CHRIST:Obdurate spirit! _160Thou seest but the Past in the To-come.Pride is thy error and thy punishment.Boast not thine empire, dream not that thy worldsAre more than furnace-sparks or rainbow-dropsBefore the Power that wields and kindles them. _165True greatness asks not space, true excellenceLives in the Spirit of all things that live,Which lends it to the worlds thou callest thine.
…
MAHOMET:…Haste thou and fill the waning crescentWith beams as keen as those which pierced the shadow _170Of Christian night rolled back upon the West,When the orient moon of Islam rode in triumphFrom Tmolus to the Acroceraunian snow.
…
Wake, thou WordOf God, and from the throne of Destiny _175Even to the utmost limit of thy wayMay Triumph
…
Be thou a curse on them whose creedDivides and multiplies the most high God.
CHORUS OF GREEK CAPTIVE WOMEN:We strew these opiate flowersOn thy restless pillow,—They were stripped from Orient bowers,By the Indian billow.Be thy sleep _5Calm and deep,Like theirs who fell—not ours who weep!
INDIAN:Away, unlovely dreams!Away, false shapes of sleepBe his, as Heaven seems, _10Clear, and bright, and deep!Soft as love, and calm as death,Sweet as a summer night without a breath.
CHORUS:Sleep, sleep! our song is ladenWith the soul of slumber; _15It was sung by a Samian maiden,Whose lover was of the numberWho now keepThat calm sleepWhence none may wake, where none shall weep. _20
INDIAN:I touch thy temples pale!I breathe my soul on thee!And could my prayers avail,All my joy should beDead, and I would live to weep, _25So thou mightst win one hour of quiet sleep.
CHORUS:Breathe low, lowThe spell of the mighty mistress now!When Conscience lulls her sated snake,And Tyrants sleep, let Freedom wake. _30Breathe low—lowThe words which, like secret fire, shall flowThrough the veins of the frozen earth—low, low!
SEMICHORUS 1:Life may change, but it may fly not;Hope may vanish, but can die not; _35Truth be veiled, but still it burneth;Love repulsed,—but it returneth!
SEMICHORUS 2:Yet were life a charnel whereHope lay coffined with Despair;Yet were truth a sacred lie, _40Love were lust—
SEMICHORUS 1:If LibertyLent 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. _45
CHORUS:In the great morning of the world,The Spirit of God with might unfurledThe flag of Freedom over Chaos,And all its banded anarchs fled,Like vultures frighted from Imaus, _50Before an earthquake’s tread.—So from Time’s tempestuous dawnFreedom’s splendour burst and shone:—Thermopylae and MarathonCaught like mountains beacon-lighted, _55The springing Fire.—The winged gloryOn Philippi half-alighted,Like an eagle on a promontory.Its unwearied wings could fanThe quenchless ashes of Milan. _60From age to age, from man to man,It lived; and lit from land to landFlorence, Albion, Switzerland.
Then night fell; and, as from night,Reassuming fiery flight, _65From 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 _70Chased the shadows and the dreams.France, with all her sanguine steams,Hid, but quenched it not; againThrough clouds its shafts of glory rainFrom utmost Germany to Spain. _75As an eagle fed with morningScorns the embattled tempest’s warning,When she seeks her aerie hangingIn the mountain-cedar’s hair,And her brood expect the clanging _80Of her wings through the wild air,Sick with famine:—Freedom, soTo what of Greece remaineth nowReturns; her hoary ruins glowLike Orient mountains lost in day; _85Beneath the safety of her wingsHer renovated nurslings prey,And in the naked lighteningsOf truth they purge their dazzled eyes.Let Freedom leave—where’er she flies, _90A Desert, or a Paradise:Let the beautiful and the braveShare her glory, or a grave.
NOTES: _77 tempest’s]tempests edition 1822. _87 prey edition 1822; play editions 1839.
SEMICHORUS 1:With the gifts of gladnessGreece did thy cradle strew; _95
SEMICHORUS 2:With the tears of sadnessGreece did thy shroud bedew!
SEMICHORUS 1:With an orphan’s affectionShe followed thy bier through Time;
SEMICHORUS 2:And at thy resurrection _100Reappeareth, like thou, sublime!
SEMICHORUS 1:If Heaven should resume thee,To Heaven shall her spirit ascend;
SEMICHORUS 2:If Hell should entomb thee,To Hell shall her high hearts bend. _105
SEMICHORUS 1:If Annihilation—
SEMICHORUS 2:Dust let her glories be!And a name and a nationBe forgotten, Freedom, with thee!
INDIAN:His brow grows darker—breathe not—move not! _110He 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? _115’Tis false! that breach towards the BosphorusCannot be practicable yet—who stirs?Stand to the match; that when the foe prevailsOne spark may mix in reconciling ruinThe conqueror and the conquered! Heave the tower _120Into the gap—wrench off the roof![ENTER HASSAN.]Ha! what!The truth of day lightens upon my dreamAnd I am Mahmud still.
HASSAN:Your Sublime HighnessIs strangely moved.
MAHMUD:The times do cast strange shadowsOn those who watch and who must rule their course, _125Lest 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 meAs thus from sleep into the troubled day;It shakes me as the tempest shakes the sea, _130Leaving no figure upon memory’s glass.Would that—no matter. Thou didst say thou knewestA Jew, whose spirit is a chronicleOf strange and secret and forgotten things.I bade thee summon him:—’tis said his tribe _135Dream, and are wise interpreters of dreams.
HASSAN:The Jew of whom I spake is old,—so oldHe seems to have outlived a world’s decay;The hoary mountains and the wrinkled oceanSeem younger still than he;—his hair and beard _140Are whiter than the tempest-sifted snow;His cold pale limbs and pulseless arteriesAre like the fibres of a cloud instinctWith light, and to the soul that quickens themAre as the atoms of the mountain-drift _145To the winter wind:—but from his eye looks forthA life of unconsumed thought which piercesThe Present, and the Past, and the To-come.Some say that this is he whom the great prophetJesus, the son of Joseph, for his mockery, _150Mocked with the curse of immortality.Some feign that he is Enoch: others dreamHe was pre-adamite and has survivedCycles of generation and of ruin.The sage, in truth, by dreadful abstinence _155And 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 scienceOver those strong and secret things and thoughts _160Which others fear and know not.
