By victor myriads, form'd in hollow square With rough and stedfast front, and thrice flung back The deluge of our foaming cavalry; Thrice their keen wedge of battle pierced our lines Our baffled army trembled like one man Before a host, and gave them space; but soon, From the surrounding hills, the batteries blazed, Kneading them down with fire and iron rain. Yet none approach'd; till, like a field of corn Under the hook of the swart sickle-man, The bands intrench'd in mounds of Turkish dead Grew weak and few-Then said the Pacha, "Slaves, Render yourselves!—They have abandon'd you— What hope of refuge, or retreat, or aid? We grant your lives."-"Grant that which is thine own,"
Cried one, and fell upon his sword and died! Another-"God, and man, and hope abandon me; But I to them and to myself remain
But he cried," Phantoms of the free, we come! Armies of the Eternal, ye who strike To dust the citadels of sanguine kings, And shake the souls throned on their stony hearts, And thaw their frost-work diadems like dew!- O ye who float around this clime, and weave The garment of the glory which it wears, Whose fame, though earth betray the dust it clasp'd Lies sepulchred in monumental thought! Progenitors of ail that yet is great, Ascribe to your bright senate, O accept In your high ministrations, us, your sons→→→→ Us first, and the more glorious yet to come! And ye, weak conquerors! giants who look pale When the crush'd worm rebels beneath your tread- The vultures, and the dogs, your pensioners tame, Are overgorged; but, like oppressors, still They crave the relie of destruction's feast. The exhalations and the thirsty winds
Are sick with blood; the dew is foul with death- Heaven's light is quench'd in slaughter: Thus where'er
Upon your camps, cities, or towers, or fleets, The obscene birds the reeking remnants cast
Of these dead limbs upon your streams and mountains, Upon your fields, your gardens, and your house-tops Where'er the winds shall creep, or the clouds fly, Or the dews fall, or the angry sun look down With poison'd light-Famine, and Pestilence, And Panic, shall wage war upon our side! Nature from all her boundaries is moved
Against ye: Time has found ye light as foam. The Earth rebels; and Good and Evil stake Their empire o'er the unborn world of men On this one cast-but ere the die be thrown, The renovated genius of our race, Proud umpire of this impious game, descends A seraph-winged Victory, bestriding The tempest of the Omnipotence of God, Which sweeps all things to their appointed doom, And you to Oblivion!"-More he would have said. But-
Died-as thou shouldst ere thy lips had painted Their ruin in the hues of our success. A rebel's crime, gilt with a rebel's tongue! Your heart is Greek, Hassan.
It may be so: A spirit not my own wrench'd me within, And I have spoken words I fear and hate; Yet would I die for-
Live! O live! outlive Me and this sinking empire:-but the fleet-
Constant;"-he bow'd his head, and his heart burst. A third exclaim'd, "There is a refuge, tyrant, Where thou darest not pursue, and canst not harm, Shouldst thou pursue; there we shall meet again." Then held his breath, and, after a brief spasm, The indignant spirit cast its mortal garment Among the slain-dead earth upon the earth! So these survivors, each by different ways, Some strange, all sudden, none dishonorable, Met in triumphant death; and when our army, Closed in, while yet in wonder, and awe, and shame, Alas! Held back the base hyenas of the battle That feed upon the dead and fly the living, One rose out of the chaos of the slain; And if it were a corpse which some dead spirit Of the old saviors of the land we rule Had lifted in its anger, wandering by; Of if there burn'd within the dying man Unquenchable disdain of death, and faith Creating what it feign'd;-I cannot tell.
