Preface…

Preface

The poem of "Hellas", written at the suggestion of the events of the moment, is a mere improvise, and derives its interest (should it be found to possess any) solely from the intense sympathy which the Author feels with the cause he would celebrate.

The subject, in its present state, is insusceptible of being treated otherwise than lyrically, and if I have called this poem a drama from the circumstance of its being composed in dialogue, the licence is not greater than that which has been assumed by other poets who have called their productions epics, only because they have been divided into twelve or twenty-four books.

The "Persae" of Aeschylus afforded me the first model of my conception, although the decision of the glorious contest now waging in Greece being yet suspended forbids a catastrophe parallel to the return of Xerxes and the desolation of the Persians. I have, therefore, contented myself with exhibiting a series of lyric pictures, and with having wrought upon the curtain of futurity, which falls upon the unfinished scene, such figures of indistinct and visionary delineation as suggest the final triumph of the Greek cause as a portion of the cause of civilisation and social improvement.

The drama (if drama it must be called) is, however, so inartificial that I doubt whether, if recited on the Thespian waggon to an Athenian village at the Dionysiaca, it would have obtained the prize of the goat. I shall bear with equanimity any punishment, greater than the loss of such a reward, which the Aristarchi of the hour may think fit to inflict.

The only "goat-song" which I have yet attempted has, I confess, in spite of the unfavourable nature of the subject, received a greater and a more valuable portion of applause than I expected or than it deserved.

Common fame is the only authority which I can allege for the details which form the basis of the poem, and I must trespass upon the forgiveness of my readers for the display of newspaper erudition to which I have been reduced. Undoubtedly, until the conclusion of the war, it will be impossible to obtain an account of it sufficiently authentic for historical materials; but poets have their privilege, and it is unquestionable that actions of the most exalted courage have been performed by the Greeks--that they have gained more than one naval victory, and that their defeat in Wallachia was signalized by circumstances of heroism more glorious even than victory.

The apathy of the rulers of the civilised world to the astonishing circumstance of the descendants of that nation to which they owe their civilisation, rising as it were from the ashes of their ruin, is something perfectly inexplicable to a mere spectator of the shows of this mortal scene. We are all Greeks. Our laws, our literature, our religion, our arts have their root in Greece. But for Greece--Rome, the instructor, the conqueror, or the metropolis of our ancestors, would have spread no illumination with her arms, and we might still have been savages and idolaters; or, what is worse, might have arrived at such a stagnant and miserable state of social institution as China and Japan possess.

The human form and the human mind attained to a perfection in Greece which has impressed its image on those faultless productions, whose very fragments are the despair of modern art, and has propagated impulses which cannot cease, through a thousand channels of manifest or imperceptible operation, to ennoble and delight mankind until the extinction of the race.

The modern Greek is the descendant of those glorious beings whom the imagination almost refuses to figure to itself as belonging to our kind, and he inherits much of their sensibility, their rapidity of conception, their enthusiasm, and their courage. If in many instances he is degraded by moral and political slavery to the practice of the basest vices it engenders--and that below the level of ordinary degradation--let us reflect that the corruption of the best produces the worst, and that habits which subsist only in relation to a peculiar state of social institution may be expected to cease as soon as that relation is dissolved. In fact, the Greeks, since the admirable novel of Anastasius could have been a faithful picture of their manners, have undergone most important changes; the flower of their youth, returning to their country from the universities of Italy, Germany, and France, have communicated to their fellow-citizens the latest results of that social perfection of which their ancestors were the original source. The University of Chios contained before the breaking out of the revolution eight hundred students, and among them several Germans and Americans. The munificence and energy of many of the Greek princes and merchants, directed to the renovation of their country with a spirit and a wisdom which has few examples, is above all praise.

The English permit their own oppressors to act according to their natural sympathy with the Turkish tyrant, and to brand upon their name the indelible blot of an alliance with the enemies of domestic happiness, of Christianity and civilisation.

Russia desires to possess, not to liberate Greece; and is contented to see the Turks, its natural enemies, and the Greeks, its intended slaves, enfeeble each other until one or both fall into its net. The wise and generous policy of England would have consisted in establishing the independence of Greece, and in maintaining it both against Russia and the Turk;--but when was the oppressor generous or just?

[Should the English people ever become free, they will reflect upon the part which those who presume to represent their will have played in the great drama of the revival of liberty, with feelings which it would become them to anticipate. This is the age of the war of the oppressed against the oppressors, and every one of those ringleaders of the privileged gangs of murderers and swindlers, called Sovereigns, look to each other for aid against the common enemy, and suspend their mutual jealousies in the presence of a mightier fear. Of this holy alliance all the despots of the earth are virtual members. But a new race has arisen throughout Europe, nursed in the abhorrence of the opinions which are its chains, and she will continue to produce fresh generations to accomplish that destiny which tyrants foresee and dread. (This paragraph, suppressed in 1822 by Charles Ollier, was first restored in 1892 by Mr. Buxton Forman ["Poetical Works of P. B. S.", volume 4 pages 40-41] from a proof copy of Hellas in his possession.]

The Spanish Peninsula is already free. France is tranquil in the enjoyment of a partial exemption from the abuses which its unnatural and feeble government are vainly attempting to revive. The seed of blood and misery has been sown in Italy, and a more vigorous race is arising to go forth to the harvest. The world waits only the news of a revolution of Germany to see the tyrants who have pinnacled themselves on its supineness precipitated into the ruin from which they shall never arise. Well do these destroyers of mankind know their enemy, when they impute the insurrection in Greece to the same spirit before which they tremble throughout the rest of Europe, and that enemy well knows the power and the cunning of its opponents, and watches the moment of their approaching weakness and inevitable division to wrest the bloody sceptres from their grasp.

PROLOGUE TO HELLAS.

HERALD OF ETERNITY: It is the day when all the sons of God Wait in the roofless senate-house, whose floor Is Chaos, and the immovable abyss Frozen by His steadfast word to hyaline

...

The shadow of God, and delegate _5 Of that before whose breath the universe Is as a print of dew. Hierarchs and kings Who from your thrones pinnacled on the past Sway the reluctant present, ye who sit Pavilioned on the radiance or the gloom _10 Of mortal thought, which like an exhalation Steaming from earth, conceals the ... of heaven Which gave it birth. ... assemble here Before your Father's throne; the swift decree Yet hovers, and the fiery incarnation _15 Is yet withheld, clothed in which it shall annul The fairest of those wandering isles that gem The sapphire space of interstellar air, That green and azure sphere, that earth enwrapped _20 Less in the beauty of its tender light Than in an atmosphere of living spirit Which interpenetrating all the ... it rolls from realm to realm And age to age, and in its ebb and flow _25 Impels the generations To their appointed place, Whilst the high Arbiter Beholds the strife, and at the appointed time Sends His decrees veiled in eternal... _30

Within the circuit of this pendent orb There lies an antique region, on which fell The dews of thought in the world's golden dawn Earliest and most benign, and from it sprung Temples and cities and immortal forms _35 And harmonies of wisdom and of song, And thoughts, and deeds worthy of thoughts so fair. And when the sun of its dominion failed, And when the winter of its glory came, The winds that stripped it bare blew on and swept _40 That dew into the utmost wildernesses In wandering clouds of sunny rain that thawed The unmaternal bosom of the North. Haste, sons of God, ... for ye beheld, Reluctant, or consenting, or astonished, _45 The stern decrees go forth, which heaped on Greece Ruin and degradation and despair. A fourth now waits: assemble, sons of God, To speed or to prevent or to suspend, If, as ye dream, such power be not withheld, _50 The unaccomplished destiny.

NOTE: _8 your Garnett; yon Forman, Dowden.

...

CHORUS: The curtain of the Universe Is rent and shattered, The splendour-winged worlds disperse Like wild doves scattered. _55

Space is roofless and bare, And in the midst a cloudy shrine, Dark amid thrones of light. In the blue glow of hyaline Golden worlds revolve and shine. _60 In ... flight From every point of the Infinite, Like a thousand dawns on a single night The splendours rise and spread; And through thunder and darkness dread _65 Light and music are radiated, And in their pavilioned chariots led By living wings high overhead The giant Powers move, Gloomy or bright as the thrones they fill. _70

...

A chaos of light and motion Upon that glassy ocean.

...

The senate of the Gods is met, Each in his rank and station set; There is silence in the spaces-- _75 Lo! Satan, Christ, and Mahomet Start from their places!

CHRIST: Almighty Father! Low-kneeling at the feet of Destiny

...

There are two fountains in which spirits weep _80 When mortals err, Discord and Slavery named, And with their bitter dew two Destinies Filled each their irrevocable urns; the third Fiercest and mightiest, mingled both, and added Chaos and Death, and slow Oblivion's lymph, _85 And hate and terror, and the poisoned rain

...

The Aurora of the nations. By this brow Whose pores wept tears of blood, by these wide wounds, By this imperial crown of agony, By infamy and solitude and death, _90 For this I underwent, and by the pain Of pity for those who would ... for me The unremembered joy of a revenge, For this I felt--by Plato's sacred light, Of which my spirit was a burning morrow-- _95 By Greece and all she cannot cease to be. Her quenchless words, sparks of immortal truth, Stars of all night--her harmonies and forms, Echoes and shadows of what Love adores In thee, I do compel thee, send forth Fate, _100 Thy irrevocable child: let her descend, A seraph-winged Victory [arrayed] In tempest of the omnipotence of God Which sweeps through all things.

From hollow leagues, from Tyranny which arms _105 Adverse miscreeds and emulous anarchies To stamp, as on a winged serpent's seed, Upon the name of Freedom; from the storm Of faction, which like earthquake shakes and sickens The solid heart of enterprise; from all _110 By which the holiest dreams of highest spirits Are stars beneath the dawn... She shall arise Victorious as the world arose from Chaos! And as the Heavens and the Earth arrayed Their presence in the beauty and the light _115 Of Thy first smile, O Father,--as they gather The spirit of Thy love which paves for them Their path o'er the abyss, till every sphere Shall be one living Spirit,--so shall Greece--

SATAN: Be as all things beneath the empyrean, _120 Mine! Art thou eyeless like old Destiny, Thou mockery-king, crowned with a wreath of thorns? Whose sceptre is a reed, the broken reed Which pierces thee! whose throne a chair of scorn; For seest thou not beneath this crystal floor _125 The innumerable worlds of golden light Which are my empire, and the least of them which thou wouldst redeem from me? Know'st thou not them my portion? Or wouldst rekindle the ... strife _130 Which our great Father then did arbitrate Which he assigned to his competing sons Each his apportioned realm? Thou Destiny, Thou who art mailed in the omnipotence Of Him who tends thee forth, whate'er thy task, _135 Speed, spare not to accomplish, and be mine Thy trophies, whether Greece again become The fountain in the desert whence the earth Shall drink of freedom, which shall give it strength To suffer, or a gulf of hollow death _140 To swallow all delight, all life, all hope. Go, thou Vicegerent of my will, no less Than of the Father's; but lest thou shouldst faint, The winged hounds, Famine and Pestilence, Shall wait on thee, the hundred-forked snake _145 Insatiate Superstition still shall... The earth behind thy steps, and War shall hover Above, and Fraud shall gape below, and Change Shall flit before thee on her dragon wings, Convulsing and consuming, and I add _150 Three vials of the tears which daemons weep When virtuous spirits through the gate of Death Pass triumphing over the thorns of life, Sceptres and crowns, mitres and swords and snares, Trampling in scorn, like Him and Socrates. _155 The first is Anarchy; when Power and Pleasure, Glory and science and security, On Freedom hang like fruit on the green tree, Then pour it forth, and men shall gather ashes. The second Tyranny--

CHRIST: Obdurate spirit! _160 Thou seest but the Past in the To-come. Pride is thy error and thy punishment. Boast not thine empire, dream not that thy worlds Are more than furnace-sparks or rainbow-drops Before the Power that wields and kindles them. _165 True greatness asks not space, true excellence Lives in the Spirit of all things that live, Which lends it to the worlds thou callest thine.

