By victor myriads, form'd in hollow square
With rough and stedfast front, and thrice flung back
The deluge of our foaming cavalry;

Thrice their keen wedge of battle pierced our lines.
Our baffled army trembled like one man
Before a host, and gave them space; but soon,
From the surrounding hills, the batteries blazed,
Kneading them down with fire and iron rain.
Yet none approach'd; till, like a field of corn
Under the hook of the swart sickle-man,
The bands intrench'd in mounds of Turkish dead
Grew weak and few.-Then said the Pacha, «< Slaves,
Render yourselves!—They have abandon'd you-
What hope of refuge, or retreat, or aid?

We grant your lives.-
‚» — « Grant that which is thine own,
Cried one, and fell upon his sword and died!
Another God, and man, and hope abandon me;
But I to them and to myself remain

Constant;»-he bow'd his head, and his heart burst.
A third exclaim'd, There is a refuge, tyrant,
Where thou darest not pursue, and canst not harm,
Shouldst thou pursue; there we shall meet again..
Then held his breath, and, after a brief spasm,
The indignant spirit cast its mortal garment
Among the slain-dead earth upon the earth!
So these survivors, each by different ways,
Some strange, all sudden, none dishonourable,
Met in triumphant death; and when our army,
Closed in, while yet in wonder, and awe, aud shame,
Held back the base hyenas of the battle
That feed upon the dead and fly the living,
One rose out of the chaos of the slain;
And if it were a corpse which some dread spirit
Of the old saviours of the land we rule
Had lifted in its anger, wandering by;
Or if there burn'd within the dying man
Unquenchable disdain of death, and faith
Creating what it feign'd;-I cannot tell,

But he cried, « Phantoms of the free, we come!
Armies of the eternal, ye who strike

To dust the citadels of sanguine kings,

And shake the souls throned on their stony hearts, And thaw their frost-work diadems like dew!

O ye who float around this clime, and weave
The garment of the glory which it wears,
Whose fame, though earth betray the dust it clasp'd,
Lies sepulchred in monumental thought!
Progenitors of all that yet is great,
Ascribe to your bright senate, O accept
In your high ministrations, us, your sons—
Us first, and the more glorious yet to come!
And ye, weak conquerors! giants who look pale
When the crush'd worm rebels beneath your tread-
The vultures, and the dogs, your pensioners tame,
Are overgorged; but, like oppressors, still
They crave the relic of destruction's feast.
The exhalations and the thirsty winds

Are sick with blood; the dew is foul with death-
Heaven's light is quench'd in slaughter: Thus where'er
Upon your camps, cities, or towers, or fleets,
The obscene birds the reeking remnants cast

Of these dead limbs upon your streams and mountains,
Upon your fields, your gardens, and your house-tops,
Where'er the winds shall creep, or the clouds fly,
Or the dews fall, or the angry sun look down
With poison'd light-Famine, and Pestilence,
And Panic, shall wage war upon our side!
Nature from all her boundaries is moved
Against ye: Time has found ye light as foam.
The Earth rebels; and Good and Evil stake
Their empire o'er the unborn world of men
On this one cast-but ere the die be thrown,
The renovated genius of our race,
Proud umpire of the impious game, descends
A seraph-winged Victory, bestriding
The tempest of the Omnipotence of God,
Which sweeps all things to their appointed doom,
And you to Oblivion!»-More he would have said,
But-

Of Mahmud; but like hounds of a base breed,
Gorge from a stranger's hand, and rend their master.

HASSAN.

Latmos, and Ampelos, and Phanae, saw The wreck

MAHMUD.

The caves of the Icarian isles Hold each to the other in loud mockery, And with the tongue as of a thousand echoes First of the sea-convulsing fight-and thenThou darest to speak-senseless are the mountains; Interpret thou their voice!

HASSAN.

