When she seeks her aerie banging
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 nurselings play,

And in the naked lightnings

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 1

With an orphan's affection

She followed thy bier through time!
SEMICHORUS II.

And at thy resurrection

Re-appeareth, like thou, 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 ?

H

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 pre-adamite, and has survived
Cycles of generation and of ruin.

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 sun-set, 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.

Mahmud. This Jew whom thou hast summoned

Hassan.

Will be here

Mahmud. When the omnipotent hour, to which are yoked He, I, and all things, shall compel-enough.

Silence those mutineers-that drunken crew

That crowd about the pilot in the storm.

Ay strike the foremost shorter by a head!

They weary me, and I have need of rest.

Kings are like stars-they rise and set, they have

The worship of the world, but no repose.

CHORUS.

Worlds on worlds are rolling ever
From creation to decay,

Like the bubbles on a river,

Sparkling, bursting, borne away.

But they are still immortal

[Exeunt severally.

Who, through birth's orient portal,

And death's dark chasm hurrying to and fro,
Clothe their unceasing flight

In the brief dust and light

Gathered around their chariots as they go;
New shapes they still may weave,
New Gods, new laws receive,

Bright or dim are they, as the robes they last
On Death's bare ribs had cast.

A power from the unknown God;
A Promethean conqueror came;
Like a triumphal path he trod

The thorns of death and shame.
A mortal shape to him
Was like the vapour dim

Which the orient planet animates with light;
Hell, Sin, and Slavery came,

Like blood-hounds mild and tame,

Nor preyed until their lord had taken flight.
The moon of Mahomet

Arose, and it shall set :

While blazoned as on heaven's immortal noon
The cross leads generations on.

Swift as the radiant shapes of sleep

From one whose dreams are paradise,
Fly, when the fond wretch wakes to weep,
And day peers forth with her blank eyes
So fleet, so faint, so fair,

The Powers of earth and air

Fled from the folding star of Bethlehem:
Apollo, Pan, and Love,

And even Olympian Jove

Grew weak, for killing Truth had glared on them
Our hills, and seas, and streams,
Dispeopled of their dreams,

Their waters turned to blood, their dew to tears,
Wailed for the golden years.

Enter MAHMUD, HASSAN, DAOOD, and others.

Mahmud. More gold? our ancestors bought gold with victory, And shall I sell it for defeat?

Daood.

Clamour for pay.

Mahmud.

The Janizars

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 kill:
Blood is the seed of gold.

Daood.

And yet the harvest to the sickle-men

Is as a grain to each.

Mahmud.

It has been sown,

Then take this signet,

Unlock the seventh chamber, in which lie
The treasures of victorious Solyman.
An empire's spoils stored for a day of ruin.
O spirit of my sires! is it not come?

[Exit DAOOD.

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.
Oh! 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 overshadowing wings
Darkened the thrones and idols of the west,
Now bright!-For thy sake cursed 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;

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 Sirocco's cry,

But not like them to weep their strength in tears
They have 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
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,