As of a joyous infant waked and playing loud The mingled battle-cry, -ha! hear I not boul; And in that ghastly breach the Islamites, 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, And seems - he is - Mahomet! AHASUERUS What thou seest Is but the ghost of thy forgotten dream. 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 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 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 phan toms Of raging death; and draw with mighty will To take the living than give up the dead; voices Of strange lament soothe my supreme repose, Wailing for glory never to return. — A later Empire nods in its decay: And wolfish change, like winter, howls to strip Ruin on ruin:-Thou art slow, my son; Boundless and mute; and for thy subjects thou, now Mutinous passions, and conflicting fears, And hopes that sate themselves on dust and die! Stript of their mortal strength, as thou of thine. Unfold itself even in the shape of that MAHMUD Spirit, woe to all! Woe to the wronged and the avenger! Woe 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, When, how, by whom, Destruction must ac complish 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 |