My presence bore

A part in that day's shame. The Grecian fleet
Bore down at day-break from the North, and hung
As multitudinous on the ocean line

As cranes upon the cloudless Thracian wind.
Our squadron, convoying ten thousand men,
Was stretching towards Nauplia when the battle
Was kindled.-

First through the hail of our artillery
The agile Hydriote barks with press of sail
Dash'd-ship to ship, cannon to cannon, man
To man were grappled in the embrace of war,
Inextricable but by death or victory.
The tempest of the raging fight convulsed
To its crystalline depths that stainless sea,
And shook heaven's roof of golden morning clouds
Poised on an hundred azure mountain-isles.
In the brief trances of the artillery,
One cry from the destroy'd and the destroyer
Rose, and a cloud of desolation wrapt
The unforeseen event, till the north wind
Sprung from the sea, lifting the heavy veil
Of battle-smoke-then victory-victory!
For, as we thought, three frigates from Algiers
Bore down from Naxos to our aid, but soon
The abhorr'd cross glimmer'd behind, before,
Among, around us; and that fatal sign

Dried with its beams the strength of Moslem hearts,
As the sun drinks the dew.-What more? We fled!
Our noonday path over the sanguine foam
Was beacon'd, and the glare struck the sun pale
By our consuming transports: the fierce light
Made all the shadows of our sails blood-red,

And every countenance blank. Some ships lay feeding
The ravening fire even to the water's level:
Some were blown up: some, settling heavily,
Sunk; and the shrieks of our companions died
Upon the wind, that bore us fast and far,

Even after they were dead. Nine thousand perish'd!
We met the vultures legion'd in the air,
Stemming the torrent of the tainted wind:
They, screaming from their cloudy mountain peak

Stoop'd through the sulphureous battle-smoke, and perch'd

Each on the weltering carcase that we loved,
Like its ill angel or its damned soul.
Riding upon the bosom of the sea,

We saw the dog-fish hastening to their feast.
Joy waked the voiceless people of the sea,
And ravening famine left his ocean-cave

To dwell with war, with us, and with despair.
We met night three hours to the west of Patmos,
And with night, tempest-

Is the grave not calmer still?

Its ruins shall be mine.

HASSAN.

Fear not the Russian;

The tiger leagues not with the stag at bay
Against the hunter.-Cunning, base, and cruel,
He crouches, watching till the spoil be won,
And must be paid for his reserve in blood.
After the war is fought, yield the sleek Russian
That which thou canst not keep, his deserved portion
Of blood, which shall not flow through streets and fields
Rivers and seas, like that which we may win,
But stagnate in the veins of Christian slaves!
Enter SECOND MESSENGER.

SECOND MESSENGER.

Nauplia, Tripolizzi, Mothon, Athens,
Navarin, Artas, Mowenbasia,
Corinth and Thebes are carried by assault;
And every Islamite who made his dogs

Fat with the flesh of Galilean slaves,

Pass'd at the edge of the sword: the lust of blood

Which made our warriors drunk, is quench'd in death▸
But like a fiery plague breaks out anew,

In deeds which makes the Christian cause look pale
In its own light. The garrison of Patras
Has store but for ten days, nor is there hope
But from the Briton: at once slave and tyrant,
His wishes still are weaker than his fears;
Or he would sell what faith may yet remain
From the oaths broke in Genoa and in Norway:
And if you buy him not, your treasury
Is empty even of promises-his own coin.
The freeman of a western poet chief'
Holds Attica with seven thousand rebels,
And has beat back the Pacha of Negropont;
The aged Ali sits in Yanina,

A crownless metaphor of empire;

His name, that shadow of his wither'd might,
Holds our besieging army like a spell
In prey to famine, pest, and mutiny:
He, bastion'd in his citadel, looks forth
Joyless upon the sapphire lake that mirrors
The ruins of the city where he reign'd
Childless and sceptreless. The Greek has reap'd
The costly harvest his own blood matured,

A Greek who had been Lord Byron's servant commanded the insurgents in Attica. This Greek, Lord Byron informs me, though a poet and an enthusiastic patriot, gave him rather the idea of a timid and unenterprising person. It appears that circumstances make men what they are, and that we all contain the germ of a degree of degradation or of greatness, whose connexion with our character is determined by events.

Not the sower, Ali-who has bought a truce From Ypsilanti with ten camel loads

Of Indian gold.

Enter a THIRD MESSENGER.

MAHMUD.

What more?

THIRD MESSENGER.