...

MAHOMET: ...Haste thou and fill the waning crescent With beams as keen as those which pierced the shadow _170 Of Christian night rolled back upon the West, When the orient moon of Islam rode in triumph From Tmolus to the Acroceraunian snow.

...

Wake, thou Word Of God, and from the throne of Destiny _175 Even to the utmost limit of thy way May Triumph

...

Be thou a curse on them whose creed Divides and multiplies the most high God.

HELLAS.

DRAMATIS PERSONAE:

MAHMUD. HASSAN. DAOOD. AHASUERUS, A JEW. CHORUS OF GREEK CAPTIVE WOMEN. [THE PHANTOM OF MAHOMET II. (OMITTED, EDITION 1822.)] MESSENGERS, SLAVES, AND ATTENDANTS.

SCENE: CONSTANTINOPLE.

TIME: SUNSET.

SCENE: A TERRACE ON THE SERAGLIO. MAHMUD SLEEPING, AN INDIAN SLAVE SITTING BESIDE HIS COUCH.

CHORUS OF GREEK CAPTIVE WOMEN: We strew these opiate flowers On thy restless pillow,-- They were stripped from Orient bowers, By the Indian billow. Be thy sleep _5 Calm and deep, Like theirs who fell--not ours who weep!

INDIAN: Away, unlovely dreams! Away, false shapes of sleep Be his, as Heaven seems, _10 Clear, 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 laden With the soul of slumber; _15 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. _20

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, _25 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. _30 Breathe low--low The words which, like secret fire, shall flow Through 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; _35 Truth be veiled, but still it burneth; Love repulsed,--but it returneth!

SEMICHORUS 2: Yet were life a charnel where Hope lay coffined with Despair; Yet were truth a sacred lie, _40 Love were lust--

SEMICHORUS 1: 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. _45

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, _50 Before an earthquake's tread.-- So from Time's tempestuous dawn Freedom's splendour burst and shone:-- Thermopylae and Marathon Caught like mountains beacon-lighted, _55 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. _60 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, Reassuming fiery flight, _65 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 _70 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. _75 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 _80 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; _85 Beneath the safety of her wings Her renovated nurslings prey, And in the naked lightenings Of truth they purge their dazzled eyes. Let Freedom leave--where'er she flies, _90 A Desert, or a Paradise: Let the beautiful and the brave Share 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 gladness Greece did thy cradle strew; _95

SEMICHORUS 2: With the tears of sadness Greece did thy shroud bedew!

SEMICHORUS 1: With an orphan's affection She followed thy bier through Time;

SEMICHORUS 2: And at thy resurrection _100 Reappeareth, 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 nation Be forgotten, Freedom, with thee!

INDIAN: His brow grows darker--breathe not--move not! _110 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? _115 '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 _120 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: Your Sublime Highness Is strangely moved.

MAHMUD: The times do cast strange shadows On those who watch and who must rule their course, _125 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, _130 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 _135 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 _140 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 _145 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, _150 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 _155 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 _160 Which others fear and know not.

MAHMUD: I would talk With this old Jew.

HASSAN: 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 _165 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, _170 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 _175 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 _180 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 _185 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! _190 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. Kinks are like stars--they rise and set, they have _195 The worship of the world, but no repose.

[EXEUNT SEVERALLY.]

CHORUS: Worlds on worlds are rolling ever From creation to decay, Like the bubbles on a river Sparkling, bursting, borne away. _200 But they are still immortal 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 _205 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. _210

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 _215 Was like the vapour dim Which the orient planet animates with light; Hell, Sin, and Slavery came, Like bloodhounds mild and tame, Nor preyed, until their Lord had taken flight; _220 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 _225 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 _230 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, _235 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: The Janizars _240 Clamour for pay.

MAHMUD: 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 _245 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: It has been sown, And yet the harvest to the sicklemen Is as a grain to each.

MAHMUD: Then, take this signet, _250 Unlock the seventh chamber in which lie The 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; _255 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. [EXIT DAOOD.] O miserable dawn, after a night More glorious than the day which it usurped! _260 O faith in God! O power on earth! O word Of the great prophet, whose o'ershadowing 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, _265 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 _270 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 _275 Of utmost Asia, irresistibly Throng, like full clouds at the Sirocco's cry; But not like them to weep their strength in tears: They bear destroying lightning, and their step Wakes earthquake to consume and overwhelm, _280 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 _285 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!' _290 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 _295 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, _300 To speak in thunder to the rebel world. Like sulphurous clouds, half-shattered by the storm, They sweep the pale Aegean, while the Queen Of Ocean, bound upon her island-throne, Far in the West, sits mourning that her sons _305 Who frown on Freedom spare a smile for thee: Russia still hovers, as an eagle might Within a cloud, near which a kite and crane Hang tangled in inextricable fight, To stoop upon the victor;--for she fears _310 The name of Freedom, even as she hates thine. But recreant Austria loves thee as the Grave Loves Pestilence, and her slow dogs of war Fleshed with the chase, come up from Italy, And howl upon their limits; for they see _315 The panther, Freedom, fled to her old cover, Amid seas and mountains, and a mightier brood Crouch 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? _320 Our arsenals and our armouries are full; Our forts defy assault; ten thousand cannon Lie ranged upon the beach, and hour by hour Their earth-convulsing wheels affright the city; The galloping of fiery steeds makes pale _325 The Christian merchant; and the yellow Jew Hides 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 _330 Sweep;--the far flashing of their starry lances Reverberates the dying light of day. We have one God, one King, one Hope, one Law; But many-headed Insurrection stands Divided 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, emblazoned Upon that shattered flag of fiery cloud Which leads the rear of the departing day; Wan emblem of an empire fading now! _340 See how it trembles in the blood-red air, And like a mighty lamp whose oil is spent Shrinks on the horizon's edge, while, from above, One star with insolent and victorious light Hovers above its fall, and with keen beams, _345 Like arrows through a fainting antelope, Strikes its weak form to death.

HASSAN: Even as that moon Renews itself--

MAHMUD: Shall we be not renewed! Far other bark than ours were needed now To stem the torrent of descending time: _350 The Spirit that lifts the slave before his lord Stalks 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; _355 And the inheritors of the earth, like beasts When earthquake is unleashed, with idiot fear Cower in their kingly dens--as I do now. What were Defeat when Victory must appal? Or Danger, when Security looks pale?-- _360 How said the messenger--who, from the fort Islanded in the Danube, saw the battle Of Bucharest?--that--

NOTES: _351 his edition 1822; its editions 1839. _356 of the earth edition 1822; of earth editions 1839.

HASSAN: Ibrahim's scimitar Drew with its gleam swift victory from Heaven, To burn before him in the night of battle-- _365 A light and a destruction.

MAHMUD: Ay! the day Was ours: but how?--

HASSAN: The light Wallachians, The Arnaut, Servian, and Albanian allies Fled from the glance of our artillery Almost before the thunderstone alit. _370 One half the Grecian army made a bridge Of safe and slow retreat, with Moslem dead; The other--

MAHMUD: Speak--tremble not.--

HASSAN: Islanded By victor myriads, formed in hollow square With rough and steadfast front, and thrice flung back _375 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, _380 Kneading them down with fire and iron rain: Yet none approached; till, like a field of corn Under the hook of the swart sickleman, The band, intrenched in mounds of Turkish dead, Grew weak and few.--Then said the Pacha, 'Slaves, _385 Render 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; _390 But I to them, and to myself, remain Constant:'--he bowed his head, and his heart burst. A third exclaimed, 'There is a refuge, tyrant, Where thou darest not pursue, and canst not harm Shouldst thou pursue; there we shall meet again.' _395 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 dishonourable, _400 Met in triumphant death; and when our army Closed in, while yet wonder, and awe, and shame Held back the base hyaenas of the battle That feed upon the dead and fly the living, One rose out of the chaos of the slain: _405 And if it were a corpse which some dread spirit Of the old saviours of the land we rule Had lifted in its anger, wandering by;-- Or if there burned within the dying man Unquenchable disdain of death, and faith _410 Creating what it feigned;--I cannot tell-- 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, _415 And thaw their frostwork 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 clasped, Lies sepulchred in monumental thought;-- _420 Progenitors of all 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 _425 When the crushed worm rebels beneath your tread, The vultures and the dogs, your pensioners tame, Are overgorged; but, like oppressors, still They crave the relic of Destruction's feast. The exhalations and the thirsty winds _430 Are sick with blood; the dew is foul with death; Heaven's light is quenched 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, _435 Upon 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 down With poisoned light--Famine, and Pestilence, And Panic, shall wage war upon our side! _440 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, _445 The renovated genius of our race, Proud umpire of the impious game, descends, A seraph-winged Victory, bestriding The tempest of the Omnipotence of God, Which sweeps all things to their appointed doom, _450 And you to oblivion!'--More he would have said, But--

NOTE: _384 band edition 1822; bands editions 1839.

MAHMUD: Died--as thou shouldst ore 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.

HASSAN: It may be so: _455 A 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! outlive Me and this sinking empire. But the fleet--

HASSAN: Alas!--

MAHMUD: The fleet which, like a flock of clouds _460 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! _465 Death is awake! Repulse is on the waters! They own no more the thunder-bearing banner Of 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 _470 The wreck--

MAHMUD: The caves of the Icarian isles Told 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: _475 Interpret thou their voice!

NOTE: _472 Told Errata, Wms. transcript; Hold edition 1822.

HASSAN: My presence bore A part in that day's shame. The Grecian fleet Bore down at daybreak from the North, and hung As multitudinous on the ocean line, As cranes upon the cloudless Thracian wind. _480 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 _485 Dashed:--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, _490 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 destroyed and the destroyer Rose, and a cloud of desolation wrapped _495 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 _500 The abhorred cross glimmered behind, before, Among, around us; and that fatal sign Dried 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 _505 Was beaconed,--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; _510 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 perished! We met the vultures legioned in the air _515 Stemming the torrent of the tainted wind; They, screaming from their cloudy mountain-peaks, Stooped through the sulphurous battle-smoke and perched Each on the weltering carcase that we loved, Like its ill angel or its damned soul, _520 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. _525 We 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!

[ENTER A MESSENGER.]

MESSENGER: Your Sublime Highness, That Christian hound, the Muscovite Ambassador, Has left the city.--If the rebel fleet Had anchored in the port, had victory _530 Crowned 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 peace In Stamboul.--

MAHMUD: Is the grave not calmer still? _535 Its ruins shall be mine.

HASSAN: Fear not the Russian: The tiger leagues not with the stag at bay Against the hunter.--Cunning, base, and cruel, He crouches, watching till the spoil be won, And must be paid for his reserve in blood. _540 After the war is fought, yield the sleek Russian That which thou canst not keep, his deserved portion Of 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

[ENTER SECOND MESSENGER.]

SECOND MESSENGER: Nauplia, Tripolizza, Mothon, Athens, Navarin, Artas, Monembasia, Corinth, and Thebes are carried by assault, And every Islamite who made his dogs Fat with the flesh of Galilean slaves _550 Passed 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 anew In deeds which make the Christian cause look pale In its own light. The garrison of Patras _555 Has store but for ten days, nor is there hope But from the Briton: at once slave and tyrant, 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 Norway; _560 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: _565 The aged Ali sits in Yanina A crownless metaphor of empire: His name, that shadow of his withered might, Holds our besieging army like a spell In prey to famine, pest, and mutiny; _570 He, bastioned in his citadel, looks forth Joyless upon the sapphire lake that mirrors The ruins of the city where he reigned Childless and sceptreless. The Greek has reaped The costly harvest his own blood matured, _575 Not the sower, Ali--who has bought a truce From Ypsilanti with ten camel-loads Of Indian gold.