MAHMUD:I would talkWith this old Jew.
HASSAN:Thy will is even nowMade known to him, where he dwells in a sea-cavern‘Mid the Demonesi, less accessibleThan thou or God! He who would question him _165Must sail alone at sunset, where the streamOf 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, _170Green Erebinthus, quench the fiery shadowOf his gilt prow within the sapphire water,Then must the lonely helmsman cry aloud‘Ahasuerus!’ and the caverns roundWill answer ‘Ahasuerus!’ If his prayer _175Be granted, a faint meteor will ariseLighting him over Marmora, and a windWill rush out of the sighing pine-forest,And with the wind a storm of harmonyUnutterably sweet, and pilot him _180Through the soft twilight to the Bosphorus:Thence at the hour and place and circumstanceFit for the matter of their conferenceThe Jew appears. Few dare, and few who dareWin the desired communion—but that shout _185Bodes—
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 yokedHe, I, and all things shall compel—enough! _190Silence 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.Kinks are like stars—they rise and set, they have _195The worship of the world, but no repose.
CHORUS:Worlds on worlds are rolling everFrom creation to decay,Like the bubbles on a riverSparkling, bursting, borne away. _200But they are still immortalWho, through birth’s orient portalAnd death’s dark chasm hurrying to and fro,Clothe their unceasing flightIn the brief dust and light _205Gathered 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 lastOn Death’s bare ribs had cast. _210
A power from the unknown God,A Promethean conqueror, came;Like a triumphal path he trodThe thorns of death and shame.A mortal shape to him _215Was like the vapour dimWhich the orient planet animates with light;Hell, Sin, and Slavery came,Like bloodhounds mild and tame,Nor preyed, until their Lord had taken flight; _220The moon of MahometArose, and it shall set:While blazoned as on Heaven’s immortal noonThe cross leads generations on.
Swift as the radiant shapes of sleep _225From one whose dreams are ParadiseFly, 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 _230Fled from the folding-star of Bethlehem:Apollo, Pan, and Love,And even Olympian JoveGrew weak, for killing Truth had glared on them;Our hills and seas and streams, _235Dispeopled of their dreams,Their waters turned to blood, their dew to tears,Wailed for the golden years.
MAHMUD:More gold? our ancestors bought gold with victory,And shall I sell it for defeat?
DAOOD:The Janizars _240Clamour for pay.
MAHMUD:Go! bid them pay themselvesWith Christian blood! Are there no Grecian virginsWhose shrieks and spasms and tears they may enjoy?No infidel children to impale on spears?No hoary priests after that Patriarch _245Who 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:It has been sown,And yet the harvest to the sicklemenIs as a grain to each.
MAHMUD:Then, take this signet, _250Unlock the seventh chamber in which lieThe treasures of victorious Solyman,—An empire’s spoil stored for a day of ruin.O spirit of my sires! is it not come?The prey-birds and the wolves are gorged and sleep; _255But 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.[EXIT DAOOD.]O miserable dawn, after a nightMore glorious than the day which it usurped! _260O faith in God! O power on earth! O wordOf the great prophet, whose o’ershadowing wingsDarkened the thrones and idols of the West,Now bright!—For thy sake cursed be the hour,Even as a father by an evil child, _265When the orient moon of Islam rolled in triumphFrom Caucasus to White Ceraunia!Ruin above, and anarchy below;Terror without, and treachery within;The Chalice of destruction full, and all _270Thirsting to drink; and who among us daresTo 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 _275Of utmost Asia, irresistiblyThrong, like full clouds at the Sirocco’s cry;But not like them to weep their strength in tears:They bear destroying lightning, and their stepWakes earthquake to consume and overwhelm, _280And reign in ruin. Phrygian Olympus,Tmolus, and Latmos, and Mycale, roughenWith horrent arms; and lofty ships even now,Like vapours anchored to a mountain’s edge,Freighted with fire and whirlwind, wait at Scala _285The convoy of the ever-veering wind.Samos is drunk with blood;—the Greek has paidBrief victory with swift loss and long despair.The false Moldavian serfs fled fast and farWhen the fierce shout of ‘Allah-illa-Allah!’ _290Rose like the war-cry of the northern windWhich kills the sluggish clouds, and leaves a flockOf 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 _295Kindles the voices of the morning birds;Nor at thy bidding less exultinglyThan birds rejoicing in the golden day,The Anarchies of Africa unleashTheir tempest-winged cities of the sea, _300To speak in thunder to the rebel world.Like sulphurous clouds, half-shattered by the storm,They sweep the pale Aegean, while the QueenOf Ocean, bound upon her island-throne,Far in the West, sits mourning that her sons _305Who frown on Freedom spare a smile for thee:Russia still hovers, as an eagle mightWithin a cloud, near which a kite and craneHang tangled in inextricable fight,To stoop upon the victor;—for she fears _310The name of Freedom, even as she hates thine.But recreant Austria loves thee as the GraveLoves Pestilence, and her slow dogs of warFleshed with the chase, come up from Italy,And howl upon their limits; for they see _315The panther, Freedom, fled to her old cover,Amid seas and mountains, and a mightier broodCrouch round. What Anarch wears a crown or mitre,Or bears the sword, or grasps the key of gold,Whose friends are not thy friends, whose foes thy foes? _320Our arsenals and our armouries are full;Our forts defy assault; ten thousand cannonLie ranged upon the beach, and hour by hourTheir earth-convulsing wheels affright the city;The galloping of fiery steeds makes pale _325The Christian merchant; and the yellow JewHides his hoard deeper in the faithless earth.Like clouds, and like the shadows of the clouds,Over the hills of Anatolia,Swift in wide troops the Tartar chivalry _330Sweep;—the far flashing of their starry lancesReverberates the dying light of day.We have one God, one King, one Hope, one Law;But many-headed Insurrection standsDivided in itself, and soon must fall. _335
NOTES: _253 spoil edition 1822; spoils editions 1839. _279 bear edition 1822; have editions 1839. _322 assault edition 1822; assaults editions 1839.
