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PREFACE.

THE Poem of "Hellas," written at the suggestion of the events of the moment, is a mere improvise, and derives its interest (should it be found to possess any) solely from the intense sympathy which the Author feels with the cause he would celebrate.

The subject, in its present state, is insusceptible of being treated otherwise than lyrically, and if I have called this poem a drama, from the circumstance of its being composed in dialogue, the licence is not greater than that which has been assumed by other poets, who have called their productions epics, only because they have been divided into twelve or twenty-four books.

The Pers of Eschylus afforded me the first model of my conception, although the decision of the glorious contest now waging in Greece being yet suspended, forbids a catastrophe parallel to the return of Xerxes and the desolation of the Persians. I have, therefore, contented myself with exhibiting a series of lyric pictures, and with having wrought upon the curtain of futurity, which falls upon the unfinished scene, such figures of indistinct and visionary delineation as suggest the final triumph of the Greek cause as a portion of the cause of civilisation and social improvement.

The drama (if drama it must be called) is, however, so inartificial that I doubt whether, if recited on the Thespian waggon to an Athenian village at the Dionysiaca, it would have obtained the prize of the goat. I shall bear with equanimity any punishment greater than the loss of such a reward which the Aristarchi of the hour may think fit to inflict.

The only goat-song which I have yet attempted has, I confess, in spite of the unfavourable nature of the subject, received a greater and a more valuable portion of applause than I expected, or than it deserved.

Common fame is the only authority which I can allege for the details which form the basis of the poem,

and I must trespass upon the forgiveness of my readers for the display of newspaper erudition to which I have been reduced. Undoubtedly, until the conclusion of the war, it will be impossible to obtain an account of it sufficiently authentic for historical materials; but poets have their privilege, and it is unquestionable that actions of the most exalted courage have been performed by the Greeks-that they have gained more than one naval victory, and that their defeat in Wallachia was signalised by circumstances of heroism more glorious even than victory.

The apathy of the rulers of the civilised world, to the astonishing circumstance of the descendants of that nation to which they owe their civilisation-rising as it were from the ashes of their ruin, is something perfectly inexplicable to a mere spectator of the shows of this mortal scene. We are all Greeks. Our laws, our literature, our religion, our arts, have their root in Greece. But for Greece-Rome the instructor, the conqueror, or the metropolis of our ancestors, would have spread no illumination with her arms, and we might still have been savages and idolaters; or, what is worse, might have arrived at such a stagnant and miserable state of social institutions as China and Japan possess.

The human form and the human mind attained to a perfection in Grecce which has impressed its image on those faultless productions, whose very fragments are the despair of modern art, and has propagated impulses which cannot cease, through a thousand channels of manifest or imperceptible operation, to ennoble and delight mankind until the extinction of the race.

The modern Greek is the descendant of those glorious beings whom the imagination almost refuses to figure to itself as belonging to our kind; and he inherits much of their sensibility, their rapidity of conception, their enthusiasm, and their courage. If in many instances he is degraded by moral and political

slavery to the practice of the basest vices it engenders and that below the level of ordinary degradation; let us reflect that the corruption of the best produces the worst, and that habits which subsist only in relation to a peculiar state of social institution may be expected to cease, as soon as that relation is dissolved. In fact, the Greeks, since the admirable novel of " Anastatius" could have been a faithful picture of their manners, have undergone most important changes; the flower of their youth, returning to their country from the universities of Italy, Germany, and France, have communicated to their fellow-citizens the latest results of that social perfection of which their ancestors were the original source. The university of Chios contained before the breaking out of the revolution, eight hundred students, and among them several Germans and Americans. The munificence and energy of many of the Greek princes and merchants, directed to the renovation of their country, with a spirit and a wisdom which has few examples, is above all praise.

The English permit their own oppressors to act according to their natural sympathy with the Turkish tyrant, and to brand upon their name the indelible blot of an alliance with the enemies of domestic happiness, of Christianity, and civilisation.

Russia desires to possess, not to liberate Greece; and is contented to see the Turks, its natural enemies, and the Greeks, its intended slaves, enfeeble each other, until one or both fall into its net. The wise and generous policy of England would have consisted in establishing the independence of Greece, and in maintaining it both against Russia and the Turks ;-but when was the oppressor generous or just ?

The Spanish Peninsula is already free. France is tranquil in the enjoyment of a partial exemption from the abuses which its unnatural and feeble government are vainly attempting to revive. The seed of blood and misery has been sown in Italy, and a more vigorous race is arising to go forth to the harvest. The world waits only the news of a revolution of Germany, to see the tyrants who have pinnacled themselves on its supineness, precipitated into the ruin from which they shall never arise. Well do these destroyers of mankind know their enemy, when they impute the insurrection in Greece to the same spirit before which they tremble throughout the rest of Europe; and that enemy well knows the power and cunning of its opponents, and watches the moment of their approaching weakness and inevitable division, to wrest the bloody sceptres from their grasp.

