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CHORUS.

Sleep, sleep! Our song is laden
With the soul of slumber;

It was sung by a Samian maiden
Whose lover was of the number
Who now keep

That calm sleep

Whence none may wake, where none shall weep.

INDIAN.

I touch thy temples pale;

I breathe my soul on thee:
And, could my prayers avail,

All my joy should be

Dead, and I would live to weep,

So thou mightst win one hour of quiet sleep.

CHORUS.

Breathe low, low,

The spell of the mighty Mistress now!
When Conscience lulls her sated snake,
And tyrants sleep, let Freedom wake.
Breathe low, low,

The words which, like secret fire, shall flow
Through the veins of the frozen earth-low, low!

SEMICHORUS I.

Life may change, but it may fly not:
Hope may vanish, but can die not;
Truth be veiled, but still it burneth;
Love repulsed, but it returneth.

SEMICHORUS II.

Yet were life a charnel where

Hope lay coffined with Despair;

Yet were truth a sacred lie;

Love were lust

SEMICHORUS I.

If Liberty

Lent not life its soul of light,

Hope its iris of delight,

Truth its prophet's robe to wear,

Love its power to give and bear.

CHORUS.

In the great morning of the world,
The Spirit of God with might unfurled
The flag of Freedom over chaos,

And all its banded anarchs fled,
Like vultures frighted from Imaus

Before an earthquake's tread.— So from Time's tempestuous dawn Freedom's splendour burst and shone: Thermopyla and Marathon

Caught, like mountains beacon-lighted, The springing fire. The winged glory On Philippi half alighted,

Like an eagle on a promontory.
Its unwearied wings could fan
The quenchless ashes of Milan.

From age to age, from man to man,
It lived; and lit from land to land
Florence, Albion, Switzerland.

Then night fell; and, as from night,
Re-assuming fiery flight,

From the west swift freedom came,

Against the course of heaven and doom,

A second sun arrayed in flame,
To burn, to kindle, to illume.
From far Atlantis its young beams
Chased the shadows and the dreams.
France, with all her sanguine steams,
Hid, but quenched it not; again
Through clouds its shafts of glory rain
From utmost Germany to Spain.
As an eagle fed with morning

Scorns the embattled tempest's warning
When she seeks her aerie hanging

In the mountain-cedar's hair,
And her brood expect the clanging

Of her wings through the wild air,
Sick with famine; Freedom so
To what of Greece remaineth now
Returns. Her hoary ruins glow
Like orient mountains lost in day;

Beneath the safety of her wings

Her renovated nurslings play,

And in the naked lightenings

Of truth they purge their dazzled eyes.
Let Freedom leave, where'er she flies,
A desert, or a paradise ;

Let the beautiful and the brave

Share her glory, or a grave!

SEMICHORUS I.

With the gifts of gladness
Greece did thy cradle strew.

SEMICHORUS II.

With the tears of sadness
Greece did thy shroud bedew.

SEMICHORUS I.

With an orphan's affection
She followed thy bier through time:

SEMICHORUS II.

And at thy resurrection
Re-appeareth, like thed, sublime.

SEMICHORUS I.

If heaven should resume thee,
To heaven shall her spirit ascend.

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). 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.

Ha! what!

The truth of day lightens upon my dream,

And I am Mahmud still.

Hassan.

Is strangely moved.

Mahmud.

Your Sublime Highness

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,

Leaving no figure upon memory's glass.

Would that . . . no matter. Thou didst say thou knewest A Jew whose spirit is a chronicle

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

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 unconsumed 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 præ-Adamite, and has survived
Cycles of generation and of ruin.

VOL. II.

H

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.

With this old Jew.

Hassan.

I would talk

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.
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
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,

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!

Will be here

Mahmud. This Jew whom thou hast summoned—

Hassan.

Mahmud. When the omnipotent hour to which are yoked

He, I, and all things, shall compel :-enough.

Silence those mutineers-that drunken crew

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