MAHMUD:Proud words, when deeds come short, are seasonable:Look, Hassan, on yon crescent moon, emblazonedUpon that shattered flag of fiery cloudWhich leads the rear of the departing day;Wan emblem of an empire fading now! _340See how it trembles in the blood-red air,And like a mighty lamp whose oil is spentShrinks on the horizon’s edge, while, from above,One star with insolent and victorious lightHovers above its fall, and with keen beams, _345Like arrows through a fainting antelope,Strikes its weak form to death.
HASSAN:Even as that moonRenews itself—
MAHMUD:Shall we be not renewed!Far other bark than ours were needed nowTo stem the torrent of descending time: _350The Spirit that lifts the slave before his lordStalks through the capitals of armed kings,And spreads his ensign in the wilderness:Exults in chains; and, when the rebel falls,Cries like the blood of Abel from the dust; _355And the inheritors of the earth, like beastsWhen earthquake is unleashed, with idiot fearCower in their kingly dens—as I do now.What were Defeat when Victory must appal?Or Danger, when Security looks pale?— _360How said the messenger—who, from the fortIslanded in the Danube, saw the battleOf Bucharest?—that—
NOTES: _351 his edition 1822; its editions 1839. _356 of the earth edition 1822; of earth editions 1839.
HASSAN:Ibrahim’s scimitarDrew with its gleam swift victory from Heaven,To burn before him in the night of battle— _365A light and a destruction.
MAHMUD:Ay! the dayWas ours: but how?—
HASSAN:The light Wallachians,The Arnaut, Servian, and Albanian alliesFled from the glance of our artilleryAlmost before the thunderstone alit. _370One half the Grecian army made a bridgeOf safe and slow retreat, with Moslem dead;The other—
MAHMUD:Speak—tremble not.—
HASSAN:IslandedBy victor myriads, formed in hollow squareWith rough and steadfast front, and thrice flung back _375The deluge of our foaming cavalry;Thrice their keen wedge of battle pierced our lines.Our baffled army trembled like one manBefore a host, and gave them space; but soon,From the surrounding hills, the batteries blazed, _380Kneading them down with fire and iron rain:Yet none approached; till, like a field of cornUnder the hook of the swart sickleman,The band, intrenched in mounds of Turkish dead,Grew weak and few.—Then said the Pacha, ‘Slaves, _385Render yourselves—they have abandoned 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; _390But I to them, and to myself, remainConstant:’—he bowed his head, and his heart burst.A third exclaimed, ‘There is a refuge, tyrant,Where thou darest not pursue, and canst not harmShouldst thou pursue; there we shall meet again.’ _395Then held his breath, and, after a brief spasm,The indignant spirit cast its mortal garmentAmong the slain—dead earth upon the earth!So these survivors, each by different ways,Some strange, all sudden, none dishonourable, _400Met in triumphant death; and when our armyClosed in, while yet wonder, and awe, and shameHeld back the base hyaenas of the battleThat feed upon the dead and fly the living,One rose out of the chaos of the slain: _405And if it were a corpse which some dread spiritOf the old saviours of the land we ruleHad lifted in its anger, wandering by;—Or if there burned within the dying manUnquenchable disdain of death, and faith _410Creating what it feigned;—I cannot tell—But he cried, ‘Phantoms of the free, we come!Armies of the Eternal, ye who strikeTo dust the citadels of sanguine kings,And shake the souls throned on their stony hearts, _415And thaw their frostwork diadems like dew;—O ye who float around this clime, and weaveThe garment of the glory which it wears,Whose fame, though earth betray the dust it clasped,Lies sepulchred in monumental thought;— _420Progenitors of all that yet is great,Ascribe to your bright senate, O acceptIn your high ministrations, us, your sons—Us first, and the more glorious yet to come!And ye, weak conquerors! giants who look pale _425When the crushed worm rebels beneath your tread,The vultures and the dogs, your pensioners tame,Are overgorged; but, like oppressors, stillThey crave the relic of Destruction’s feast.The exhalations and the thirsty winds _430Are sick with blood; the dew is foul with death;Heaven’s light is quenched in slaughter: thus, where’erUpon your camps, cities, or towers, or fleets,The obscene birds the reeking remnants castOf these dead limbs,—upon your streams and mountains, _435Upon your fields, your gardens, and your housetops,Where’er the winds shall creep, or the clouds fly,Or the dews fall, or the angry sun look downWith poisoned light—Famine, and Pestilence,And Panic, shall wage war upon our side! _440Nature from all her boundaries is movedAgainst ye: Time has found ye light as foam.The Earth rebels; and Good and Evil stakeTheir empire o’er the unborn world of menOn this one cast;—but ere the die be thrown, _445The renovated genius of our race,Proud umpire of the impious game, descends,A seraph-winged Victory, bestridingThe tempest of the Omnipotence of God,Which sweeps all things to their appointed doom, _450And you to oblivion!’—More he would have said,But—
NOTE: _384 band edition 1822; bands editions 1839.
MAHMUD:Died—as thou shouldst ere thy lips had paintedTheir ruin in the hues of our success.A rebel’s crime, gilt with a rebel’s tongue!Your heart is Greek, Hassan.
HASSAN:It may be so: _455A spirit not my own wrenched me within,And I have spoken words I fear and hate;Yet would I die for—
MAHMUD:Live! oh live! outliveMe and this sinking empire. But the fleet—
HASSAN:Alas!—
MAHMUD:The fleet which, like a flock of clouds _460Chased 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 empireBefore their centuries of servile fear! _465Death is awake! Repulse is on the waters!They own no more the thunder-bearing bannerOf Mahmud; but, like hounds of a base breed,Gorge from a stranger’s hand, and rend their master.
NOTE: _466 Repulse is “Shelley, Errata”, edition 1822; Repulsed edition 1822.