The Christian tribes

Of Lebanon and the Syrian wilderness
Are in revolt;-Damascus, Hems, Aleppo,
Tremble;-the Arab menaces Medina;
The Ethiop has intrench'd himself in Sennaar,
And keeps the Egyptian rebel well employ'd:
Who denies homage, claims investiture
As price of tardy aid. Persia demands
The cities on the Tigris, and the Georgians
Refuse their living tribute. Crete and Cyprus,

Like mountain-twins that from each other's veins
Catch the volcano-fire and earthquake spasm,
Shake in the general fever. Through the city,
Like birds before a storm the santons shriek,
And prophecyings horrible and new
Are heard among the crowd; that sea of men
Sleeps on the wrecks it made, breathless and still.
A Dervise, learn'd in the koran, preaches
That it is written how the sins of Islam.
Must raise up a destroyer even now.
The Greeks expect a Saviour from the west, '

Who shall not come, men say, in clouds and glory,
But in the omnipresence of that spirit

In which all live and are. Ominous signs
Are blazon'd broadly on the noon-day sky;
One saw a red cross stamp'd upon the sun;

It has rain'd blood; and monstrous births declare
The secret wrath of Nature and her Lord.
The army encamp'd upon the Cydaris
Was roused last night by the alarm of battle,
And saw two hosts conflicting in the air,-
The shadows doubtless of the unborn time,
Cast on the mirror of the night. While yet
The fight hung balanced, there arose a storm
Which swept the phantoms from among the stars.
At the third watch the spirit of the plague
Was heard abroad flapping among the tents:
Those who relieved watch found the sentinels dead.
The last news from the camp is, that a thousand
Have sicken'd, and—

Enter a FOURTH Messenger.

MAHMUD.

And thou, pale ghost, dim shadow

Of some untimely rumour, speak!
FOURTH MESSENGER.

One comes
Fainting with toil, cover'd with foam and blood;
He stood, he says, upon Clelonites
Promontory, which o'erlooks the isles that groan
Under the Briton's frown, and all their waters
Then trembling in the splendour of the moon,
When as the wandering clouds unveil'd or hid
Her boundless light, he saw two adverse fleets
Stalk through the night in the horizon's glimmer,

It is reported that this Messiah bad arrived at a sea-port near Lacedaemon in an American brig. The association of names and ideas is irresistibly ludicrous, but the prevalence of such a rumour strongly marks the state of popular enthusiasm in Greece.

Mingling fierce thunders and sulphurcous gleams,
And smoke which strangled every infant wind
That soothed the silver clouds through the deep air.
At length the battle slept, but the Sirocco
Awoke, and drove his flock of thunder-clouds
Over the sea-horizon, blotting out

All objects-save that in the faint moon-glimpse
He saw, or dream'd he saw the Turkish admiral
And two the loftiest of our ships of war,
With the bright image of that queen of heaven,
Who hid, perhaps, her face for grief, reversed;
And the abhorred cross-

Thou art an adept in the difficult lore

Of Greek and Frank philosophy; thou numberest The flowers, and thou measurest the stars;

Thou severest element from element;

Thy spirit is present in the past, and sees

The birth of this old world through all its cycles
Of desolation and of loveliness;

And when man was not, and how man became
The monarch and the slave of this low sphere,
And all its narrow circles-it is much.

I honour thee, and would be what thou art
Were I not what I am; but the unborn hour,
Cradled in fear and hope, conflicting storms,
Who shall unveil? Nor thou, nor I, nor any
Mighty or wise. I apprehend not

What thou hast taught me, but I now perceive
That thou art no interpreter of dreams;
Thou dost not own that art, device, or God,
Can make the future present-let it come!
Moreover, thou disdainest us and ours:
Thou art as God, whom thou contemplatest.

ABASUERUS.

Disdain thee?-not the worm beneath my feet!
The Fathomless has care for meaner things
Than thou canst dream, and has made pride for those
Who would be what they may not, or would seem
That which they are not. Sultan talk no more
Of thee and me, the future and the past;
But look on that which cannot change-the one
The unborn, and undying. Earth and ocean,
Space, and the isles of life or light that
gem
The sapphire floods of interstellar air,
This firmament pavilion'd upon chaos,
With all its cressets of immortal fire,
Whose outwalls, bastion'd impregnably
Against the escape of boldest thoughts, repels them

As Calpe the Atlantic clouds-this whole

Of suns, and worlds, and men, and beasts, and flowers,

With all the silent or tempestuous workings

By which they have been, are, or cease to be,

Is but a vision;-all that it inherits

Are motes of a sick eye, bubbles and dreams;
Thought is its cradle and its grave, nor less
The future and the past are idle shadows
Of thought's eternal flight-they have no being;
Nought is but that it feels itself to be.

MAHMUD,

What meanest thou? thy words stream like a tempest Of dazzling mist within my brain-they shake