FullReads

[NOTE:
762 thy edition 1822; my editions 1839.]

MAHMUD:
What meanest thou? Thy words stream like a tempest
Of dazzling mist within my brain–they shake
The earth on which I stand, and hang like night
On Heaven above me. What can they avail?
They cast on all things surest, brightest, best, 790
Doubt, insecurity, astonishment.

AHASUERUS:
Mistake me not! All is contained in each.
Dodona’s forest to an acorn’s cup
Is that which has been, or will be, to that
Which is–the absent to the present. Thought 795
Alone, and its quick elements, Will, Passion,
Reason, Imagination, cannot die;
They are, what that which they regard appears,
The stuff whence mutability can weave
All that it hath dominion o’er, worlds, worms, 800
Empires, and superstitions. What has thought
To do with time, or place, or circumstance?
Wouldst thou behold the Future?–ask and have!
Knock and it shall be opened–look, and lo!
The coming age is shadowed on the Past 805
As on a glass.

MAHMUD:
Wild, wilder thoughts convulse
My spirit–Did not Mahomet the Second
Win Stamboul?

AHASUERUS:
Thou wouldst ask that giant spirit
The written fortunes of thy house and faith.
Thou wouldst cite one out of the grave to tell 810
How what was born in blood must die.

MAHMUD:
Thy words
Have power on me! I see–

AHASUERUS:
What hearest thou?

MAHMUD:
A far whisper–
Terrible silence.

AHASUERUS:
What succeeds?

MAHMUD:
The sound
As of the assault of an imperial city, 815
The hiss of inextinguishable fire,
The roar of giant cannon; the earthquaking
Fall of vast bastions and precipitous towers,
The shock of crags shot from strange enginery,
The clash of wheels, and clang of armed hoofs, 820
And crash of brazen mail as of the wreck
Of adamantine mountains–the mad blast
Of trumpets, and the neigh of raging steeds,
The shrieks of women whose thrill jars the blood,
And one sweet laugh, most horrible to hear, 825
As of a joyous infant waked and playing
With its dead mother’s breast, and now more loud
The mingled battle-cry,–ha! hear I not
‘En touto nike!’ ‘Allah-illa-Allah!’?

AHASUERUS:
The sulphurous mist is raised–thou seest–

MAHMUD:
A chasm, 830
As of two mountains in the wall of Stamboul;
And in that ghastly breach the Islamites,
Like giants on the ruins of a world,
Stand in the light of sunrise. In the dust
Glimmers a kingless diadem, and one 835
Of regal port has cast himself beneath
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, 840
And seems–he is–Mahomet!

AHASUERUS:
What thou seest
Is but the ghost of thy forgotten dream.
A dream itself, yet less, perhaps, than that
Thou call’st reality. Thou mayst behold
How cities, on which Empire sleeps enthroned, 845
Bow their towered crests to mutability.
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 850
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 855
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 phantoms
Of raging death; and draw with mighty will 860
The imperial shade hither.