HASSAN:Latmos, and Ampelos, and Phanae saw _470The wreck—
MAHMUD:The caves of the Icarian islesTold each to the other in loud mockery,And with the tongue as of a thousand echoes,First of the sea-convulsing fight—and, then,—Thou darest to speak—senseless are the mountains: _475Interpret thou their voice!
NOTE: _472 Told Errata, Wms. transcript; Hold edition 1822.
HASSAN:My presence boreA part in that day’s shame. The Grecian fleetBore down at daybreak from the North, and hungAs multitudinous on the ocean line,As cranes upon the cloudless Thracian wind. _480Our squadron, convoying ten thousand men,Was stretching towards Nauplia when the battleWas kindled.—First through the hail of our artilleryThe agile Hydriote barks with press of sail _485Dashed:—ship to ship, cannon to cannon, manTo man were grappled in the embrace of war,Inextricable but by death or victory.The tempest of the raging fight convulsedTo its crystalline depths that stainless sea, _490And shook Heaven’s roof of golden morning clouds,Poised on an hundred azure mountain-isles.In the brief trances of the artilleryOne cry from the destroyed and the destroyerRose, and a cloud of desolation wrapped _495The unforeseen event, till the north windSprung from the sea, lifting the heavy veilOf battle-smoke—then victory—victory!For, as we thought, three frigates from AlgiersBore down from Naxos to our aid, but soon _500The abhorred cross glimmered behind, before,Among, around us; and that fatal signDried with its beams the strength in Moslem hearts,As the sun drinks the dew.—What more? We fled!—Our noonday path over the sanguine foam _505Was beaconed,—and the glare struck the sun pale,—By our consuming transports: the fierce lightMade all the shadows of our sails blood-red,And every countenance blank. Some ships lay feedingThe ravening fire, even to the water’s level; _510Some were blown up; some, settling heavily,Sunk; and the shrieks of our companions diedUpon the wind, that bore us fast and far,Even after they were dead. Nine thousand perished!We met the vultures legioned in the air _515Stemming the torrent of the tainted wind;They, screaming from their cloudy mountain-peaks,Stooped through the sulphurous battle-smoke and perchedEach on the weltering carcase that we loved,Like its ill angel or its damned soul, _520Riding 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 caveTo dwell with War, with us, and with Despair. _525We met night three hours to the west of Patmos,And with night, tempest—
NOTES: _503 in edition 1822; of editions 1839. _527 And edition 1822; As editions 1839.
MAHMUD:Cease!
MESSENGER:Your Sublime Highness,That Christian hound, the Muscovite Ambassador,Has left the city.—If the rebel fleetHad anchored in the port, had victory _530Crowned the Greek legions in the Hippodrome,Panic were tamer.—Obedience and Mutiny,Like giants in contention planet-struck,Stand gazing on each other.—There is peaceIn Stamboul.—
MAHMUD:Is the grave not calmer still? _535Its ruins shall be mine.
HASSAN:Fear not the Russian:The tiger leagues not with the stag at bayAgainst the hunter.—Cunning, base, and cruel,He crouches, watching till the spoil be won,And must be paid for his reserve in blood. _540After the war is fought, yield the sleek RussianThat which thou canst not keep, his deserved portionOf blood, which shall not flow through streets and fields,Rivers and seas, like that which we may win,But stagnate in the veins of Christian slaves! _545
SECOND MESSENGER:Nauplia, Tripolizza, Mothon, Athens,Navarin, Artas, Monembasia,Corinth, and Thebes are carried by assault,And every Islamite who made his dogsFat with the flesh of Galilean slaves _550Passed at the edge of the sword: the lust of blood,Which made our warriors drunk, is quenched in death;But like a fiery plague breaks out anewIn deeds which make the Christian cause look paleIn its own light. The garrison of Patras _555Has store but for ten days, nor is there hopeBut from the Briton: at once slave and tyrant,His wishes still are weaker than his fears,Or he would sell what faith may yet remainFrom the oaths broke in Genoa and in Norway; _560And if you buy him not, your treasuryIs empty even of promises—his own coin.The freedman of a western poet-chiefHolds Attica with seven thousand rebels,And has beat back the Pacha of Negropont: _565The aged Ali sits in YaninaA crownless metaphor of empire:His name, that shadow of his withered might,Holds our besieging army like a spellIn prey to famine, pest, and mutiny; _570He, bastioned in his citadel, looks forthJoyless upon the sapphire lake that mirrorsThe ruins of the city where he reignedChildless and sceptreless. The Greek has reapedThe costly harvest his own blood matured, _575Not the sower, Ali—who has bought a truceFrom Ypsilanti with ten camel-loadsOf Indian gold.
NOTE: _563 freedman edition 1822; freeman editions 1839.
MAHMUD:What more?
THIRD MESSENGER:The Christian tribesOf Lebanon and the Syrian wildernessAre in revolt;—Damascus, Hems, Aleppo _580Tremble;—the Arab menaces Medina,The Aethiop has intrenched himself in Sennaar,And keeps the Egyptian rebel well employed,Who denies homage, claims investitureAs price of tardy aid. Persia demands _585The cities on the Tigris, and the GeorgiansRefuse their living tribute. Crete and Cyprus,Like mountain-twins that from each other’s veinsCatch the volcano-fire and earthquake-spasm,Shake in the general fever. Through the city, _590Like birds before a storm, the Santons shriek,And prophesyings horrible and newAre heard among the crowd: that sea of menSleeps on the wrecks it made, breathless and still.A Dervise, learned in the Koran, preaches _595That it is written how the sins of IslamMust raise up a destroyer even now.The Greeks expect a Saviour from the West,Who shall not come, men say, in clouds and glory,But in the omnipresence of that Spirit _600In which all live and are. Ominous signsAre blazoned broadly on the noonday sky:One saw a red cross stamped upon the sun;It has rained blood; and monstrous births declareThe secret wrath of Nature and her Lord. _605The army encamped upon the CydarisWas roused last night by the alarm of battle,And saw two hosts conflicting in the air,The shadows doubtless of the unborn timeCast on the mirror of the night. While yet _610The fight hung balanced, there arose a stormWhich swept the phantoms from among the stars.At the third watch the Spirit of the PlagueWas heard abroad flapping among the tents;Those who relieved watch found the sentinels dead. _615The last news from the camp is, that a thousandHave sickened, and—
MAHMUD:And thou, pale ghost, dim shadowOf some untimely rumour, speak!
