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 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

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?
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,
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.

slaves!

Victory! poor [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
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 I.

Victorious Wrong, with vulture scream, Salutes the risen 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 pavil

ioned lay

In visions of the dawning undelight.

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! Violate! make their flesh cheaper than dust!

SEMICHORUS II.

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

When desolation flashes o'er a world destroyed:

Oh, bear me to those isles of jaggèd cloud Which float like mountains on the earthquake, mid

The momentary oceans of the lightning,

Or to some toppling promontory proud 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

In the thunder night!

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,

These chains are light, fitter for slaves and poisoners

Than Greeks. Kill! plunder! burn! let none remain.

SEMICHORUS I.

Alas! for Liberty!

If numbers, wealth, or unfulfilling years,
Or fate, can quell the free!

Alas! for Virtue, when

Torments, or contumely, or the sneers