The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Part 86

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 b.l.o.o.d.y main, And my solemn thunder-knell Should ring to the world the pa.s.sing-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 impa.s.sive 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 t.i.tanian 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d, Can make the Future present--let it come!

Moreover thou disdainest us and ours; _760 Thou art as G.o.d, 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, s.p.a.ce, 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, Pa.s.sion, 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 superst.i.tions. What has thought To do with time, or place, or circ.u.mstance?

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 gla.s.s.

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 a.s.sault 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 pa.s.sion 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.]