FOURTH MESSENGER:One comesFainting with toil, covered with foam and blood:He stood, he says, on Chelonites’ _620Promontory, which o’erlooks the isles that groanUnder the Briton’s frown, and all their watersThen trembling in the splendour of the moon,When as the wandering clouds unveiled or hidHer boundless light, he saw two adverse fleets _625Stalk through the night in the horizon’s glimmer,Mingling fierce thunders and sulphureous gleams,And smoke which strangled every infant windThat soothed the silver clouds through the deep air.At length the battle slept, but the Sirocco _630Awoke, and drove his flock of thunder-cloudsOver the sea-horizon, blotting outAll objects—save that in the faint moon-glimpseHe saw, or dreamed he saw, the Turkish admiralAnd two the loftiest of our ships of war, _635With the bright image of that Queen of Heaven,Who hid, perhaps, her face for grief, reversed;And the abhorred cross—
NOTE:_620 on Chelonites’]on Chelonites “Errata”;upon Clelonite’s edition 1822;upon Clelonit’s editions 1839.
ATTENDANT:Your Sublime Highness,The Jew, who—
MAHMUD:Could not come more seasonably:Bid him attend. I’ll hear no more! too long _640We gaze on danger through the mist of fear,And multiply upon our shattered hopesThe images of ruin. Come what will!To-morrow and to-morrow are as lampsSet in our path to light us to the edge _645Through rough and smooth, nor can we suffer aughtWhich He inflicts not in whose hand we are.
SEMICHORUS 1:Would I were the winged cloudOf a tempest swift and loud!I would scorn _650The smile of mornAnd the wave where the moonrise is born!I would leaveThe spirits of eveA shroud for the corpse of the day to weave _655From other threads than mine!Bask in the deep blue noon divine.Who would? Not I.
NOTE: _657 the deep blue “Errata”, Wms. transcript; the blue edition 1822.
SEMICHORUS 2:Whither to fly?
SEMICHORUS 1:Where the rocks that gird th’ Aegean _660Echo to the battle paeanOf the free—I would fleeA tempestuous herald of victory!My golden rainFor the Grecian slain _665Should mingle in tears with the bloody main,And my solemn thunder-knellShould ring to the world the passing-bellOf Tyranny! _670
SEMICHORUS 2:Ah king! wilt thou chainThe rack and the rain?Wilt thou fetter the lightning and hurricane?The storms are free,But we— _675
CHORUS:O Slavery! thou frost of the world’s prime,Killing its flowers and leaving its thorns bare!Thy touch has stamped these limbs with crime,These brows thy branding garland bear,But the free heart, the impassive soul _680Scorn thy control!
SEMICHORUS 1:Let there be light! said Liberty,And like sunrise from the sea,Athens arose!—Around her born,Shone like mountains in the morn _685Glorious states;—and are they nowAshes, wrecks, oblivion?
SEMICHORUS 2:Go,Where Thermae and Asopus swallowedPersia, as the sand does foam:Deluge upon deluge followed, _690Discord, Macedon, and Rome:And lastly thou!
SEMICHORUS 1:Temples and towers,Citadels and marts, and theyWho live and die there, have been ours,And may be thine, and must decay; _695But Greece and her foundations areBuilt below the tide of war,Based on the crystalline seaOf thought and its eternity;Her citizens, imperial spirits, _700Rule the present from the past,On all this world of men inheritsTheir seal is set.
SEMICHORUS 2:Hear ye the blast,Whose Orphic thunder thrilling callsFrom ruin her Titanian walls? _705Whose spirit shakes the sapless bonesOf Slavery? Argos, Corinth, CreteHear, and from their mountain thronesThe daemons and the nymphs repeatThe harmony.
SEMICHORUS 1:I hear! I hear! _710
SEMICHORUS 2:The world’s eyeless charioteer,Destiny, is hurrying by!What faith is crushed, what empire bleedsBeneath her earthquake-footed steeds?What eagle-winged victory sits _715At her right hand? what shadow flitsBefore? what splendour rolls behind?Ruin and renovation cry‘Who but We?’
SEMICHORUS 1:I hear! I hear!The hiss as of a rushing wind, _720The 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 _725‘Mercy! mercy!’—How they thrill!Then a shout of ‘kill! kill! kill!’And then a small still voice, thus—
SEMICHORUS 2:ForRevenge and Wrong bring forth their kind,The foul cubs like their parents are, _730Their den is in the guilty mind,And Conscience feeds them with despair.
NOTE: _728 For edition 1822, Wms. transcript; Fear cj. Fleay, Forman, Dowden. See Editor’s Note.
SEMICHORUS 1:In sacred Athens, near the faneOf Wisdom, Pity’s altar stood:Serve not the unknown God in vain. _735But pay that broken shrine again,Love for hate and tears for blood.
MAHMUD:Thou art a man, thou sayest, even as we.
AHASUERUS:No more!
MAHMUD:But raised above thy fellow-menBy thought, as I by power.
AHASUERUS:Thou sayest so. _740
MAHMUD:Thou art an adept in the difficult loreOf Greek and Frank philosophy; thou numberestThe flowers, and thou measurest the stars;Thou severest element from element;Thy spirit is present in the Past, and sees _745The birth of this old world through all its cyclesOf desolation and of loveliness,And when man was not, and how man becameThe monarch and the slave of this low sphere,And all its narrow circles—it is much— _750I honour thee, and would be what thou artWere I not what I am; but the unborn hour,Cradled in fear and hope, conflicting storms,Who shall unveil? Nor thou, nor I, nor anyMighty or wise. I apprehended not _755What thou hast taught me, but I now perceiveThat 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; _760Thou art as God, whom thou contemplatest.