The fleet which, like a flock of clouds Chased by the wind, flies the insurgent banner; Our winged castles from their merchant ships! Our myriads before their weak pirate bands! Our arms before their chains! Our years of empire Before their centuries of servile fear! Death is awake! Repulsed on the waters, They own no more the thunder-bearing banner
A part in that day's shame. The Grecian fleet Bore down at day-break from the North, and hung, As multitudinous on the ocean line
As cranes upon the cloudless Thracian wind. Our squadron, convoying ten thousand men, Was stretching towards Nauplia when the battle Was kindled.-
First through the hail of our artillery The agile Hydriote barks with press of sail Dash'd:-ship to ship, cannon to cannon, man To man were grappled in the embrace of war Inextricable but by death or victory. The tempest of the raging fight convulsed To its crystalline depths that stainless sea, And shook heaven's roof of golden morning clouds Poised on an hundred azure mountain-isles. In the brief trances of the artillery, One cry from the destroy'd and the destroyer Rose, and a cloud of desolation wrapt The unforeseen event, till the north wind Sprung from the sea, lifting the heavy veil Of battle-smoke-then victory-victory! For, as we thought, three frigates from Algiers Bore down from Naxos to our aid, but soon The abhorred cross glimmer'd behind, before, Among, around us; and that fatal sign Dried with its beams the strength of Moslem hearts, As the sun drinks the dew.-What more? We fled! Our noonday path over the sanguine foam Was beacon'd, and the glare struck the sun pale By our consuming transports: the fierce light Made all the shadows of our sails blood-red, And every countenance blank. Some ships lay feeding The ravening fire even to the water's level: Some were blown up: some, settling heavily, Sunk; and the shrieks of our companions died Upon the wind, that bore us fast and far,
Even after they were dead. Nine thousand perish'd! We met the vultures legion'd in the air, Stemming the torrent of the tainted wind: They, screaming from the cloudy mountain peak Stoop'd through the sulphurous battle-smoke,
Each on the weltering carcass that we loved, Like its ill angel or its damned soul. Riding upon the bosom of the sea,
We saw the dog-fish hastening to their feast. Joy waked the voiceless people of the sea, And ravening famine left his ocean-cave
To dwell with war, with us, and with despair. We met night three hours to the west of Patmos, And with night, tempest-
Nauplia, Tripolizzi, Mothon, Athens, Navarin, Artas, Mowenbasia,
Corinth and Thebes are carried by assault; And every Islamite who made his dogs Fat with the flesh of Galilean slaves, Pass'd at the edge of the sword: the lust of blood Which made our warriors drunk, is quench'd in death, But like a fiery plague breaks out anew,
In deeds which make the Christian cause look o In its own light. The garrison of Patras Has store but for ten days, nor is there hope But from the Briton: at once slave and tyran, His wishes still are weaker than his fears; Or he would sell what faith may yet remain From the oaths broke in Genoa and in Now) : And if you buy him not, your treasury Is empty even of promises-his own coin. The freedman of a western poet chief* Holds Attica with seven thousand rebels, And has beat back the Pacha of Negropont, The aged Ali sits in Yanina,
A crownless metaphor of empire; His name, that shadow of his wither'd right, Holds our besieging army like a spell In prey to famine, pest, and mutiny: He, bastion'd in his citadel, looks forth Joyless upon the sapphire lake that mirrors The ruins of the city where he reign'd Childless and sceptreless. Tfie Greek has reap'd The costly harvest his own blod matured,
A Greek who had been Lord Byron's servant commanded the insurgents in Attica. This Greek, Lord Byron informs me, though a poet and an enthusiastic patriot, gave him rather the idea of a timid and unenterprising person. It appears that circumstances make men what they are, and that we all contain the germ of a degree of degradation or of greatness, whose connexion with our character is determined by events.
Not the sower, Ali-who has bought a truce From Ypsilanti with ten camel-loads
MAHMUD.
What more?
THIRD MESSENGER.
Of Lebanon and the Syrian wilderness Are in revolt;-Damascus, Hems, Aleppo, Tremble-the Arab menaces Medina ; The Ethiop has intrench'd himself in Sennaar, And keeps the Egyptian rebel well employ'd: Who denies homage, claims investiture As price of tardy aid. Persia demands The cities on the Tigris, and the Georgians Refuse their living tribute. Crete and Cyprus, Like mountain-twins that from each other's veins Catch the volcano-fire and earthquake spasm, Shake in the general fever. Through the city, Like birds before a storm the santons shriek, And prophecyings horrible and new
Are heard among the crowd; that sea of men Sleeps on the wrecks it made, breathless and still. A Devise, learn'd in the koran, preaches That it is written how the sins of Islam Must raise up a destroyer even now. The Greeks expect a Savior from the west,*
Who shall not come, men say, in clouds and glory, But in the omnipresence of that spirit In which all live and are. Ominous signs Are blazon'd broadly on the noonday sky; One saw a red cross stamp'd upon the sun;
It has rain'd blood; and monstrous births declare The secret wrath of Nature and her Lord. The army encamp'd upon the Cydaris Was roused last night by the alarm of battle, And saw two hosts conflicting in the air,- The shadows doubtless of the unborn time,' Cast on the mirror of the night. While yet The fight hung balanced, there arose a storm Which swept the phantoms from among the stars. At the third watch the spirit of the plague Was heard abroad flapping among the tents: Those who relieved watch found the sentinels dead. The last news from the camp is, that a thousand Have sicken'd, and-
Enter a FOURTH MESSENGER.
And thou, pale ghost, dim shadow
Of some untimely rumor, speak!
FOURTH MESSENGER.
Fainting with toil, cover'd with foam and blood; He stood, he says, upon Clelonites' Promontory, which o'erlooks the isles that groan Under the Briton's frown, and all their waters Then trembling in the splendor of the moon, When as the wandering clouds unveil'd or hid Her boundless light, he saw two adverse fleets Stalk through the night in the horizon's glimmer,
It is reported that this Messiah had arrived at a seaport near Lacedæmon in an American brig. The association of names and ideas is irresistibly ludicrous, but the prevalence of such a rumor strongly marks the state of popular enthusiasm in Greece.
