seas and mountains, and a mightier brood
Crouch 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 armories are full;

320

Our forts defy assault; ten thousand cannon Lie ranged upon the beach, and hour by

hour

Their earth-convulsing wheels affright the city; The galloping of fiery steeds makes pale

The Christian merchant; and the yellow Jew Hides his hoard deeper in the faithless earth. Like clouds, and like the shadows of the clouds, Over the hills of Anatolia,

330

Swift in wide troops the Tartar chivalry
Sweep; the far flashing of their starry lances
Reverberates the dying light of day.

We have one God, one King, one Hope, one

Law;

But many-headed Insurrection stands

Divided in itself, and soon must fall,

MAHMUD.

Proud words, when deeds come short, are seasonable:

Look, Hassan, on yon crescent moon, emblazoned

340

Upon that shattered flag of fiery cloud
Which 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 spent
Shrinks on the horizon's edge, while, from

above,

One star with insolent and victorious light
Hovers above its fall, and with keen beams,
Like arrows through a fainting antelope,
Strikes its weak form to death.

Renews itself

HASSAN.

Even as that moon

MAHMUD.

Shall we be not renewed!

350

Far other bark than ours were needed now
To stem the torrent of descending time:
The spirit that lifts the slave before his lord
Stalks 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 beasts
When earthquake is unleashed, with idiot fear
Cower in their kingly dens--as I do now.
What were Defeat when Victory must appall?
Or Danger, when Security looks pale?— 360
How said the messenger—who, from the fort
Islanded in the Danube, saw the battle
Of Bucharest ?-that-

HASSAN.

Ibrahim's scymitar

Drew with its gleam swift victory from heaven,
To burn before him in the night of battle-
A light and a destruction.

MAHMUD.

Aye! the day

Was ours: but how?

HASSAN.

The light Wallachians,

The Arnaut, Servian, and Albanian allies
Fled from the glance of our artillery
Almost before the thunderstone alit.

370