AHASUERUS:Disdain thee?—not the worm beneath thy feet!The Fathomless has care for meaner thingsThan thou canst dream, and has made pride for thoseWho would be what they may not, or would seem _765That which they are not. Sultan! talk no moreOf 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 _770The sapphire floods of interstellar air,This firmament pavilioned upon chaos,With all its cressets of immortal fire,Whose outwall, bastioned impregnablyAgainst the escape of boldest thoughts, repels them _775As Calpe the Atlantic clouds—this WholeOf suns, and worlds, and men, and beasts, and flowers,With all the silent or tempestuous workingsBy which they have been, are, or cease to be,Is but a vision;—all that it inherits _780Are motes of a sick eye, bubbles and dreams;Thought is its cradle and its grave, nor lessThe Future and the Past are idle shadowsOf thought’s eternal flight—they have no being:Nought is but that which feels itself to be. _785
NOTE: _762 thy edition 1822; my editions 1839.
MAHMUD:What meanest thou? Thy words stream like a tempestOf dazzling mist within my brain—they shakeThe earth on which I stand, and hang like nightOn Heaven above me. What can they avail?They cast on all things surest, brightest, best, _790Doubt, insecurity, astonishment.
AHASUERUS:Mistake me not! All is contained in each.Dodona’s forest to an acorn’s cupIs that which has been, or will be, to thatWhich is—the absent to the present. Thought _795Alone, and its quick elements, Will, Passion,Reason, Imagination, cannot die;They are, what that which they regard appears,The stuff whence mutability can weaveAll that it hath dominion o’er, worlds, worms, _800Empires, and superstitions. What has thoughtTo 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 _805As on a glass.
MAHMUD:Wild, wilder thoughts convulseMy spirit—Did not Mahomet the SecondWin Stamboul?
AHASUERUS:Thou wouldst ask that giant spiritThe written fortunes of thy house and faith.Thou wouldst cite one out of the grave to tell _810How what was born in blood must die.
MAHMUD:Thy wordsHave power on me! I see—
AHASUERUS:What hearest thou?
MAHMUD:A far whisper—Terrible silence.
AHASUERUS:What succeeds?
MAHMUD:The soundAs of the assault of an imperial city, _815The hiss of inextinguishable fire,The roar of giant cannon; the earthquakingFall of vast bastions and precipitous towers,The shock of crags shot from strange enginery,The clash of wheels, and clang of armed hoofs, _820And crash of brazen mail as of the wreckOf adamantine mountains—the mad blastOf trumpets, and the neigh of raging steeds,The shrieks of women whose thrill jars the blood,And one sweet laugh, most horrible to hear, _825As of a joyous infant waked and playingWith its dead mother’s breast, and now more loudThe mingled battle-cry,—ha! hear I not‘En touto nike!’ ‘Allah-illa-Allah!‘?
AHASUERUS:The sulphurous mist is raised—thou seest—
MAHMUD:A chasm, _830As 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 dustGlimmers a kingless diadem, and one _835Of regal port has cast himself beneathThe stream of war. Another proudly cladIn golden arms spurs a Tartarian barbInto the gap, and with his iron maceDirects the torrent of that tide of men, _840And seems—he is—Mahomet!
AHASUERUS:What thou seestIs but the ghost of thy forgotten dream.A dream itself, yet less, perhaps, than thatThou call’st reality. Thou mayst beholdHow cities, on which Empire sleeps enthroned, _845Bow 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 powerEbbs to its depths.—Inheritor of glory,Conceived in darkness, born in blood, and nourished _850With tears and toil, thou seest the mortal throesOf that whose birth was but the same. The PastNow stands before thee like an IncarnationOf the To-come; yet wouldst thou commune withThat portion of thyself which was ere thou _855Didst start for this brief race whose crown is death,Dissolve with that strong faith and fervent passionWhich called it from the uncreated deep,Yon cloud of war, with its tempestuous phantomsOf raging death; and draw with mighty will _860The imperial shade hither.
MAHMUD:Approach!
PHANTOM:I comeThence whither thou must go! The grave is fitterTo 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 _865When I arose, like shapeless crags and clouds,Hang round my throne on the abyss, and voicesOf strange lament soothe my supreme repose,Wailing for glory never to return.—A later Empire nods in its decay: _870The autumn of a greener faith is come,And wolfish change, like winter, howls to stripThe foliage in which Fame, the eagle, builtHer aerie, while Dominion whelped below.The storm is in its branches, and the frost _875Is on its leaves, and the blank deep expectsOblivion on oblivion, spoil on spoil,Ruin on ruin:—Thou art slow, my son;The Anarchs of the world of darkness keepA throne for thee, round which thine empire lies _880Boundless and mute; and for thy subjects thou,Like us, shalt rule the ghosts of murdered life,The phantoms of the powers who rule thee now—Mutinous passions, and conflicting fears,And hopes that sate themselves on dust, and die!— _885Stripped of their mortal strength, as thou of thine.Islam must fall, but we will reign togetherOver its ruins in the world of death:—And if the trunk be dry, yet shall the seedUnfold itself even in the shape of that _890Which gathers birth in its decay. Woe! woe!To the weak people tangled in the graspOf its last spasms.
MAHMUD:Spirit, woe to all!Woe to the wronged and the avenger! WoeTo the destroyer, woe to the destroyed! _895Woe to the dupe, and woe to the deceiver!Woe to the oppressed, and woe to the oppressor!Woe both to those that suffer and inflict;Those who are born and those who die! but say,Imperial shadow of the thing I am, _900When, how, by whom, Destruction must accomplishHer consummation!
PHANTOM:Ask the cold pale Hour,Rich in reversion of impending death,When HE shall fall upon whose ripe gray hairsSit Care, and Sorrow, and Infirmity— _905The weight which Crime, whose wings are plumed with years,Leaves in his flight from ravaged heart to heartOver the heads of men, under which burthenThey bow themselves unto the grave: fond wretch!He leans upon his crutch, and talks of years _910To come, and how in hours of youth renewedHe will renew lost joys, and—
VOICE WITHOUT:Victory! Victory!
MAHMUD:What sound of the importunate earth has brokenMy mighty trance?
VOICE WITHOUT:Victory! Victory!
