No More Learning

[ENTER MAHMUD AND AHASUERUS. ]

MAHMUD:
Thou art a man, thou sayest, even as we.

AHASUERUS:
No more!

MAHMUD:
But raised above thy fellow-men
By thought, as I by power.

AHASUERUS:
Thou sayest so. _740

MAHMUD:
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 _745
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-- _750
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 apprehended not _755
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; _760
Thou art as God, whom thou contemplatest.

AHASUERUS:
Disdain thee? --not the worm beneath thy 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 _765
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 the undying. Earth and ocean,
Space, and the isles of life or light that gem _770
The sapphire floods of interstellar air,
This firmament pavilioned upon chaos,
With all its cressets of immortal fire,
Whose outwall, bastioned impregnably
Against the escape of boldest thoughts, repels them _775
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 _780
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 which feels itself to be.
_785

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.