NOTE: _563 freedman edition 1822; freeman editions 1839.

[ENTER A THIRD MESSENGER.]

MAHMUD: What more?

THIRD MESSENGER: The Christian tribes Of Lebanon and the Syrian wilderness Are in revolt;--Damascus, Hems, Aleppo _580 Tremble;--the Arab menaces Medina, The Aethiop has intrenched himself in Sennaar, And keeps the Egyptian rebel well employed, Who denies homage, claims investiture As price of tardy aid. Persia demands _585 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, _590 Like birds before a storm, the Santons shriek, And prophesyings horrible and new Are heard among the crowd: that sea of men Sleeps on the wrecks it made, breathless and still. A Dervise, learned in the Koran, preaches _595 That it is written how the sins of Islam Must 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 _600 In which all live and are. Ominous signs Are blazoned broadly on the noonday sky: One saw a red cross stamped upon the sun; It has rained blood; and monstrous births declare The secret wrath of Nature and her Lord. _605 The army encamped 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 _610 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. _615 The last news from the camp is, that a thousand Have sickened, and--

[ENTER A FOURTH MESSENGER.]

MAHMUD: And thou, pale ghost, dim shadow Of some untimely rumour, speak!

FOURTH MESSENGER: One comes Fainting with toil, covered with foam and blood: He stood, he says, on Chelonites' _620 Promontory, which o'erlooks the isles that groan Under the Briton's frown, and all their waters Then trembling in the splendour of the moon, When as the wandering clouds unveiled or hid Her boundless light, he saw two adverse fleets _625 Stalk through the night in the horizon's glimmer, 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 _630 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 dreamed he saw, the Turkish admiral And two the loftiest of our ships of war, _635 With 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.

[ENTER AN ATTENDANT.]

ATTENDANT: Your Sublime Highness, The Jew, who--

MAHMUD: Could not come more seasonably: Bid him attend. I'll hear no more! too long _640 We gaze on danger through the mist of fear, And multiply upon our shattered hopes The images of ruin. Come what will! To-morrow and to-morrow are as lamps Set in our path to light us to the edge _645 Through rough and smooth, nor can we suffer aught Which He inflicts not in whose hand we are.

[EXEUNT.]

SEMICHORUS 1: Would I were the winged cloud Of a tempest swift and loud! I would scorn _650 The smile of morn And the wave where the moonrise is born! I would leave The spirits of eve A shroud for the corpse of the day to weave _655 From 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 _660 Echo to the battle paean Of the free-- I would flee A tempestuous herald of victory! My golden rain For the Grecian slain _665 Should mingle in tears with the bloody main, And my solemn thunder-knell Should ring to the world the passing-bell Of Tyranny! _670

SEMICHORUS 2: Ah king! wilt thou chain The 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 _680 Scorn 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 _685 Glorious states;--and are they now Ashes, wrecks, oblivion?

SEMICHORUS 2: Go, Where Thermae and Asopus swallowed Persia, as the sand does foam: Deluge upon deluge followed, _690 Discord, Macedon, and Rome: And lastly thou!

SEMICHORUS 1: Temples and towers, Citadels and marts, and they Who live and die there, have been ours, And may be thine, and must decay; _695 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, _700 Rule the present from the past, On all this world of men inherits Their seal is set.

SEMICHORUS 2: Hear ye the blast, Whose Orphic thunder thrilling calls From ruin her Titanian walls? _705 Whose spirit shakes the sapless bones Of Slavery? Argos, Corinth, Crete Hear, and from their mountain thrones The daemons and the nymphs repeat The 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 bleeds Beneath her earthquake-footed steeds? What eagle-winged victory sits _715 At her right hand? what shadow flits Before? what splendour rolls behind? Ruin and renovation cry 'Who but We?'

SEMICHORUS 1: I hear! I hear! The hiss as of a rushing wind, _720 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 _725 'Mercy! mercy!'--How they thrill! Then a shout of 'kill! kill! kill!' And then a small still voice, thus--

SEMICHORUS 2: For Revenge and Wrong bring forth their kind, The foul cubs like their parents are, _730 Their 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 fane Of Wisdom, Pity's altar stood: Serve not the unknown God in vain. _735 But pay that broken shrine again, Love for hate and tears for blood.

[ENTER MAHMUD AND AHASUERUS.]

MAHMUD: Thou art a man, thou sayest, even as we.

AHASUERUS: No more!

MAHMUD: But raised above thy fellow-men By thought, as I by power.

AHASUERUS: Thou sayest so. _740

MAHMUD: 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 _745 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-- _750 I honour 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 apprehended not _755 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; _760 Thou art as God, whom thou contemplatest.

AHASUERUS: Disdain thee?--not the worm beneath thy feet! The Fathomless has care for meaner things Than thou canst dream, and has made pride for those Who would be what they may not, or would seem _765 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 the undying. Earth and ocean, Space, and the isles of life or light that gem _770 The sapphire floods of interstellar air, This firmament pavilioned upon chaos, With all its cressets of immortal fire, Whose outwall, bastioned impregnably Against the escape of boldest thoughts, repels them _775 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 _780 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: 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 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, _790 Doubt, insecurity, astonishment.

AHASUERUS: Mistake me not! All is contained 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 _795 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, _800 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 opened--look, and lo! The coming age is shadowed on the Past _805 As on a glass.

MAHMUD: Wild, wilder thoughts convulse My spirit--Did not Mahomet the Second Win Stamboul?

AHASUERUS: Thou wouldst ask that giant spirit The written fortunes of thy house and faith. Thou wouldst cite one out of the grave to tell _810 How what was born in blood must die.

MAHMUD: Thy words Have power on me! I see--

AHASUERUS: What hearest thou?

MAHMUD: A far whisper-- Terrible silence.

AHASUERUS: What succeeds?

MAHMUD: The sound As of the assault of an imperial city, _815 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, _820 And crash of brazen mail as of the wreck Of adamantine mountains--the mad blast Of trumpets, and the neigh of raging steeds, The shrieks of women whose thrill jars the blood, And one sweet laugh, most horrible to hear, _825 As of a joyous infant waked and playing With its dead mother's breast, and now more loud The mingled battle-cry,--ha! hear I not 'En touto nike!' 'Allah-illa-Allah!'?

AHASUERUS: The sulphurous mist is raised--thou seest--

MAHMUD: A chasm, _830 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 _835 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, _840 And seems--he is--Mahomet!

AHASUERUS: What thou seest 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, _845 Bow 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 power Ebbs to its depths.--Inheritor of glory, Conceived in darkness, born in blood, and nourished _850 With tears and toil, thou seest the mortal throes 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 _855 Didst start for this brief race whose crown is death, Dissolve with that strong faith and fervent passion Which called it from the uncreated deep, Yon cloud of war, with its tempestuous phantoms Of raging death; and draw with mighty will _860 The imperial shade hither.

[EXIT AHASUERUS.]

[THE PHANTOM OF MAHOMET THE SECOND APPEARS.]

MAHMUD: Approach!

PHANTOM: I come Thence whither thou must go! The grave is fitter To 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 _865 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: _870 The autumn of a greener faith is come, And wolfish change, like winter, howls to strip The foliage in which Fame, the eagle, built Her aerie, while Dominion whelped below. The storm is in its branches, and the frost _875 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 _880 Boundless 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!-- _885 Stripped of their mortal strength, as thou of thine. Islam must fall, but we will reign together Over its ruins in the world of death:-- And if the trunk be dry, yet shall the seed Unfold itself even in the shape of that _890 Which gathers birth in its decay. Woe! woe! To the weak people tangled in the grasp Of its last spasms.

MAHMUD: Spirit, woe to all! Woe to the wronged and the avenger! Woe To the destroyer, woe to the destroyed! _895 Woe 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, _900 When, how, by whom, Destruction must accomplish Her consummation!

PHANTOM: Ask the cold pale Hour, Rich in reversion of impending death, When HE shall fall upon whose ripe gray hairs Sit Care, and Sorrow, and Infirmity-- _905 The weight which Crime, whose wings are plumed with years, Leaves in his flight from ravaged heart to heart Over the heads of men, under which burthen They bow themselves unto the grave: fond wretch! He leans upon his crutch, and talks of years _910 To come, and how in hours of youth renewed He will renew lost joys, and--

VOICE WITHOUT: Victory! Victory!

[THE PHANTOM VANISHES.]

MAHMUD: What sound of the importunate earth has broken My mighty trance?

VOICE WITHOUT: Victory! Victory!

MAHMUD: Weak lightning before darkness! poor faint smile _915 Of dying Islam! Voice which art the response Of 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? _920 It matters not!--for nought we see or dream, Possess, or lose, or grasp at, can be worth More than it gives or teaches. Come what may, The Future must become the Past, and I As they were to whom once this present hour, _925 This gloomy crag of time to which I cling, Seemed an Elysian isle of peace and joy Never to be attained.--I must rebuke This drunkenness of triumph ere it die, And dying, bring despair. Victory! poor slaves! _930

[EXIT MAHMUD.]

VOICE WITHOUT: Shout in the jubilee of death! The Greeks Are as a brood of lions in the net Round which the kingly hunters of the earth Stand smiling. Anarchs, ye whose daily food Are curses, groans, and gold, the fruit of death, _935 From 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, _940 Salutes 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 lay In visions of the dawning undelight. _945 Who shall impede her flight? Who rob her of her prey?

VOICE WITHOUT: Victory! Victory! Russia's famished eagles Dare not to prey beneath the crescent's light. Impale the remnant of the Greeks! despoil! _950 Violate! make their flesh cheaper than dust!

SEMICHORUS 2: Thou voice which art The herald of the ill in splendour hid! Thou echo of the hollow heart Of monarchy, bear me to thine abode _955 When desolation flashes o'er a world destroyed: Oh, bear me to those isles of jagged cloud Which float like mountains on the earthquake, mid The momentary oceans of the lightning, Or to some toppling promontory proud _960 Of solid tempest whose black pyramid, Riven, overhangs the founts intensely bright'ning Of those dawn-tinted deluges of fire Before their waves expire, When heaven and earth are light, and only light _965 In 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, _970 These chains are light, fitter for slaves and poisoners Than Greeks. Kill! plunder! burn! let none remain.

SEMICHORUS 1: Alas! for Liberty! If numbers, wealth, or unfulfilling years, Or fate, can quell the free! _975 Alas! for Virtue, when Torments, or contumely, or the sneers Of erring judging men Can break the heart where it abides. Alas! if Love, whose smile makes this obscure world splendid, _980 Can 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 _985 Before 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 morn Through many an hostile Anarchy! _990 At length they wept aloud, and cried, 'The Sea! the Sea!' Through exile, persecution, and despair, Rome was, and young Atlantis shall become The wonder, or the terror, or the tomb Of all whose step wakes Power lulled in her savage lair: _995 But Greece was as a hermit-child, Whose fairest thoughts and limbs were built To woman's growth, by dreams so mild, She knew not pain or guilt; And now, O Victory, blush! and Empire, tremble _1000 When ye desert the free-- If Greece must be A wreck, yet shall its fragments reassemble, And build themselves again impregnably In a diviner clime, _1005 To 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 _1010 With 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 sends The 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 _1020 This jubilee of unrevenged blood! Kill! crush! despoil! Let not a Greek escape!