MAHMUD:Weak lightning before darkness! poor faint smile _915Of dying Islam! Voice which art the responseOf hollow weakness! Do I wake and live?Were there such things, or may the unquiet brain,Vexed by the wise mad talk of the old Jew,Have shaped itself these shadows of its fear? _920It matters not!—for nought we see or dream,Possess, or lose, or grasp at, can be worthMore than it gives or teaches. Come what may,The Future must become the Past, and IAs they were to whom once this present hour, _925This gloomy crag of time to which I cling,Seemed an Elysian isle of peace and joyNever to be attained.—I must rebukeThis drunkenness of triumph ere it die,And dying, bring despair. Victory! poor slaves! _930
VOICE WITHOUT:Shout in the jubilee of death! The GreeksAre as a brood of lions in the netRound which the kingly hunters of the earthStand smiling. Anarchs, ye whose daily foodAre curses, groans, and gold, the fruit of death, _935From Thule to the girdle of the world,Come, feast! the board groans with the flesh of men;The cup is foaming with a nation’s blood,Famine and Thirst await! eat, drink, and die!
SEMICHORUS 1:Victorious Wrong, with vulture scream, _940Salutes the rising sun, pursues the flying day!I saw her, ghastly as a tyrant’s dream,Perch on the trembling pyramid of night,Beneath which earth and all her realms pavilioned layIn visions of the dawning undelight. _945Who shall impede her flight?Who rob her of her prey?
VOICE WITHOUT:Victory! Victory! Russia’s famished eaglesDare not to prey beneath the crescent’s light.Impale the remnant of the Greeks! despoil! _950Violate! make their flesh cheaper than dust!
SEMICHORUS 2:Thou voice which artThe herald of the ill in splendour hid!Thou echo of the hollow heartOf monarchy, bear me to thine abode _955When desolation flashes o’er a world destroyed:Oh, bear me to those isles of jagged cloudWhich float like mountains on the earthquake, midThe momentary oceans of the lightning,Or to some toppling promontory proud _960Of solid tempest whose black pyramid,Riven, overhangs the founts intensely bright’ningOf those dawn-tinted deluges of fireBefore their waves expire,When heaven and earth are light, and only light _965In the thunder-night!
NOTE: _958 earthquake edition 1822; earthquakes editions 1839.
VOICE WITHOUT:Victory! Victory! Austria, Russia, England,And that tame serpent, that poor shadow, France,Cry peace, and that means death when monarchs speak.Ho, there! bring torches, sharpen those red stakes, _970These chains are light, fitter for slaves and poisonersThan Greeks. Kill! plunder! burn! let none remain.
SEMICHORUS 1:Alas! for Liberty!If numbers, wealth, or unfulfilling years,Or fate, can quell the free! _975Alas! for Virtue, whenTorments, or contumely, or the sneersOf erring judging menCan break the heart where it abides.Alas! if Love, whose smile makes this obscure world splendid, _980Can change with its false times and tides,Like hope and terror,—Alas for Love!And Truth, who wanderest lone and unbefriended,If thou canst veil thy lie-consuming mirror _985Before the dazzled eyes of Error,Alas for thee! Image of the Above.
SEMICHORUS 2:Repulse, with plumes from conquest torn,Led the ten thousand from the limits of the mornThrough many an hostile Anarchy! _990At length they wept aloud, and cried, ‘The Sea! the Sea!’Through exile, persecution, and despair,Rome was, and young Atlantis shall becomeThe wonder, or the terror, or the tombOf all whose step wakes Power lulled in her savage lair: _995But Greece was as a hermit-child,Whose fairest thoughts and limbs were builtTo woman’s growth, by dreams so mild,She knew not pain or guilt;And now, O Victory, blush! and Empire, tremble _1000When ye desert the free—If Greece must beA wreck, yet shall its fragments reassemble,And build themselves again impregnablyIn a diviner clime, _1005To Amphionic music on some Cape sublime,Which frowns above the idle foam of Time.
SEMICHORUS 1:Let the tyrants rule the desert they have made;Let the free possess the Paradise they claim;Be the fortune of our fierce oppressors weighed _1010With our ruin, our resistance, and our name!
SEMICHORUS 2:Our dead shall be the seed of their decay,Our survivors be the shadow of their pride,Our adversity a dream to pass away—Their dishonour a remembrance to abide! _1015
VOICE WITHOUT:Victory! Victory! The bought Briton sendsThe keys of ocean to the Islamite.—Now shall the blazon of the cross be veiled,And British skill directing Othman might,Thunder-strike rebel victory. Oh, keep holy _1020This jubilee of unrevenged blood!Kill! crush! despoil! Let not a Greek escape!
SEMICHORUS 1:Darkness has dawned in the EastOn the noon of time:The death-birds descend to their feast _1025From the hungry clime.Let Freedom and Peace flee farTo a sunnier strand,And follow Love’s folding-starTo the Evening land! _1030
SEMICHORUS 2:The young moon has fedHer exhausted hornWith the sunset’s fire:The weak day is dead,But the night is not born; _1035And, like loveliness panting with wild desireWhile it trembles with fear and delight,Hesperus flies from awakening night,And pants in its beauty and speed with lightFast-flashing, soft, and bright. _1040Thou beacon of love! thou lamp of the free!Guide us far, far away,To climes where now veiled by the ardour of dayThou art hiddenFrom waves on which weary Noon _1045Faints in her summer swoon,Between kingless continents sinless as Eden,Around mountains and islands inviolablyPranked on the sapphire sea.
SEMICHORUS 1:Through the sunset of hope, _1050Like the shapes of a dream.What Paradise islands of glory gleam!Beneath Heaven’s cope,Their shadows more clear float by—The sound of their oceans, the light of their sky, _1055The music and fragrance their solitudes breatheBurst, like morning on dream, or like Heaven on death,Through the walls of our prison;And Greece, which was dead, is arisen!
NOTE: _1057 dream edition 1822; dreams editions 1839.