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In the great morning of the world,
The spirit of God with might unfurled
The flag of Freedom over Chaos,

And all its banded anarchs fled,
Like vultures frighted from Imaus,
Before an earthquake's tread.-
So from Time's tempestuous dawn
Freedom's splendour burst and shone:-
Thermopyla and Marathon

Caught, like mountains beacon-lighted,
The springing Fire.-The winged glory
On Philippi half-alighted,

Like an eagle on a promontory.

Its unwearied wings could fan
The quenchless ashes of Milan.
From age to age, from man to man
It lived; and lit from land to land
Florence, Albion, Switzerland.
Then night fell; and, as from night,
Re-assuming fiery flight,

From the West swift Freedom came,
Against the course of heaven and doom,

A second sun arrayed in flame,
To burn, to kindle, to illume.

From far Atlantis its young beams
Chased the shadows and the dreams.
France, with all her sanguine steams,
Hid, but quenched it not; again
Through clouds its shafts of glory rain
From utmost Germany to Spain.
As an eagle fed with morning
Scorns the embattled tempest's warning,
When she seeks her aerie hanging

In the mountain-cedar's hair,
And her brood expect the clanging
Of her wings through the wild air,
Sick with famine ;-Freedom, so
To what of Greece remaineth now
Returns; her hoary ruins glow
Like orient mountains lost in day;
Beneath the safety of her wings
Her renovated nurselings play,

And in the naked lightnings

Of truth they purge their dazzled eyes.
Let Freedom leave, where'er she flies,
A Desert, or a Paradise;

Let the beautiful and the brave

Share her glory, or a grave.

SEMICHORUS I.

With the gifts of gladness Greece did thy cradle strew;

SEMICHORUS II.

With the tears of sadness

Greece did thy shroud bedew ;

SEMICHORUS I.

With an orphan's affection

She followed thy bier through time!

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A life of unconsumed thought, which pierces
The present and the past, and the to-come.
Some say that this is he whom the great prophet
Jesus, the son of Joseph, for his mockery,
Mocked with the curse of immortality.
Some feign that he is Enoch; others dream
He was pre-adamite, and has survived
Cycles of generation and of ruin.
The sage, in truth, by dreadful abstinence,
And conquering penance of the mutinous flesh,
Deep contemplation, and unwearied study,
In years outstretched beyond the date of man,
May have attained to sovereignty and science
Over those strong and secret things and thoughts
Which others fear and know not.

MAHMUD.

I would talk

With this old Jew.

HASSAN.

Thy will is even now

Made known to him, where he dwells in a sea-cavern 'Mid the Demonesi, less accessible

Than thou or God! He who would question him
Must sail alone at sun-set, where the stream
Of ocean sleeps around those foamless isles
When the young moon is westering as now,
And evening airs wander upon the wave;
And when the pines of that bee-pasturing isle,
Green Erebinthus, quench the fiery shadow
Of his gilt prow within the sapphire water,
Then must the lonely helmsman cry aloud,
Ahasuerus! and the caverns round
Will answer, Ahasuerus! If his prayer
Be granted, a faint meteor will arise.
Lighting him over Marmora, and a wind
Will rush out of the sighing pine-forest,
And with the wind a storm of harmony
Unutterably sweet, and pilot him
Through the soft twilight to the Bosphorus:
Thence, at the hour and place and circumstance
Fit for the matter of their conference,

The Jew appears. Few dare, and few who dare,
Win the desired communion-but that shout
Bodes-

CHORUS.

Worlds on worlds are rolling ever
From creation to decay,
Like the bubbles on a river,

Sparkling, bursting, borne away.
But they are still immortal

Who, through birth's orient portal, And death's dark chasm hurrying to and fro, Clothe their unceasing flight

In the brief dust and light

Gathered around their chariots as they go;
New shapes they still may weave,
New Gods, new laws receive,

Bright or dim are they, as the robes they last
On Death's bare ribs had cast.

A power from the unknown God;
A Promethean conqueror came;
Like a triumphal path he trod

The thorns of death and shame.
A mortal shape to him
Was like the vapour dim

Which the orient planet animates with light;
Hell, Sin, and Slavery came,

Like blood-hounds mild and tame,

Nor preyed until their lord had taken flight.
The moon of Mahomet
Arose, and it shall set :

While blazoned as on heaven's immortal noon
The cross leads generations on.

Swift as the radiant shapes of sleep

From one whose dreams are paradise,
Fly, when the fond wretch wakes to weep,
And day peers forth with her blank eyes;
So fleet, so faint, so fair,
The Powers of earth and air

Fled from the folding star of Bethlehem :
Apollo, Pan, and Love,

And even Olympian Jove

Grew weak, for killing Truth had glared on them. Our hills, and seas, and streams,

Dispeopled of their dreams,

Their waters turned to blood, their dew to tears, Wailed for the golden years.

