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Hellas: A Lyrical Drama
by
SEMICHORUS 2:
Ah king! wilt thou chain
The rack and the rain?
Wilt thou fetter the lightning and hurricane?
The storms are free,
But we– 675
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 680
Scorn thy control!
SEMICHORUS 1:
Let there be light! said Liberty,
And like sunrise from the sea,
Athens arose!–Around her born,
Shone like mountains in the morn 685
Glorious states;–and are they now
Ashes, wrecks, oblivion?
SEMICHORUS 2:
Go,
Where Thermae and Asopus swallowed
Persia, as the sand does foam:
Deluge upon deluge followed, 690
Discord, Macedon, and Rome:
And lastly thou!
SEMICHORUS 1:
Temples and towers,
Citadels and marts, and they
Who live and die there, have been ours,
And may be thine, and must decay; 695
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, 700
Rule the present from the past,
On all this world of men inherits
Their seal is set.
SEMICHORUS 2:
Hear ye the blast,
Whose Orphic thunder thrilling calls
From ruin her Titanian walls? 705
Whose spirit shakes the sapless bones
Of Slavery? Argos, Corinth, Crete
Hear, and from their mountain thrones
The daemons and the nymphs repeat
The harmony.
SEMICHORUS 1:
I hear! I hear! 710
SEMICHORUS 2:
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 715
At her right hand? what shadow flits
Before? what splendour rolls behind?
Ruin and renovation cry
‘Who but We?’
SEMICHORUS 1:
I hear! I hear!
The hiss as of a rushing wind, 720
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 725
‘Mercy! mercy!’–How they thrill!
Then a shout of ‘kill! kill! kill!’
And then a small still voice, thus–