CHORUS:The world’s great age begins anew, _1060The golden years return,The earth doth like a snake renewHer winter weeds outworn:Heaven smiles, and faiths and empires gleam,Like wrecks of a dissolving dream. _1065
A brighter Hellas rears its mountainsFrom waves serener far;A new Peneus rolls his fountainsAgainst the morning star.Where fairer Tempes bloom, there sleep _1070Young Cyclads on a sunnier deep.
A loftier Argo cleaves the main,Fraught with a later prize;Another Orpheus sings again,And loves, and weeps, and dies. _1075A new Ulysses leaves once moreCalypso for his native shore.
Oh, write no more the tale of Troy,If earth Death’s scroll must be!Nor mix with Laian rage the joy _1080Which dawns upon the free:Although a subtler Sphinx renewRiddles of death Thebes never knew.
Another Athens shall arise,And to remoter time _1085Bequeath, like sunset to the skies,The splendour of its prime;And leave, if nought so bright may live,All earth can take or Heaven can give.
Saturn and Love their long repose _1090Shall burst, more bright and goodThan all who fell, than One who rose,Than many unsubdued:Not gold, not blood, their altar dowers,But votive tears and symbol flowers. _1095
Oh, cease! must hate and death return?Cease! must men kill and die?Cease! drain not to its dregs the urnOf bitter prophecy.The world is weary of the past, _1100Oh, might it die or rest at last!
NOTES: _1068 his edition 1822; its editions 1839. _1072 Argo]Argos edition 1822. _1091-_1093 See Editor’s note. _1091 bright editions 1839; wise edition 1829 (ed. Galignani). _1093 unsubdued editions 1839; unwithstood edition 1829 (ed. Galignani).
Milan was the centre of the resistance of the Lombard league against the Austrian tyrant. Frederic Barbarossa burnt the city to the ground, but liberty lived in its ashes, and it rose like an exhalation from its ruin. See Sismondi’s “Histoire des Republiques Italiennes”, a book which has done much towards awakening the Italians to an imitation of their great ancestors.
The popular notions of Christianity are represented in this chorus as true in their relation to the worship they superseded, and that which in all probability they will supersede, without considering their merits in a relation more universal. The first stanza contrasts the immortality of the living and thinking beings which inhabit the planets, and to use a common and inadequate phrase, “clothe themselves in matter”, with the transience of the noblest manifestations of the external world.
The concluding verses indicate a progressive state of more or loss exalted existence, according to the degree of perfection which every distinct intelligence may have attained. Let it not be supposed that I mean to dogmatise upon a subject, concerning which all men are equally ignorant, or that I think the Gordian knot of the origin of evil can be disentangled by that or any similar assertions. The received hypothesis of a Being resembling men in the moral attributes of His nature, having called us out of non-existence, and after inflicting on us the misery of the commission of error, should superadd that of the punishment and the privations consequent upon it, still would remain inexplicable and incredible. That there is a true solution of the riddle, and that in our present state that solution is unattainable by us, are propositions which may be regarded as equally certain: meanwhile, as it is the province of the poet to attach himself to those ideas which exalt and ennoble humanity, let him be permitted to have conjectured the condition of that futurity towards which we are all impelled by an inextinguishable thirst for immortality. Until better arguments can be produced than sophisms which disgrace the cause, this desire itself must remain the strongest and the only presumption that eternity is the inheritance of every thinking being.
The Greek Patriarch, after haying been compelled to fulminate an anathema against the insurgents, was put to death by the Turks.
Fortunately the Greeks have been taught that they cannot buy security by degradation, and the Turks, though equally cruel, are less cunning than the smooth-faced tyrants of Europe. As to the anathema, his Holiness might as well have thrown his mitre at Mount Athos for any effect that it produced. The chiefs of the Greeks are almost all men of comprehension and enlightened views on religion and politics.
A Greek who had been Lord Byron’s servant commands 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 connection with our character is determined by events.
It is reported that this Messiah had arrived at a seaport near Lacedaemon in an American brig. The association of names and ideas is irresistibly ludicrous, but the prevalence of such a rumour strongly marks the state of popular enthusiasm in Greece.
For the vision of Mahmud of the taking of Constantinople in 1453, seeGibbon’s “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”, volume 12 page 223.
The manner of the invocation of the spirit of Mahomet the Second will be censured as over subtle. I could easily have made the Jew a regular conjuror, and the Phantom an ordinary ghost. 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.
The final chorus is indistinct and obscure, as the event of the living drama whose arrival it foretells. Prophecies of wars, and rumours of wars, etc., may safely be made by poet or prophet in any age, but to anticipate however darkly a period of regeneration and happiness is a more hazardous exercise of the faculty which bards possess or feign. It will remind the reader ‘magno NEC proximus intervallo’ of Isaiah and Virgil, whose ardent spirits overleaping the actual reign of evil which we endure and bewail, already saw the possible and perhaps approaching state of society in which the ‘lion shall lie down with the lamb,’ and ‘omnis feret omnia tellus.’ Let these great names be my authority and my excuse.
Saturn and Love were among the deities of a real or imaginary state of innocence and happiness. ALL those WHO FELL, or the Gods of Greece, Asia, and Egypt; the ONE WHO ROSE, or Jesus Christ, at whose appearance the idols of the Pagan World wore amerced of their worship; and the MANY UNSUBDUED, or the monstrous objects of the idolatry of China, India, the Antarctic islands, and the native tribes of America, certainly have reigned over the understandings of men in conjunction or in succession, during periods in which all we know of evil has been in a state of portentous, and, until the revival of learning and the arts, perpetually increasing, activity. The Grecian gods seem indeed to have been personally more innocent, although it cannot be said, that as far as temperance and chastity are concerned, they gave so edifying an example as their successor. The sublime human character of Jesus Christ was deformed by an imputed identification with a Power, who tempted, betrayed, and punished the innocent beings who were called into existence by His sole will; and for the period of a thousand years, the spirit of this most just, wise, and benevolent of men has been propitiated with myriads of hecatombs of those who approached the nearest to His innocence and wisdom, sacrificed under every aggravation of atrocity and variety of torture. The horrors of the Mexican, the Peruvian, and the Indian superstitions are well known.