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MAHMUD.

Then take this signet, Unlock the seventh chamber, in which lie The treasures of victorious Solyman. An empire's spoils stored for a day of ruin. O spirit of my sires! is it not come !

The prey-birds and the wolves are gorged and sleep; But these, who spread their feast on the red earth, Hunger for gold, which fills not.-See them fed; Then lead them to the rivers of fresh death.

[Exit DAOOD.

Oh! miserable dawn, after a night
More glorious than the day which it usurped !
O, faith in God! O, power on earth! O, word
Of the great Prophet, whose overshadowing wings
Darkened the thrones and idols of the west,
Now bright!-For thy sake cursed be the hour,
Even as a father by an evil child,

When the orient moon of Islam rolled in triumph
From Caucasus to white Ceraunia!
Ruin above, and anarchy below;
Terror without, and treachery within ;
The chalice of destruction full, and all
Thirsting to drink; and who among us dares
To dash it from his lips? and where is Hope?

HASSAN.

The lamp of our dominion still rides high;
One God is God-Mahomet is his Prophet.
Four hundred thousand Moslems, from the limits
Of utmost Asia, irresistibly

Throng, like full clouds at the Scirocco's cry,
But not like them to weep their strength in tears;
They have destroying lightning, and their step
Wakes earthquake, to consume and overwhelm,
And reign in ruin. Phrygian Olympus,
Tmolus, and Latmos, and Mycale, roughen
With horrent arms, and lofty ships, even now,
Like vapours anchored to a mountain's edge,
Freighted with fire and whirlwind, wait at Scala
The convoy of the ever-veering wind.
Samos is drunk with blood;-the Greek has paid
Brief victory with swift loss and long despair.
The false Moldavian serfs fled fast and far
When the fierce shout of Allah-illa-Allah!
Rose like the war-cry of the northern wind,
Which kills the sluggish clouds, and leaves a flock
Of wild swans struggling with the naked storm.
So were the lost Greeks on the Danube's day!
If night is mute, yet the returning sun,
Kindles the voices of the morning birds;
Nor at thy bidding less exultingly
Than birds rejoicing in the golden day,
The Anarchies of Africa unleash
Their tempest-winged cities of the sea,
To speak in thunder to the rebel world.

Like sulphureous clouds half-shattered by the storm,
They sweep the pale Ægean, while the Queen
Of Ocean, bound upon her island throne,
Far in the West, sits mourning that her sons,
Who frown on Freedom, spare a smile for thee:
Russia still hovers, as an eagle might
Within a cloud, near which a kite and crane
Hang tangled in inextricable fight,

To stoop upon the victor; for she fears

The name of Freedom, even as she hates thine : But recreant Austria loves thee as the Grave Loves Pestilence, and her slow dogs of war, Fleshed with the chase, come up from Italy,

And howl upon their limits; for they see
The panther Freedom fled to her old cover,
Amid seas and mountains, and a mightier brood
Crouch around. What Anarch wears a crown or

mitre,

Or bears the sword, or grasps the key of gold, Whose friends are not thy friends, whose foes thy

foes!

Our arsenals and our armories are full ;
Our forts defy assaults; ten thousand cannon
Lie ranged upon the beach, and hour by hour
Their earth-convulsing wheels affright the city;
The galloping of fiery steeds makes pale
The Christian merchant, and the yellow Jew
Hides his hoard deeper in the faithless earth.
Like clouds, and like the shadows of the clouds,
Over the hills of Anatolia,

Swift in wide troops the Tartar chivalry
Sweep; the far-flashing of their starry lances
Reverberates the dying light of day.

We have one God, one King, one Hope, one Law;
But many-headed Insurrection stands
Divided in itself, and soon must fall.

MAHMUD.

Proud words, when deeds come short, are seasonable;

Look, Hassan, on yon crescent moon, emblazoned
Upon that shattered flag of fiery cloud
Which leads the rear of the departing day,
Wan emblem of an empire fading now!
See how it trembles in the blood-red air,
And like a mighty lamp whose oil is spent,
Shrinks on the horizon's edge, while, from above,
One star with insolent and victorious light
Hovers above its fall, and with keen beams,
Like arrows through a fainting antelope,
Strikes its weak form to death.

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Shall we be not renewed! Far other bark than ours were needed now To stem the torrent of descending time: The spirit that lifts the slave before its lord Stalks through the capitals of armed kings, And spreads his ensign in the wilderness; Exults in chains; and when the rebel falls, Cries like the blood of Abel from the dust; And the inheritors of earth, like beasts When earthquake is unleashed, with idiot fear Cower in their kingly dens-as I do now. What were Defeat, when Victory must appal? Or Danger, when Security looks pale ? How said the messenger-who from the fort Islanded in the Danube, saw the battle Of Bucharest ?-that

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