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, SEMICHORUS I. Let there be light! said Liberty, 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 Eve 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, 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, that broken shrine again, But pay 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. 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 The birth of this old world through all its cycles Of desolation and of loveliness, |