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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-

750

I honour 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.

AHASUERUS.

760

Disdain thee?-not the worm beneath my 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 770
The sapphire floods of interstellar air,
This firmament pavilioned upon chaos,
With all its cressets of immortal fire,
Whose outwall, bastioned 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
780
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:
Naught 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, 790 Doubt, insecurity, astonishment.

AHASUERUS.

Mistake me not! 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;

799

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 810 How what was born in blood must die.

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

The roar of giant cannon; the earthquaking
Fall of vast bastions and precipitous towers,
The shock of crags shot from strange enginery,
The clash of wheels, and clang of armed 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,

821

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 TOUT☎ VIÊn." "Allah, Illah, Allah!"

AHASUERUS.

The sulphurous mist is raised-thou seest

MAHMUD.

A chasm, 830

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.

840

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

850

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 860 The imperial shade hither. [Exit AHASUERUS.

MAHMUD.

Approach!

PHANTOM.

I come

Thence whither thou must go! The grave is

fitter

To take the living than give up the dead; '
Yet has thy faith prevailed, and I am here.
The heavy fragments of the power which fell
When I arose, like shapeless crags and clouds,
Hang round my throne on the abyss, and voices
Of strange lament soothe my supreme repose,
Wailing for glory never to return.-

870

A later Empire nods in its decay: The autumn of a greener faith is come, And wolfish change, like winter, howls to strip The foliage in which Fame, the eagle, built

1 Compare the Persæ again (verses 685-6) :—

ἄλλως τε πάντως χοὶ κατὰ χθονὸς θεοὶ
λαβεῖν ἀμείνους ἐισὶν ἢ μεθίεναι.-ED.

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