SEMICHORUS 1: Darkness has dawned in the East On the noon of time: The death-birds descend to their feast _1025 From the hungry clime. Let Freedom and Peace flee far To a sunnier strand, And follow Love's folding-star To the Evening land! _1030

SEMICHORUS 2: The young moon has fed Her exhausted horn With the sunset's fire: The weak day is dead, But the night is not born; _1035 And, like loveliness panting with wild desire While it trembles with fear and delight, Hesperus flies from awakening night, And pants in its beauty and speed with light Fast-flashing, soft, and bright. _1040 Thou beacon of love! thou lamp of the free! Guide us far, far away, To climes where now veiled by the ardour of day Thou art hidden From waves on which weary Noon _1045 Faints in her summer swoon, Between kingless continents sinless as Eden, Around mountains and islands inviolably Pranked on the sapphire sea.

SEMICHORUS 1: Through the sunset of hope, _1050 Like 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, _1055 The music and fragrance their solitudes breathe Burst, 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, _1060 The golden years return, The earth doth like a snake renew Her winter weeds outworn: Heaven smiles, and faiths and empires gleam, Like wrecks of a dissolving dream. _1065

A brighter Hellas rears its mountains From waves serener far; A new Peneus rolls his fountains Against the morning star. Where fairer Tempes bloom, there sleep _1070 Young 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. _1075 A new Ulysses leaves once more Calypso 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 _1080 Which dawns upon the free: Although a subtler Sphinx renew Riddles of death Thebes never knew.

Another Athens shall arise, And to remoter time _1085 Bequeath, 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 _1090 Shall burst, more bright and good Than 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 urn Of bitter prophecy. The world is weary of the past, _1100 Oh, 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).

NOTES.

(1) THE QUENCHLESS ASHES OF MILAN [L. 60].

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.

(2) THE CHORUS [L. 197].

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.

(3) NO HOARY PRIESTS AFTER THAT PATRIARCH [L. 245].

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.

(4) THE FREEDMAN OF A WESTERN POET-CHIEF [L. 563].

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.

(5) THE GREEKS EXPECT A SAVIOUR FROM THE WEST [L. 598].

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.

(6) THE SOUND AS OF THE ASSAULT OF AN IMPERIAL CITY [LL. 814-15].

For the vision of Mahmud of the taking of Constantinople in 1453, see Gibbon'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.

(7) THE CHORUS [L. 1060].

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.

(8) SATURN AND LOVE THEIR LONG REPOSE SHALL BURST [L. 1090].

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.

NOTE ON HELLAS, BY MRS. SHELLEY.

The South of Europe was in a state of great political excitement at the beginning of the year 1821. The Spanish Revolution had been a signal to Italy; secrete societies were formed; and, when Naples rose to declare the Constitution, the call was responded to from Brundusium to the foot of the Alps. To crush these attempts to obtain liberty, early in 1821 the Austrians poured their armies into the Peninsula: at first their coming rather seemed to add energy and resolution to a people long enslaved. The Piedmontese asserted their freedom; Genoa threw off the yoke of the King of Sardinia; and, as if in playful imitation, the people of the little state of Massa and Carrara gave the conge to their sovereign, and set up a republic.

Tuscany alone was perfectly tranquil. It was said that the Austrian minister presented a list of sixty Carbonari to the Grand Duke, urging their imprisonment; and the Grand Duke replied, 'I do not know whether these sixty men are Carbonari, but I know, if I imprison them, I shall directly have sixty thousand start up.' But, though the Tuscans had no desire to disturb the paternal government beneath whose shelter they slumbered, they regarded the progress of the various Italian revolutions with intense interest, and hatred for the Austrian was warm in every bosom. But they had slender hopes; they knew that the Neapolitans would offer no fit resistance to the regular German troops, and that the overthrow of the constitution in Naples would act as a decisive blow against all struggles for liberty in Italy.

We have seen the rise and progress of reform. But the Holy Alliance was alive and active in those days, and few could dream of the peaceful triumph of liberty. It seemed then that the armed assertion of freedom in the South of Europe was the only hope of the liberals, as, if it prevailed, the nations of the north would imitate the example. Happily the reverse has proved the fact. The countries accustomed to the exercise of the privileges of freemen, to a limited extent, have extended, and are extending, these limits. Freedom and knowledge have now a chance of proceeding hand in hand; and, if it continue thus, we may hope for the durability of both. Then, as I have said--in 1821--Shelley, as well as every other lover of liberty, looked upon the struggles in Spain and Italy as decisive of the destinies of the world, probably for centuries to come. The interest he took in the progress of affairs was intense. When Genoa declared itself free, his hopes were at their highest. Day after day he read the bulletins of the Austrian army, and sought eagerly to gather tokens of its defeat. He heard of the revolt of Genoa with emotions of transport. His whole heart and soul were in the triumph of the cause. We were living at Pisa at that time; and several well-informed Italians, at the head of whom we may place the celebrated Vacca, were accustomed to seek for sympathy in their hopes from Shelley: they did not find such for the despair they too generally experienced, founded on contempt for their southern countrymen.

While the fate of the progress of the Austrian armies then invading Naples was yet in suspense, the news of another revolution filled him with exultation. We had formed the acquaintance at Pisa of several Constantinopolitan Greeks, of the family of Prince Caradja, formerly Hospodar of Wallachia; who, hearing that the bowstring, the accustomed finale of his viceroyalty, was on the road to him, escaped with his treasures, and took up his abode in Tuscany. Among these was the gentleman to whom the drama of "Hellas" is dedicated. Prince Mavrocordato was warmed by those aspirations for the independence of his country which filled the hearts of many of his countrymen. He often intimated the possibility of an insurrection in Greece; but we had no idea of its being so near at hand, when, on the 1st of April 1821, he called on Shelley, bringing the proclamation of his cousin, Prince Ypsilanti, and, radiant with exultation and delight, declared that henceforth Greece would be free.

Shelley had hymned the dawn of liberty in Spain and Naples, in two odes dictated by the warmest enthusiasm; he felt himself naturally impelled to decorate with poetry the uprise of the descendants of that people whose works he regarded with deep admiration, and to adopt the vaticinatory character in prophesying their success. "Hellas" was written in a moment of enthusiasm. It is curious to remark how well he overcomes the difficulty of forming a drama out of such scant materials. His prophecies, indeed, came true in their general, not their particular, purport. He did not foresee the death of Lord Londonderry, which was to be the epoch of a change in English politics, particularly as regarded foreign affairs; nor that the navy of his country would fight for instead of against the Greeks, and by the battle of Navarino secure their enfranchisement from the Turks. Almost against reason, as it appeared to him, he resolved to believe that Greece would prove triumphant; and in this spirit, auguring ultimate good, yet grieving over the vicissitudes to be endured in the interval, he composed his drama.

"Hellas" was among the last of his compositions, and is among the most beautiful. The choruses are singularly imaginative, and melodious in their versification. There are some stanzas that beautifully exemplify Shelley's peculiar style; as, for instance, the assertion of the intellectual empire which must be for ever the inheritance of the country of Homer, Sophocles, and Plato:--

'But Greece and her foundations are Built below the tide of war, Based on the crystalline sea Of thought and its eternity.'

And again, that philosophical truth felicitously imaged forth--

'Revenge and Wrong bring forth their kind, The foul cubs like their parents are, Their den is in the guilty mind, And Conscience feeds them with despair.'

The conclusion of the last chorus is among the most beautiful of his lyrics. The imagery is distinct and majestic; the prophecy, such as poets love to dwell upon, the Regeneration of Mankind--and that regeneration reflecting back splendour on the foregone time, from which it inherits so much of intellectual wealth, and memory of past virtuous deeds, as must render the possession of happiness and peace of tenfold value.

***

FRAGMENTS OF AN UNFINISHED DRAMA.

[Published in part (lines 1-69, 100-120) by Mrs. Shelley, "Posthumous Poems", 1824; and again, with the notes, in "Poetical Works", 1839. Lines 127-238 were printed by Dr. Garnett under the title of "The Magic Plant" in his "Relics of Shelley", 1862. The whole was edited in its present form from the Boscombe manuscript by Mr. W.M. Rossetti in 1870 ("Complete Poetical Works of P. B. S.", Moxon, 2 volumes.). 'Written at Pisa during the late winter or early spring of 1822' (Garnett).]

The following fragments are part of a Drama undertaken for the amusement of the individuals who composed our intimate society, but left unfinished. I have preserved a sketch of the story as far as it had been shadowed in the poet's mind.

An Enchantress, living in one of the islands of the Indian Archipelago, saves the life of a Pirate, a man of savage but noble nature. She becomes enamoured of him; and he, inconstant to his mortal love, for a while returns her passion; but at length, recalling the memory of her whom he left, and who laments his loss, he escapes from the Enchanted Island, and returns to his lady. His mode of life makes him again go to sea, and the Enchantress seizes the opportunity to bring him, by a spirit-brewed tempest, back to her Island. --[MRS. SHELLEY'S NOTE, 1839.]

SCENE.--BEFORE THE CAVERN OF THE INDIAN ENCHANTRESS.

THE ENCHANTRESS COMES FORTH.

ENCHANTRESS: He came like a dream in the dawn of life, He fled like a shadow before its noon; He is gone, and my peace is turned to strife, And I wander and wane like the weary moon. O, sweet Echo, wake, _5 And for my sake Make answer the while my heart shall break!

But my heart has a music which Echo's lips, Though tender and true, yet can answer not, And the shadow that moves in the soul's eclipse _10 Can return not the kiss by his now forgot; Sweet lips! he who hath On my desolate path Cast the darkness of absence, worse than death!

NOTE: _8 my omitted 1824.

[THE ENCHANTRESS MAKES HER SPELL: SHE IS ANSWERED BY A SPIRIT.]

SPIRIT: Within the silent centre of the earth _15 My mansion is; where I have lived insphered From the beginning, and around my sleep Have woven all the wondrous imagery Of this dim spot, which mortals call the world; Infinite depths of unknown elements _20 Massed into one impenetrable mask; Sheets of immeasurable fire, and veins Of gold and stone, and adamantine iron. And as a veil in which I walk through Heaven I have wrought mountains, seas, and waves, and clouds, _25 And lastly light, whose interfusion dawns In the dark space of interstellar air.

NOTES: _15-_27 Within...air. 1839; omitted 1824. See these lines in "Posthumous Poems", 1824, page 209: "Song of a Spirit". _16 have 1839; omitted 1824, page 209. _25 seas, and waves 1824, page 209; seas, waves 1839.

[A good Spirit, who watches over the Pirate's fate, leads, in a mysterious manner, the lady of his love to the Enchanted Isle. She is accompanied by a Youth, who loves the lady, but whose passion she returns only with a sisterly affection. The ensuing scene takes place between them on their arrival at the Isle. [MRS. SHELLEY'S NOTE, 1839.]]

ANOTHER SCENE.

INDIAN YOUTH AND LADY.

INDIAN: And, if my grief should still be dearer to me Than all the pleasures in the world beside, Why would you lighten it?--

NOTE: _29 pleasures]pleasure 1824.

LADY: I offer only _30 That which I seek, some human sympathy In this mysterious island.

INDIAN: Oh! my friend, My sister, my beloved!--What do I say? My brain is dizzy, and I scarce know whether I speak to thee or her.

LADY: Peace, perturbed heart! _35 I am to thee only as thou to mine, The passing wind which heals the brow at noon, And may strike cold into the breast at night, Yet cannot linger where it soothes the most, Or long soothe could it linger.

INDIAN: But you said _40 You also loved?

NOTE: _32-_41 Assigned to INDIAN, 1824.

LADY: Loved! Oh, I love. Methinks This word of love is fit for all the world, And that for gentle hearts another name Would speak of gentler thoughts than the world owns. I have loved.

INDIAN: And thou lovest not? if so, _45 Young as thou art thou canst afford to weep.

