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 Round which the kingly hunters of the earth 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? 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! Of monarchy, bear me to thine abode When desolation flashes o'er a world des troyed: Oh, bear me to those isles of jaggèd cloud Which float like mountains on the earthquake, mid The momentary oceans of the lightning, 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 |