Mingling fierce thunders and sulphureous gleams, And smoke which strangled every, infant wind That soothed the silver clouds through the deep air. At length the battle slept, but the Sirocco Awoke, and drove his flock of thunder-clouds Over the sea-horizon, blotting out
All objects-save that in the faint moon-glimpse He saw, or dream'd he saw the Turkish admiral And two the loftiest of our ships of war, With the bright image of the queen of heaven, Who hid, perhaps, her face for grief, reversed; And the abhorred cross-
O Slavery thou frost of the world's prime,
Killing its flowers and leaving its thorns bare Thy touch has stamp'd these limbs with crime, These brows thy branding garland bear; But the free heart, the impassive soul, Scorn thy control!
Citadels and marts, and they
Who live and die there, have been ours, And may be thine, and must decay;
But Greece and her foundations are Built below the tide of war, Based on the crystalline sea Of thought and its eternity; Her citizens' imperial spirits
Rule the present from the past; On all this world of men inherits Their seal is set.
Hear ye the blast, Whose Orphic thunder thrilling calls From ruin her Titanian walls? Whose spirit shakes the sapless bones
Of Slavery? Argos, Corinth, Crete, Hear, and from their mountain thrones The demons and the nymphs repeat The harmony.
SEMICHORUS I. I hear! I hear!
The world's eyeless charioteer, Destiny, is hurrying by!
What faith is crush'd, what empire bleeds Beneath her earthquake-footed steeds? What eagle-winged victory sits
At her right hand? what shadow flits Before? what splendor rolls behind? Ruin and Renovation cry, Who but we?
SEMICHORUS 1.
I hear! I hear!
The hiss as of a rushing wind, The roar as of an ocean foaming, The thunder as of earthquake coming, I hear! I hear!
The crash as of an empire falling, The shrieks as of a people calling Mercy! Mercy!-How they thrill! Then a shout of "Kill! kill! kill!" And then a small still voice, thus-
Revenge and wrong bring forth their kind, The foul cubs like their parents are, Their den is in their guilty mind,
And Conscience feeds them with despair.
But raised above thy fellow-men
By thought, as I by power.
Thou art an adept in the difficult lore
Of Greek and Frank philosophy; thou numberest The flowers, and thou measurest the stars;
Thou severest element from element;
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.
I honor 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 apprehend 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.
Disdain thee?-not the worm beneath my feet! The Fathomless has care for meaner things Than thou canst dream, and has made pride for
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 undying. Earth and ocean, Space, and the isles of life or light that gem The sapphire floods of interstellar air, This firmament pavilion'd upon chaos, With all its cressets of immortal fire, Whose outwalls, bastion'd 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
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 it feels itself to be.
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, Doubt, insecurity, astonishment.
Mistake me not! All is contain'd 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;
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 open'd-look, and lo! The coming age is shadow'd on the past As on a glass.
Wild, wilder thoughts convulse My spirit-Did not Mahomet the Second Win Stamboul?
The mingled battle-cry-ha! hear I not EV TOUT VIKη. Allah, Illah, Allah!
The sulphurous mist is raised-thou see'st
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.
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 tower'd crests to mutability.
Thou wouldst ask that giant spirit Poised by the flood, e'en on the height thou holdest
The written fortunes of thy house and faith. Thou wouldst cite one out of the grave to tell How what was born in blood must die.
Thou mayst now learn how the full tide of power Ebbs to its depths.--Inheritor of glory,
Conceived in darkness, born in blood, and nourish'd With tears and toil, thou seest the mortal throes Thy words 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 call'd it from the uncreated deep, Yon cloud of war, with its tempestuous phantoms Of raging death; and draw with mighty will The imperial shade hither.
As of the asault 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, As of a joyous infant waked and playing
Thence whither thou must go! The grave is fitter To take the living, than give up the dead; Yet has thy faith prevail'd, 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.-
A later empire nods in its decay;
With its dead mother's breast; and now more loud The autumn of a greener faith is come,
* For the vision of Mahmud of the taking of Constantinople in 1445, see Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, The manner of the invocation of the spirit of Mahomet the Second will be censured as overdrawn. I could easily have made the Jew a regular conjuror, and the phantom an ordinary host. I have preferred to represent the Jew as disclaiming all pretension, or even belief, in supernatural agency, and as tempting Mahmud to that state of mind in which ideas may be supposed to assume the force of sensations, through the confusion of thought with the objects of thought, and the excess of passion animating the creations of imagination.
It is a sort of natural magic, susceptible of being exercised in
a degree by any one who should have made himself master of the secret associations of another's thoughts.
And wolfish change, like winter, howls to strip The foliage in which Fame, the eagle, built Her aëry, while Dominion whelp'd below. The storm is in its branches, and the frost Is on its leaves, and the blank deep expects Oblivion on oblivion, spoil on spoil, Ruin on ruin: thou art slow, my son; The anarchs of the world of darkness keep A throne for thee, round which thine empire lies Boundless and mute; and for thy subjects thou, Like us, shall rule the ghosts of murder'd life, The phantoms of the powers who rule thee now- Mutinous passions, and conflicting fears,
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