LADY: Oh! would that I could claim exemption From all the bitterness of that sweet name. I loved, I love, and when I love no more Let joys and grief perish, and leave despair _50 To ring the knell of youth. He stood beside me, The embodied vision of the brightest dream, Which like a dawn heralds the day of life; The shadow of his presence made my world A Paradise. All familiar things he touched, _55 All common words he spoke, became to me Like forms and sounds of a diviner world. He was as is the sun in his fierce youth, As terrible and lovely as a tempest; He came, and went, and left me what I am. _60 Alas! Why must I think how oft we two Have sate together near the river springs, Under the green pavilion which the willow Spreads on the floor of the unbroken fountain, Strewn, by the nurslings that linger there, _65 Over that islet paved with flowers and moss, While the musk-rose leaves, like flakes of crimson snow, Showered on us, and the dove mourned in the pine, Sad prophetess of sorrows not her own? The crane returned to her unfrozen haunt, _70 And the false cuckoo bade the spray good morn; And on a wintry bough the widowed bird, Hid in the deepest night of ivy-leaves, Renewed the vigils of a sleepless sorrow. I, left like her, and leaving one like her, _75 Alike abandoned and abandoning (Oh! unlike her in this!) the gentlest youth, Whose love had made my sorrows dear to him, Even as my sorrow made his love to me!

NOTE: _71 spray Rossetti 1870, Woodberry; Spring Forman, Dowden.

INDIAN: One curse of Nature stamps in the same mould _80 The features of the wretched; and they are As like as violet to violet, When memory, the ghost, their odours keeps Mid the cold relics of abandoned joy.-- Proceed.

LADY: He was a simple innocent boy. _85 I loved him well, but not as he desired; Yet even thus he was content to be:-- A short content, for I was--

INDIAN [ASIDE]: God of Heaven! From such an islet, such a river-spring--! I dare not ask her if there stood upon it _90 A pleasure-dome surmounted by a crescent, With steps to the blue water. [ALOUD.] It may be That Nature masks in life several copies Of the same lot, so that the sufferers May feel another's sorrow as their own, _95 And find in friendship what they lost in love. That cannot be: yet it is strange that we, From the same scene, by the same path to this Realm of abandonment-- But speak! your breath-- Your breath is like soft music, your words are _100 The echoes of a voice which on my heart Sleeps like a melody of early days. But as you said--

LADY: He was so awful, yet So beautiful in mystery and terror, Calming me as the loveliness of heaven _105 Soothes the unquiet sea:--and yet not so, For he seemed stormy, and would often seem A quenchless sun masked in portentous clouds; For such his thoughts, and even his actions were; But he was not of them, nor they of him, _110 But as they hid his splendour from the earth. Some said he was a man of blood and peril, And steeped in bitter infamy to the lips. More need was there I should be innocent, More need that I should be most true and kind, _115 And much more need that there should be found one To share remorse and scorn and solitude, And all the ills that wait on those who do The tasks of ruin in the world of life. He fled, and I have followed him.

INDIAN: Such a one _120 Is he who was the winter of my peace. But, fairest stranger, when didst thou depart From the far hills where rise the springs of India? How didst thou pass the intervening sea?

LADY: If I be sure I am not dreaming now, _125 I should not doubt to say it was a dream. Methought a star came down from heaven, And rested mid the plants of India, Which I had given a shelter from the frost Within my chamber. There the meteor lay, _130 Panting forth light among the leaves and flowers, As if it lived, and was outworn with speed; Or that it loved, and passion made the pulse Of its bright life throb like an anxious heart, Till it diffused itself; and all the chamber _135 And walls seemed melted into emerald fire That burned not; in the midst of which appeared A spirit like a child, and laughed aloud A thrilling peal of such sweet merriment As made the blood tingle in my warm feet: _140 Then bent over a vase, and murmuring Low, unintelligible melodies, Placed something in the mould like melon-seeds, And slowly faded, and in place of it A soft hand issued from the veil of fire, _145 Holding a cup like a magnolia flower, And poured upon the earth within the vase The element with which it overflowed, Brighter than morning light, and purer than The water of the springs of Himalah. _150

NOTE: _120-_126 Such...dream 1839; omitted 1824.

INDIAN: You waked not?

LADY: Not until my dream became Like a child's legend on the tideless sand. Which the first foam erases half, and half Leaves legible. At length I rose, and went, Visiting my flowers from pot to pot, and thought _155 To set new cuttings in the empty urns, And when I came to that beside the lattice, I saw two little dark-green leaves Lifting the light mould at their birth, and then I half-remembered my forgotten dream. _160 And day by day, green as a gourd in June, The plant grew fresh and thick, yet no one knew What plant it was; its stem and tendrils seemed Like emerald snakes, mottled and diamonded With azure mail and streaks of woven silver; _165 And all the sheaths that folded the dark buds Rose like the crest of cobra-di-capel, Until the golden eye of the bright flower, Through the dark lashes of those veined lids, ...disencumbered of their silent sleep, _170 Gazed like a star into the morning light. Its leaves were delicate, you almost saw The pulses With which the purple velvet flower was fed To overflow, and like a poet's heart _175 Changing bright fancy to sweet sentiment, Changed half the light to fragrance. It soon fell, And to a green and dewy embryo-fruit Left all its treasured beauty. Day by day I nursed the plant, and on the double flute _180 Played to it on the sunny winter days Soft melodies, as sweet as April rain On silent leaves, and sang those words in which Passion makes Echo taunt the sleeping strings; And I would send tales of forgotten love _185 Late into the lone night, and sing wild songs Of maids deserted in the olden time, And weep like a soft cloud in April's bosom Upon the sleeping eyelids of the plant, So that perhaps it dreamed that Spring was come, _190 And crept abroad into the moonlight air, And loosened all its limbs, as, noon by noon, The sun averted less his oblique beam.

INDIAN: And the plant died not in the frost?

LADY: It grew; And went out of the lattice which I left _195 Half open for it, trailing its quaint spires Along the garden and across the lawn, And down the slope of moss and through the tufts Of wild-flower roots, and stumps of trees o'ergrown With simple lichens, and old hoary stones, _200 On to the margin of the glassy pool, Even to a nook of unblown violets And lilies-of-the-valley yet unborn, Under a pine with ivy overgrown. And theme its fruit lay like a sleeping lizard _205 Under the shadows; but when Spring indeed Came to unswathe her infants, and the lilies Peeped from their bright green masks to wonder at This shape of autumn couched in their recess, Then it dilated, and it grew until _210 One half lay floating on the fountain wave, Whose pulse, elapsed in unlike sympathies, Kept time Among the snowy water-lily buds. Its shape was such as summer melody _215 Of the south wind in spicy vales might give To some light cloud bound from the golden dawn To fairy isles of evening, and it seemed In hue and form that it had been a mirror Of all the hues and forms around it and _220 Upon it pictured by the sunny beams Which, from the bright vibrations of the pool, Were thrown upon the rafters and the roof Of boughs and leaves, and on the pillared stems Of the dark sylvan temple, and reflections _225 Of every infant flower and star of moss And veined leaf in the azure odorous air. And thus it lay in the Elysian calm Of its own beauty, floating on the line Which, like a film in purest space, divided _230 The heaven beneath the water from the heaven Above the clouds; and every day I went Watching its growth and wondering; And as the day grew hot, methought I saw A glassy vapour dancing on the pool, _235 And on it little quaint and filmy shapes. With dizzy motion, wheel and rise and fall, Like clouds of gnats with perfect lineaments.

...

O friend, sleep was a veil uplift from Heaven-- As if Heaven dawned upon the world of dream-- _240 When darkness rose on the extinguished day Out of the eastern wilderness.

INDIAN: I too Have found a moment's paradise in sleep Half compensate a hell of waking sorrow.

***

CHARLES THE FIRST.

["Charles the First" was designed in 1818, begun towards the close of 1819 [Medwin, "Life", 2 page 62], resumed in January, and finally laid aside by June, 1822. It was published in part in the "Posthumous Poems", 1824, and printed, in its present form (with the addition of some 530 lines), by Mr. W.M. Rossetti, 1870. Further particulars are given in the Editor's Notes at the end of Volume 3.]

Dramatis Personae

KING CHARLES I. QUEEN HENRIETTA. LAUD, ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY. WENTWORTH, EARL OF STRAFFORD. LORD COTTINGTON. LORD WESTON. LORD COVENTRY. WILLIAMS, BISHOP OF LINCOLN. SECRETARY LYTTELTON. JUXON. ST. JOHN. ARCHY, THE COURT FOOL. HAMPDEN. PYM. CROMWELL. CROMWELL'S DAUGHTER. SIR HARRY VANE THE YOUNGER. LEIGHTON. BASTWICK. PRYNNE. GENTLEMEN OF THE INNS OF COURT, CITIZENS, PURSUIVANTS, MARSHALSMEN, LAW STUDENTS, JUDGES, CLERK.

1. THE MASQUE OF THE INNS OF COURT

A PURSUIVANT: Place, for the Marshal of the Masque!

FIRST CITIZEN: What thinkest thou of this quaint masque which turns, Like morning from the shadow of the night, The night to day, and London to a place Of peace and joy?

SECOND CITIZEN: And Hell to Heaven. _5 Eight years are gone, And they seem hours, since in this populous street I trod on grass made green by summer's rain, For the red plague kept state within that palace Where now that vanity reigns. In nine years more _10 The roots will be refreshed with civil blood; And thank the mercy of insulted Heaven That sin and wrongs wound, as an orphan's cry, The patience of the great Avenger's ear.

NOTE: _10 now that vanity reigns 1870; now reigns vanity 1824.

A YOUTH: Yet, father, 'tis a happy sight to see, _15 Beautiful, innocent, and unforbidden By God or man;--'tis like the bright procession Of skiey visions in a solemn dream From which men wake as from a Paradise, And draw new strength to tread the thorns of life. _20 If God be good, wherefore should this be evil? And if this be not evil, dost thou not draw Unseasonable poison from the flowers Which bloom so rarely in this barren world? Oh, kill these bitter thoughts which make the present _25 Dark as the future!--

...

When Avarice and Tyranny, vigilant Fear, And open-eyed Conspiracy lie sleeping As on Hell's threshold; and all gentle thoughts Waken to worship Him who giveth joys _30 With His own gift.

SECOND CITIZEN: How young art thou in this old age of time! How green in this gray world? Canst thou discern The signs of seasons, yet perceive no hint Of change in that stage-scene in which thou art _35 Not a spectator but an actor? or Art thou a puppet moved by [enginery]? The day that dawns in fire will die in storms, Even though the noon be calm. My travel's done,-- Before the whirlwind wakes I shall have found _40 My inn of lasting rest; but thou must still Be journeying on in this inclement air. Wrap thy old cloak about thy back; Nor leave the broad and plain and beaten road, Although no flowers smile on the trodden dust, _45 For the violet paths of pleasure. This Charles the First Rose like the equinoctial sun,... By vapours, through whose threatening ominous veil Darting his altered influence he has gained This height of noon--from which he must decline _50 Amid the darkness of conflicting storms, To dank extinction and to latest night... There goes The apostate Strafford; he whose titles whispered aphorisms _55 From Machiavel and Bacon: and, if Judas Had been as brazen and as bold as he--

NOTES: _33-_37 Canst...enginery 1870; Canst thou not think Of change in that low scene, in which thou art Not a spectator but an actor?... 1824. _43-_57 Wrap...bold as he 1870; omitted 1824.

FIRST CITIZEN: That Is the Archbishop.

