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…

A chaos of light and motion
Upon that glassy ocean.

…

The senate of the Gods is met,
Each in his rank and station set;
There is silence in the spaces– 75
Lo! Satan, Christ, and Mahomet
Start from their places!

CHRIST:
Almighty Father!
Low-kneeling at the feet of Destiny

…

There are two fountains in which spirits weep 80
When mortals err, Discord and Slavery named,
And with their bitter dew two Destinies
Filled each their irrevocable urns; the third
Fiercest and mightiest, mingled both, and added
Chaos and Death, and slow Oblivion’s lymph, 85
And hate and terror, and the poisoned rain

…

The Aurora of the nations. By this brow
Whose pores wept tears of blood, by these wide wounds,
By this imperial crown of agony,
By infamy and solitude and death, 90
For this I underwent, and by the pain
Of pity for those who would … for me
The unremembered joy of a revenge,
For this I felt–by Plato’s sacred light,
Of which my spirit was a burning morrow– 95
By Greece and all she cannot cease to be.
Her quenchless words, sparks of immortal truth,
Stars of all night–her harmonies and forms,
Echoes and shadows of what Love adores
In thee, I do compel thee, send forth Fate, 100
Thy irrevocable child: let her descend,
A seraph-winged Victory [arrayed]
In tempest of the omnipotence of God
Which sweeps through all things.

From hollow leagues, from Tyranny which arms 105
Adverse miscreeds and emulous anarchies
To stamp, as on a winged serpent’s seed,
Upon the name of Freedom; from the storm
Of faction, which like earthquake shakes and sickens
The solid heart of enterprise; from all 110
By which the holiest dreams of highest spirits
Are stars beneath the dawn…
She shall arise
Victorious as the world arose from Chaos!
And as the Heavens and the Earth arrayed
Their presence in the beauty and the light 115
Of Thy first smile, O Father,–as they gather
The spirit of Thy love which paves for them
Their path o’er the abyss, till every sphere
Shall be one living Spirit,–so shall Greece–

SATAN:
Be as all things beneath the empyrean, 120
Mine! Art thou eyeless like old Destiny,
Thou mockery-king, crowned with a wreath of thorns?
Whose sceptre is a reed, the broken reed
Which pierces thee! whose throne a chair of scorn;
For seest thou not beneath this crystal floor 125
The innumerable worlds of golden light
Which are my empire, and the least of them
which thou wouldst redeem from me?
Know’st thou not them my portion?
Or wouldst rekindle the … strife 130
Which our great Father then did arbitrate
Which he assigned to his competing sons
Each his apportioned realm?
Thou Destiny,
Thou who art mailed in the omnipotence
Of Him who tends thee forth, whate’er thy task, 135
Speed, spare not to accomplish, and be mine
Thy trophies, whether Greece again become
The fountain in the desert whence the earth
Shall drink of freedom, which shall give it strength
To suffer, or a gulf of hollow death 140
To swallow all delight, all life, all hope.
Go, thou Vicegerent of my will, no less
Than of the Father’s; but lest thou shouldst faint,
The winged hounds, Famine and Pestilence,
Shall wait on thee, the hundred-forked snake 145
Insatiate Superstition still shall…
The earth behind thy steps, and War shall hover
Above, and Fraud shall gape below, and Change
Shall flit before thee on her dragon wings,
Convulsing and consuming, and I add 150
Three vials of the tears which daemons weep
When virtuous spirits through the gate of Death
Pass triumphing over the thorns of life,
Sceptres and crowns, mitres and swords and snares,
Trampling in scorn, like Him and Socrates. 155
The first is Anarchy; when Power and Pleasure,
Glory and science and security,
On Freedom hang like fruit on the green tree,
Then pour it forth, and men shall gather ashes.
The second Tyranny–