CHORUS. Sleep, sleep! Our song is laden It was sung by a Samian maiden That calm sleep Whence none may wake, where none shall weep. INDIAN. I touch thy temples pale; I breathe my soul on thee: 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! The words which, like secret fire, shall flow SEMICHORUS I. Life may change, but it may fly not: 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, And all its banded anarchs fled, 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. From age to age, from man to man, Then night fell; and, as from night, From the west swift freedom came, Against the course of heaven and doom, A second sun arrayed in flame, Scorns the embattled tempest's warning In the mountain-cedar's hair, Of her wings through the wild air, Beneath the safety of her wings Her renovated nurslings play, And in the naked lightenings Of truth they purge their dazzled eyes. Let the beautiful and the brave Share her glory, or a grave! SEMICHORUS I. With the gifts of gladness SEMICHORUS II. With the tears of sadness SEMICHORUS I. With an orphan's affection SEMICHORUS II. And at thy resurrection SEMICHORUS I. If heaven should resume thee, 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 ! 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, The conqueror and the conquered! Heave the tower 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 His cold pale limbs and pulseless arteries With light, and, to the soul that quickens them, To the winter wind. But from his eye looks forth A life of unconsumed thought which pierces 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 VOL. II. H The sage, in truth, by dreadful abstinence, 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, The Jew appears. Few dare, and few who dare [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 |