SECOND CITIZEN: Rather say the Pope: London will be soon his Rome: he walks As if he trod upon the heads of men: _60 He looks elate, drunken with blood and gold;-- Beside him moves the Babylonian woman Invisibly, and with her as with his shadow, Mitred adulterer! he is joined in sin, Which turns Heaven's milk of mercy to revenge. _65

THIRD CITIZEN [LIFTING UP HIS EYES]: Good Lord! rain it down upon him!... Amid her ladies walks the papist queen, As if her nice feet scorned our English earth. The Canaanitish Jezebel! I would be A dog if I might tear her with my teeth! _70 There's old Sir Henry Vane, the Earl of Pembroke, Lord Essex, and Lord Keeper Coventry, And others who make base their English breed By vile participation of their honours With papists, atheists, tyrants, and apostates. _75 When lawyers masque 'tis time for honest men To strip the vizor from their purposes. A seasonable time for masquers this! When Englishmen and Protestants should sit dust on their dishonoured heads _80 To avert the wrath of Him whose scourge is felt For the great sins which have drawn down from Heaven and foreign overthrow. The remnant of the martyred saints in Rochefort Have been abandoned by their faithless allies _85 To that idolatrous and adulterous torturer Lewis of France,--the Palatinate is lost-- [ENTER LEIGHTON (WHO HAS BEEN BRANDED IN THE FACE) AND BASTWICK.] Canst thou be--art thou?

NOTE: _73 make 1824; made 1839.

LEIGHTON: I WAS Leighton: what I AM thou seest. And yet turn thine eyes, And with thy memory look on thy friend's mind, _90 Which is unchanged, and where is written deep The sentence of my judge.

THIRD CITIZEN: Are these the marks with which Laud thinks to improve the image of his Maker Stamped on the face of man? Curses upon him, The impious tyrant!

SECOND CITIZEN: It is said besides _95 That lewd and papist drunkards may profane The Sabbath with their And has permitted that most heathenish custom Of dancing round a pole dressed up with wreaths On May-day. _100 A man who thus twice crucifies his God May well ... his brother.--In my mind, friend, The root of all this ill is prelacy. I would cut up the root.

THIRD CITIZEN: And by what means?

SECOND CITIZEN: Smiting each Bishop under the fifth rib. _105

THIRD CITIZEN: You seem to know the vulnerable place Of these same crocodiles.

SECOND CITIZEN: I learnt it in Egyptian bondage, sir. Your worm of Nile Betrays not with its flattering tears like they; For, when they cannot kill, they whine and weep. _110 Nor is it half so greedy of men's bodies As they of soul and all; nor does it wallow In slime as they in simony and lies And close lusts of the flesh.

NOTE: _78-_114 A seasonable...of the flesh 1870; omitted 1824. _108 bondage cj. Forman; bondages 1870.

A MARSHALSMAN: Give place, give place! You torch-bearers, advance to the great gate, _115 And then attend the Marshal of the Masque Into the Royal presence.

A LAW STUDENT: What thinkest thou Of this quaint show of ours, my aged friend? Even now we see the redness of the torches Inflame the night to the eastward, and the clarions _120 [Gasp?] to us on the wind's wave. It comes! And their sounds, floating hither round the pageant, Rouse up the astonished air.

NOTE: _119-_123 Even now...air 1870; omitted 1824.

FIRST CITIZEN: I will not think but that our country's wounds May yet be healed. The king is just and gracious, _125 Though wicked counsels now pervert his will: These once cast off--

SECOND CITIZEN: As adders cast their skins And keep their venom, so kings often change; Councils and counsellors hang on one another, Hiding the loathsome _130 Like the base patchwork of a leper's rags.

THE YOUTH: Oh, still those dissonant thoughts!--List how the music Grows on the enchanted air! And see, the torches Restlessly flashing, and the crowd divided Like waves before an admiral's prow!

NOTE: _132 how the 1870; loud 1824.

A MARSHALSMAN: Give place _135 To the Marshal of the Masque!

A PURSUIVANT: Room for the King!

NOTE: _136 A Pursuivant: Room for the King! 1870; omitted 1824.

THE YOUTH: How glorious! See those thronging chariots Rolling, like painted clouds before the wind, Behind their solemn steeds: how some are shaped Like curved sea-shells dyed by the azure depths _140 Of Indian seas; some like the new-born moon; And some like cars in which the Romans climbed (Canopied by Victory's eagle-wings outspread) The Capitolian--See how gloriously The mettled horses in the torchlight stir _145 Their gallant riders, while they check their pride, Like shapes of some diviner element Than English air, and beings nobler than The envious and admiring multitude.

NOTE: _138-40 Rolling...depths 1870; Rolling like painted clouds before the wind Some are Like curved shells, dyed by the azure depths 1824.

SECOND CITIZEN: Ay, there they are-- _150 Nobles, and sons of nobles, patentees, Monopolists, and stewards of this poor farm, On whose lean sheep sit the prophetic crows, Here is the pomp that strips the houseless orphan, Here is the pride that breaks the desolate heart. _155 These are the lilies glorious as Solomon, Who toil not, neither do they spin,--unless It be the webs they catch poor rogues withal. Here is the surfeit which to them who earn The niggard wages of the earth, scarce leaves _160 The tithe that will support them till they crawl Back to her cold hard bosom. Here is health Followed by grim disease, glory by shame, Waste by lame famine, wealth by squalid want, And England's sin by England's punishment. _165 And, as the effect pursues the cause foregone, Lo, giving substance to my words, behold At once the sign and the thing signified-- A troop of cripples, beggars, and lean outcasts, Horsed upon stumbling jades, carted with dung, _170 Dragged for a day from cellars and low cabins And rotten hiding-holes, to point the moral Of this presentment, and bring up the rear Of painted pomp with misery!

NOTES: _162 her 1870; its 1824. _170 jades 1870; shapes 1824. _173 presentment 1870; presentiment 1824.

THE YOUTH: 'Tis but The anti-masque, and serves as discords do _175 In sweetest music. Who would love May flowers If they succeeded not to Winter's flaw; Or day unchanged by night; or joy itself Without the touch of sorrow?

SECOND CITIZEN: I and thou-

A MARSHALSMAN: Place, give place! _180

NOTE: _179, _180 I...place! 1870; omitted 1824.

SCENE 2: A CHAMBER IN WHITEHALL. ENTER THE KING, QUEEN, LAUD, LORD STRAFTORD, LORD COTTINGTON, AND OTHER LORDS; ARCHY; ALSO ST. JOHN, WITH SOME GENTLEMEN OF THE INNS OF COURT.

KING: Thanks, gentlemen. I heartily accept This token of your service: your gay masque Was performed gallantly. And it shows well When subjects twine such flowers of [observance?] With the sharp thorns that deck the English crown. _5 A gentle heart enjoys what it confers, Even as it suffers that which it inflicts, Though Justice guides the stroke. Accept my hearty thanks.

NOTE: _3-9 And...thanks 1870; omitted 1824.

QUEEN: And gentlemen, Call your poor Queen your debtor. Your quaint pageant _10 Rose on me like the figures of past years, Treading their still path back to infancy, More beautiful and mild as they draw nearer The quiet cradle. I could have almost wept To think I was in Paris, where these shows _15 Are well devised--such as I was ere yet My young heart shared a portion of the burthen, The careful weight, of this great monarchy. There, gentlemen, between the sovereign's pleasure And that which it regards, no clamour lifts _20 Its proud interposition. In Paris ribald censurers dare not move Their poisonous tongues against these sinless sports; And HIS smile Warms those who bask in it, as ours would do _25 If ... Take my heart's thanks: add them, gentlemen, To those good words which, were he King of France, My royal lord would turn to golden deeds.

ST. JOHN: Madam, the love of Englishmen can make The lightest favour of their lawful king _30 Outweigh a despot's.--We humbly take our leaves, Enriched by smiles which France can never buy.

[EXEUNT ST. JOHN AND THE GENTLEMEN OF THE INNS OF COURT.]

KING: My Lord Archbishop, Mark you what spirit sits in St. John's eyes? Methinks it is too saucy for this presence. _35

ARCHY: Yes, pray your Grace look: for, like an unsophisticated [eye] sees everything upside down, you who are wise will discern the shadow of an idiot in lawn sleeves and a rochet setting springes to catch woodcocks in haymaking time. Poor Archy, whose owl-eyes are tempered to the error of his age, and because he is a fool, and by special ordinance of God forbidden ever to see himself as he is, sees now in that deep eye a blindfold devil sitting on the ball, and weighing words out between king and subjects. One scale is full of promises, and the other full of protestations: and then another devil creeps behind the first out of the dark windings [of a] pregnant lawyer's brain, and takes the bandage from the other's eyes, and throws a sword into the left-hand scale, for all the world like my Lord Essex's there. _48

STRAFFORD: A rod in pickle for the Fool's back!

ARCHY: Ay, and some are now smiling whose tears will make the brine; for the Fool sees--

STRAFFORD: Insolent! You shall have your coat turned and be whipped out of the palace for this. _53

ARCHY: When all the fools are whipped, and all the Protestant writers, while the knaves are whipping the fools ever since a thief was set to catch a thief. If all turncoats were whipped out of palaces, poor Archy would be disgraced in good company. Let the knaves whip the fools, and all the fools laugh at it. [Let the] wise and godly slit each other's noses and ears (having no need of any sense of discernment in their craft); and the knaves, to marshal them, join in a procession to Bedlam, to entreat the madmen to omit their sublime Platonic contemplations, and manage the state of England. Let all the honest men who lie [pinched?] up at the prisons or the pillories, in custody of the pursuivants of the High-Commission Court, marshal them. _65

NOTE: _64 pinched marked as doubtful by Rossetti. 1870; Forman, Dowden; penned Woodberry.

[ENTER SECRETARY LYTTELTON, WITH PAPERS.]

KING [LOOKING OVER THE PAPERS]: These stiff Scots His Grace of Canterbury must take order To force under the Church's yoke.--You, Wentworth, Shall be myself in Ireland, and shall add Your wisdom, gentleness, and energy, _70 To what in me were wanting.--My Lord Weston, Look that those merchants draw not without loss Their bullion from the Tower; and, on the payment Of shipmoney, take fullest compensation For violation of our royal forests, _75 Whose limits, from neglect, have been o'ergrown With cottages and cornfields. The uttermost Farthing exact from those who claim exemption From knighthood: that which once was a reward Shall thus be made a punishment, that subjects _80 May know how majesty can wear at will The rugged mood.--My Lord of Coventry, Lay my command upon the Courts below That bail be not accepted for the prisoners Under the warrant of the Star Chamber. _85 The people shall not find the stubbornness Of Parliament a cheap or easy method Of dealing with their rightful sovereign: And doubt not this, my Lord of Coventry, We will find time and place for fit rebuke.-- _90 My Lord of Canterbury.

NOTE: _22-90 In Paris...rebuke 1870; omitted 1824.

ARCHY: The fool is here.

LAUD: I crave permission of your Majesty To order that this insolent fellow be Chastised: he mocks the sacred character, Scoffs at the state, and--

NOTE: _95 state 1870; stake 1824.

KING: What, my Archy? _95 He mocks and mimics all he sees and hears, Yet with a quaint and graceful licence--Prithee For this once do not as Prynne would, were he Primate of England. With your Grace's leave, He lives in his own world; and, like a parrot _100 Hung in his gilded prison from the window Of a queen's bower over the public way, Blasphemes with a bird's mind:--his words, like arrows Which know no aim beyond the archer's wit, Strike sometimes what eludes philosophy.-- _105 [TO ARCHY.] Go, sirrah, and repent of your offence Ten minutes in the rain; be it your penance To bring news how the world goes there. [EXIT ARCHY.] Poor Archy! He weaves about himself a world of mirth Out of the wreck of ours. _110

NOTES: _99 With your Grace's leave 1870; omitted 1824. _106-_110 Go...ours spoken by THE QUEEN, 1824.

