The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Part 87

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 pa.s.sions, 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 rea.s.semble, 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 pa.s.s 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 h.e.l.las 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 sh.o.r.e.

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).