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
Scorn thy control!

SEMICHORUS I.

Let there be light! said Liberty,
And like sunrise from the sea,
Athens arose! - Around her born,
Shone like mountains in the morn
Glorious states; - and are they now
Ashes, wrecks, oblivion?

SEMICHORUS II.

Go,

Where Thermæ and Asopus swallowed

Persia, as the sand does foam, Deluge upon deluge followed, Discord, Macedon, and Rome: And lastly thou!

SEMICHORUS I.

Temples and towers,

Citadels and marts, and they

Who live and die there, have been ours,
And may be thine, and must decay;
But Greece and her foundations are
Built below the tide of war,
Based on the crystalline sea
Of thought and its eternity;
Her citizens, imperial spirits,

Rule the present from the past,
On all this world of men inherits

Their seal is set.

SEMICHORUS II.

Hear ye the blast,

Whose Orphic thunder thrilling calls From ruin her Titanian walls?

Whose spirit shakes the sapless bones

Of Slavery? Argos, Corinth, Crete Hear, and from their mountain thrones The dæmons and the nymphs repeat The harmony.

SEMICHORUS I.

I hear! I hear!

SEMICHORUS II.

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
At her right hand? what shadow flits
Before? what splendour rolls behind?
Ruin and renovation cry

Who but We?

SEMICHORUS I.

I hear! I hear!

The hiss as of a rushing wind, The roar as of an ocean foaming,

The thunder as of earthquake coming.
I hear! I hear!

The crash as of an empire falling,
The shrieks as of a people calling
Mercy! mercy!- How they thrill!
Then a shout of "kill! kill! kill!'
And then a small still voice, thus-

SEMICHORUS II.

Fear

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.

SEMICHORUS I.

In sacred Athens, near the fane

Of Wisdom, Pity's altar stood: Serve not the unknown God in vain, But pay that broken shrine again,

Love for hate and tears for blood.

Enter MAHMUD and AHASUERUS.

No more!

MAHMUD

Thou art a man thou sayest even as we.

AHASUERUS

MAHMUD

But raised above thy fellow men

By thought, as I by power.

AHASUERUS

Thou sayest so.

MAHMUD

Thou art an adept in the difficult lore

Of Greek and Frank philosophy; thou num

berest

The flowers, and thou measurest the stars; Thou severest element from element; Thy spirit is present in the past, and sees birth of this old world through all its cycles

The

Of desolation and of loveliness,