LAUD: I take with patience, as my Master did, All scoffs permitted from above.

KING: My lord, Pray overlook these papers. Archy's words Had wings, but these have talons.

QUEEN: And the lion That wears them must be tamed. My dearest lord, _115 I see the new-born courage in your eye Armed to strike dead the Spirit of the Time, Which spurs to rage the many-headed beast. Do thou persist: for, faint but in resolve, And it were better thou hadst still remained _120 The slave of thine own slaves, who tear like curs The fugitive, and flee from the pursuer; And Opportunity, that empty wolf, Flies at his throat who falls. Subdue thy actions Even to the disposition of thy purpose, _125 And be that tempered as the Ebro's steel; And banish weak-eyed Mercy to the weak, Whence she will greet thee with a gift of peace And not betray thee with a traitor's kiss, As when she keeps the company of rebels, _130 Who think that she is Fear. This do, lest we Should fall as from a glorious pinnacle In a bright dream, and wake as from a dream Out of our worshipped state.

NOTES: _116 your 1824; thine 1870. _118 Which...beast 1870; omitted 1824.

KING: Beloved friend, God is my witness that this weight of power, _135 Which He sets me my earthly task to wield Under His law, is my delight and pride Only because thou lovest that and me. For a king bears the office of a God To all the under world; and to his God _140 Alone he must deliver up his trust, Unshorn of its permitted attributes. [It seems] now as the baser elements Had mutinied against the golden sun That kindles them to harmony, and quells _145 Their self-destroying rapine. The wild million Strike at the eye that guides them; like as humours Of the distempered body that conspire Against the spirit of life throned in the heart,-- And thus become the prey of one another, _150 And last of death--

STRAFFORD: That which would be ambition in a subject Is duty in a sovereign; for on him, As on a keystone, hangs the arch of life, Whose safety is its strength. Degree and form, _155 And all that makes the age of reasoning man More memorable than a beast's, depend on this-- That Right should fence itself inviolably With Power; in which respect the state of England From usurpation by the insolent commons _160 Cries for reform. Get treason, and spare treasure. Fee with coin The loudest murmurers; feed with jealousies Opposing factions,--be thyself of none; And borrow gold of many, for those who lend _165 Will serve thee till thou payest them; and thus Keep the fierce spirit of the hour at bay, Till time, and its coming generations Of nights and days unborn, bring some one chance,

...

Or war or pestilence or Nature's self,-- _170 By some distemperature or terrible sign, Be as an arbiter betwixt themselves. Nor let your Majesty Doubt here the peril of the unseen event. How did your brother Kings, coheritors _175 In your high interest in the subject earth, Rise past such troubles to that height of power Where now they sit, and awfully serene Smile on the trembling world? Such popular storms Philip the Second of Spain, this Lewis of France, _180 And late the German head of many bodies, And every petty lord of Italy, Quelled or by arts or arms. Is England poorer Or feebler? or art thou who wield'st her power Tamer than they? or shall this island be-- _185 [Girdled] by its inviolable waters-- To the world present and the world to come Sole pattern of extinguished monarchy? Not if thou dost as I would have thee do.

KING: Your words shall be my deeds: _190 You speak the image of my thought. My friend (If Kings can have a friend, I call thee so), Beyond the large commission which [belongs] Under the great seal of the realm, take this: And, for some obvious reasons, let there be _195 No seal on it, except my kingly word And honour as I am a gentleman. Be--as thou art within my heart and mind-- Another self, here and in Ireland: Do what thou judgest well, take amplest licence, _200 And stick not even at questionable means. Hear me, Wentworth. My word is as a wall Between thee and this world thine enemy-- That hates thee, for thou lovest me.

STRAFFORD: I own No friend but thee, no enemies but thine: _205 Thy lightest thought is my eternal law. How weak, how short, is life to pay--

KING: Peace, peace. Thou ow'st me nothing yet. [TO LAUD.] My lord, what say Those papers?

LAUD: Your Majesty has ever interposed, _210 In lenity towards your native soil, Between the heavy vengeance of the Church And Scotland. Mark the consequence of warming This brood of northern vipers in your bosom. The rabble, instructed no doubt _215 By London, Lindsay, Hume, and false Argyll (For the waves never menace heaven until Scourged by the wind's invisible tyranny), Have in the very temple of the Lord Done outrage to His chosen ministers. _220 They scorn the liturgy of the Holy Church, Refuse to obey her canons, and deny The apostolic power with which the Spirit Has filled its elect vessels, even from him Who held the keys with power to loose and bind, _225 To him who now pleads in this royal presence.-- Let ample powers and new instructions be Sent to the High Commissioners in Scotland. To death, imprisonment, and confiscation, Add torture, add the ruin of the kindred _230 Of the offender, add the brand of infamy, Add mutilation: and if this suffice not, Unleash the sword and fire, that in their thirst They may lick up that scum of schismatics. I laugh at those weak rebels who, desiring _235 What we possess, still prate of Christian peace, As if those dreadful arbitrating messengers Which play the part of God 'twixt right and wrong, Should be let loose against the innocent sleep Of templed cities and the smiling fields, _240 For some poor argument of policy Which touches our own profit or our pride (Where it indeed were Christian charity To turn the cheek even to the smiter's hand): And, when our great Redeemer, when our God, _245 When He who gave, accepted, and retained Himself in propitiation of our sins, Is scorned in His immediate ministry, With hazard of the inestimable loss Of all the truth and discipline which is _250 Salvation to the extremest generation Of men innumerable, they talk of peace! Such peace as Canaan found, let Scotland now: For, by that Christ who came to bring a sword, Not peace, upon the earth, and gave command _255 To His disciples at the Passover That each should sell his robe and buy a sword,- Once strip that minister of naked wrath, And it shall never sleep in peace again Till Scotland bend or break.

NOTES: _134-_232 Beloved...mutilation 1870; omitted 1824. _237 arbitrating messengers 1870; messengers of wrath 1824. _239 the 1870; omitted 1524. _243-_244 Parentheses inserted 1870. _246, _247 When He...sins 1870; omitted 1824. _248 ministry 1870; ministers 1824. _249-52 With...innumerable 1870; omitted 1824.

KING: My Lord Archbishop, _260 Do what thou wilt and what thou canst in this. Thy earthly even as thy heavenly King Gives thee large power in his unquiet realm. But we want money, and my mind misgives me That for so great an enterprise, as yet, _265 We are unfurnished.

STRAFFORD: Yet it may not long Rest on our wills.

COTTINGTON: The expenses Of gathering shipmoney, and of distraining For every petty rate (for we encounter A desperate opposition inch by inch _270 In every warehouse and on every farm), Have swallowed up the gross sum of the imposts; So that, though felt as a most grievous scourge Upon the land, they stand us in small stead As touches the receipt.

STRAFFORD: 'Tis a conclusion _275 Most arithmetical: and thence you infer Perhaps the assembling of a parliament. Now, if a man should call his dearest enemies T0 sit in licensed judgement on his life, His Majesty might wisely take that course. _280 [ASIDE TO COTTINGTON.] It is enough to expect from these lean imposts That they perform the office of a scourge, Without more profit. [ALOUD.] Fines and confiscations, And a forced loan from the refractory city, Will fill our coffers: and the golden love _285 Of loyal gentlemen and noble friends For the worshipped father of our common country, With contributions from the catholics, Will make Rebellion pale in our excess. Be these the expedients until time and wisdom _290 Shall frame a settled state of government.

LAUD: And weak expedients they! Have we not drained All, till the ... which seemed A mine exhaustless?

STRAFFORD: And the love which IS, If loyal hearts could turn their blood to gold. _295

LAUD: Both now grow barren: and I speak it not As loving parliaments, which, as they have been In the right hand of bold bad mighty kings The scourges of the bleeding Church, I hate. Methinks they scarcely can deserve our fear. _300

STRAFFORD: Oh! my dear liege, take back the wealth thou gavest: With that, take all I held, but as in trust For thee, of mine inheritance: leave me but This unprovided body for thy service, And a mind dedicated to no care _305 Except thy safety:--but assemble not A parliament. Hundreds will bring, like me, Their fortunes, as they would their blood, before--

KING: No! thou who judgest them art but one. Alas! We should be too much out of love with Heaven, _310 Did this vile world show many such as thee, Thou perfect, just, and honourable man! Never shall it be said that Charles of England Stripped those he loved for fear of those he scorns; Nor will he so much misbecome his throne _315 As to impoverish those who most adorn And best defend it. That you urge, dear Strafford, Inclines me rather--

QUEEN: To a parliament? Is this thy firmness? and thou wilt preside Over a knot of ... censurers, _320 To the unswearing of thy best resolves, And choose the worst, when the worst comes too soon? Plight not the worst before the worst must come. Oh, wilt thou smile whilst our ribald foes, Dressed in their own usurped authority, _325 Sharpen their tongues on Henrietta's fame? It is enough! Thou lovest me no more! [WEEPS.]

KING: Oh, Henrietta!

[THEY TALK APART.]

COTTINGTON [TO LAUD]: Money we have none: And all the expedients of my Lord of Strafford Will scarcely meet the arrears.

LAUD: Without delay _330 An army must be sent into the north; Followed by a Commission of the Church, With amplest power to quench in fire and blood, And tears and terror, and the pity of hell, The intenser wrath of Heresy. God will give _335 Victory; and victory over Scotland give The lion England tamed into our hands. That will lend power, and power bring gold.

COTTINGTON: Meanwhile We must begin first where your Grace leaves off. Gold must give power, or--

LAUD: I am not averse _340 From the assembling of a parliament. Strong actions and smooth words might teach them soon The lesson to obey. And are they not A bubble fashioned by the monarch's mouth, The birth of one light breath? If they serve no purpose, _345 A word dissolves them.

STRAFFORD: The engine of parliaments Might be deferred until I can bring over The Irish regiments: they will serve to assure The issue of the war against the Scots. And, this game won--which if lost, all is lost-- _350 Gather these chosen leaders of the rebels, And call them, if you will, a parliament.

KING: Oh, be our feet still tardy to shed blood. Guilty though it may be! I would still spare The stubborn country of my birth, and ward _355 From countenances which I loved in youth The wrathful Church's lacerating hand. [TO LAUD.] Have you o'erlooked the other articles?

[ENTER ARCHY.]

LAUD: Hazlerig, Hampden, Pym, young Harry Vane, Cromwell, and other rebels of less note, _360 Intend to sail with the next favouring wind For the Plantations.

ARCHY: Where they think to found A commonwealth like Gonzalo's in the play, Gynaecocoenic and pantisocratic.

NOTE: _363 Gonzalo's 1870; Gonzaga Boscombe manuscript.

KING: What's that, sirrah?

ARCHY: New devil's politics. _365 Hell is the pattern of all commonwealths: Lucifer was the first republican. Will you hear Merlin's prophecy, how three [posts?] 'In one brainless skull, when the whitethorn is full, Shall sail round the world, and come back again: _370 Shall sail round the world in a brainless skull, And come back again when the moon is at full:'-- When, in spite of the Church, They will hear homilies of whatever length Or form they please. _375

[COTTINGTON?]: So please your Majesty to sign this order For their detention.

ARCHY: If your Majesty were tormented night and day by fever, gout, rheumatism, and stone, and asthma, etc., and you found these diseases had secretly entered into a conspiracy to abandon you, should you think it necessary to lay an embargo on the port by which they meant to dispeople your unquiet kingdom of man? _383

KING: If fear were made for kings, the Fool mocks wisely; But in this case--[WRITING]. Here, my lord, take the warrant, And see it duly executed forthwith.-- That imp of malice and mockery shall be punished. _387

[EXEUNT ALL BUT KING, QUEEN, AND ARCHY.]

ARCHY: Ay, I am the physician of whom Plato prophesied, who was to be accused by the confectioner before a jury of children, who found him guilty without waiting for the summing-up, and hanged him without benefit of clergy. Thus Baby Charles, and the Twelfth-night Queen of Hearts, and the overgrown schoolboy Cottington, and that little urchin Laud--who would reduce a verdict of 'guilty, death,' by famine, if it were impregnable by composition--all impannelled against poor Archy for presenting them bitter physic the last day of the holidays. _397

QUEEN: Is the rain over, sirrah?

KING: When it rains And the sun shines, 'twill rain again to-morrow: And therefore never smile till you've done crying. _400

ARCHY: But 'tis all over now: like the April anger of woman, the gentle sky has wept itself serene.

QUEEN: What news abroad? how looks the world this morning?

ARCHY: Gloriously as a grave covered with virgin flowers. There's a rainbow in the sky. Let your Majesty look at it, for

'A rainbow in the morning _407 Is the shepherd's warning;'

and the flocks of which you are the pastor are scattered among the mountain-tops, where every drop of water is a flake of snow, and the breath of May pierces like a January blast. _411

KING: The sheep have mistaken the wolf for their shepherd, my poor boy; and the shepherd, the wolves for their watchdogs.

QUEEN: But the rainbow was a good sign, Archy: it says that the waters of the deluge are gone, and can return no more.

ARCHY: Ay, the salt-water one: but that of tears and blood must yet come down, and that of fire follow, if there be any truth in lies.--The rainbow hung over the city with all its shops,...and churches, from north to south, like a bridge of congregated lightning pieced by the masonry of heaven--like a balance in which the angel that distributes the coming hour was weighing that heavy one whose poise is now felt in the lightest hearts, before it bows the proudest heads under the meanest feet. _424

QUEEN: Who taught you this trash, sirrah?

ARCHY: A torn leaf out of an old book trampled in the dirt.--But for the rainbow. It moved as the sun moved, and...until the top of the Tower...of a cloud through its left-hand tip, and Lambeth Palace look as dark as a rock before the other. Methought I saw a crown figured upon one tip, and a mitre on the other. So, as I had heard treasures were found where the rainbow quenches its points upon the earth, I set off, and at the Tower-- But I shall not tell your Majesty what I found close to the closet-window on which the rainbow had glimmered.

KING: Speak: I will make my Fool my conscience. _435

ARCHY: Then conscience is a fool.--I saw there a cat caught in a rat-trap. I heard the rats squeak behind the wainscots: it seemed to me that the very mice were consulting on the manner of her death.

QUEEN: Archy is shrewd and bitter.

ARCHY: Like the season, _440 So blow the winds.--But at the other end of the rainbow, where the gray rain was tempered along the grass and leaves by a tender interfusion of violet and gold in the meadows beyond Lambeth, what think you that I found instead of a mitre?

KING: Vane's wits perhaps. _445

ARCHY: Something as vain. I saw a gross vapour hovering in a stinking ditch over the carcass of a dead ass, some rotten rags, and broken dishes--the wrecks of what once administered to the stuffing-out and the ornament of a worm of worms. His Grace of Canterbury expects to enter the New Jerusalem some Palm Sunday in triumph on the ghost of this ass. _451

QUEEN: Enough, enough! Go desire Lady Jane She place my lute, together with the music Mari received last week from Italy, In my boudoir, and--

[EXIT ARCHY.]

KING: I'll go in.

NOTE: _254-_455 For by...I'll go in 1870; omitted 1824.

QUEEN: MY beloved lord, _455 Have you not noted that the Fool of late Has lost his careless mirth, and that his words Sound like the echoes of our saddest fears? What can it mean? I should be loth to think Some factious slave had tutored him.

KING: Oh, no! _460 He is but Occasion's pupil. Partly 'tis That our minds piece the vacant intervals Of his wild words with their own fashioning,-- As in the imagery of summer clouds, Or coals of the winter fire, idlers find _465 The perfect shadows of their teeming thoughts: And partly, that the terrors of the time Are sown by wandering Rumour in all spirits; And in the lightest and the least, may best Be seen the current of the coming wind. _470

NOTES: _460, _461 Oh...pupil 1870; omitted 1824. _461 Partly 'tis 1870; It partly is 1824. _465 of 1870; in 1824.

QUEEN: Your brain is overwrought with these deep thoughts. Come, I will sing to you; let us go try These airs from Italy; and, as we pass The gallery, we'll decide where that Correggio Shall hang--the Virgin Mother _475 With her child, born the King of heaven and earth, Whose reign is men's salvation. And you shall see A cradled miniature of yourself asleep, Stamped on the heart by never-erring love; Liker than any Vandyke ever made, _480 A pattern to the unborn age of thee, Over whose sweet beauty I have wept for joy A thousand times, and now should weep for sorrow, Did I not think that after we were dead Our fortunes would spring high in him, and that _485 The cares we waste upon our heavy crown Would make it light and glorious as a wreath Of Heaven's beams for his dear innocent brow.

NOTE: _473-_477 and, as...salvation 1870; omitted 1824.

KING: Dear Henrietta!

SCENE 3: THE STAR CHAMBER. LAUD, JUXON, STRAFFORD, AND OTHERS, AS JUDGES. PRYNNE AS A PRISONER, AND THEN BASTWICK.

LAUD: Bring forth the prisoner Bastwick: let the clerk Recite his sentence.

CLERK: 'That he pay five thousand Pounds to the king, lose both his ears, be branded With red-hot iron on the cheek and forehead, And be imprisoned within Lancaster Castle _5 During the pleasure of the Court.'

LAUD: Prisoner, If you have aught to say wherefore this sentence Should not be put into effect, now speak.

JUXON: If you have aught to plead in mitigation, Speak.

BASTWICK: Thus, my lords. If, like the prelates, I _10 Were an invader of the royal power A public scorner of the word of God, Profane, idolatrous, popish, superstitious, Impious in heart and in tyrannic act, Void of wit, honesty, and temperance; _15 If Satan were my lord, as theirs,--our God Pattern of all I should avoid to do; Were I an enemy of my God and King And of good men, as ye are;--I should merit Your fearful state and gilt prosperity, _20 Which, when ye wake from the last sleep, shall turn To cowls and robes of everlasting fire. But, as I am, I bid ye grudge me not The only earthly favour ye can yield, Or I think worth acceptance at your hands,-- _25 Scorn, mutilation, and imprisonment. even as my Master did, Until Heaven's kingdom shall descend on earth, Or earth be like a shadow in the light Of Heaven absorbed--some few tumultuous years _30 Will pass, and leave no wreck of what opposes His will whose will is power.

NOTE: _27-_32 even...power printed as a fragment, Garnett, 1862; inserted here conjecturally, Rossetti, 1870.

LAUD: Officer, take the prisoner from the bar, And be his tongue slit for his insolence.

BASTWICK: While this hand holds a pen--

LAUD: Be his hands--

JUXON: Stop! _35 Forbear, my lord! The tongue, which now can speak No terror, would interpret, being dumb, Heaven's thunder to our harm;... And hands, which now write only their own shame, With bleeding stumps might sign our blood away. _40

LAUD: Much more such 'mercy' among men would be, Did all the ministers of Heaven's revenge Flinch thus from earthly retribution. I Could suffer what I would inflict. [EXIT BASTWICK GUARDED.] Bring up The Lord Bishop of Lincoln.-- [TO STRATFORD.] Know you not _45 That, in distraining for ten thousand pounds Upon his books and furniture at Lincoln, Were found these scandalous and seditious letters Sent from one Osbaldistone, who is fled? I speak it not as touching this poor person; _50 But of the office which should make it holy, Were it as vile as it was ever spotless. Mark too, my lord, that this expression strikes His Majesty, if I misinterpret not.

[ENTER BISHOP WILLIAMS GUARDED.]

STRAFFORD: 'Twere politic and just that Williams taste _55 The bitter fruit of his connection with The schismatics. But you, my Lord Archbishop, Who owed your first promotion to his favour, Who grew beneath his smile--

LAUD: Would therefore beg The office of his judge from this High Court,-- _60 That it shall seem, even as it is, that I, In my assumption of this sacred robe, Have put aside all worldly preference, All sense of all distinction of all persons, All thoughts but of the service of the Church.-- _65 Bishop of Lincoln!

WILLIAMS: Peace, proud hierarch! I know my sentence, and I own it just. Thou wilt repay me less than I deserve, In stretching to the utmost

...

NOTE: Scene 3. _1-_69 Bring...utmost 1870; omitted 1824.

4. HAMPDEN, PYM, CROMWELL, HIS DAUGHTER, AND YOUNG SIR HARRY VANE

HAMPDEN: England, farewell! thou, who hast been my cradle, Shalt never be my dungeon or my grave! I held what I inherited in thee As pawn for that inheritance of freedom Which thou hast sold for thy despoiler's smile: _5 How can I call thee England, or my country?-- Does the wind hold?

VANE: The vanes sit steady Upon the Abbey towers. The silver lightnings Of the evening star, spite of the city's smoke, Tell that the north wind reigns in the upper air. _10 Mark too that flock of fleecy-winged clouds Sailing athwart St. Margaret's.

NOTE: _11 flock 1824; fleet 1870.

HAMPDEN: Hail, fleet herald Of tempest! that rude pilot who shall guide Hearts free as his, to realms as pure as thee, Beyond the shot of tyranny, _15 Beyond the webs of that swoln spider... Beyond the curses, calumnies, and [lies?] Of atheist priests! ... And thou Fair star, whose beam lies on the wide Atlantic, Athwart its zones of tempest and of calm, _20 Bright as the path to a beloved home Oh, light us to the isles of the evening land! Like floating Edens cradled in the glimmer Of sunset, through the distant mist of years Touched by departing hope, they gleam! lone regions, _25 Where Power's poor dupes and victims yet have never Propitiated the savage fear of kings With purest blood of noblest hearts; whose dew Is yet unstained with tears of those who wake To weep each day the wrongs on which it dawns; _30 Whose sacred silent air owns yet no echo Of formal blasphemies; nor impious rites Wrest man's free worship, from the God who loves, To the poor worm who envies us His love! Receive, thou young ... of Paradise. _35 These exiles from the old and sinful world!

...

This glorious clime, this firmament, whose lights Dart mitigated influence through their veil Of pale blue atmosphere; whose tears keep green The pavement of this moist all-feeding earth; _40 This vaporous horizon, whose dim round Is bastioned by the circumfluous sea, Repelling invasion from the sacred towers, Presses upon me like a dungeon's grate, A low dark roof, a damp and narrow wall. _45 The boundless universe Becomes a cell too narrow for the soul That owns no master; while the loathliest ward Of this wide prison, England, is a nest Of cradling peace built on the mountain tops,-- _50 To which the eagle spirits of the free, Which range through heaven and earth, and scorn the storm Of time, and gaze upon the light of truth, Return to brood on thoughts that cannot die And cannot be repelled. _55 Like eaglets floating in the heaven of time, They soar above their quarry, and shall stoop Through palaces and temples thunderproof.

NOTES: _13 rude 1870; wild 1824. _16-_18 Beyond...priests 1870; omitted 1824. _25 Touched 1870; Tinged 1824. _34 To the poor 1870; Towards the 1824. _38 their 1870; the 1824. _46 boundless 1870; mighty 1824. _48 owns no 1824; owns a 1870. ward 1870; spot 1824. _50 cradling 1870; cradled 1824. _54, _55 Return...repelled 1870; Return to brood over the [ ] thoughts That cannot die, and may not he repelled 1824. _56-_58 Like...thunderproof 1870; omitted 1824.