No More Learning

PHANTOM:
Ask the cold pale Hour,
Rich in reversion of impending death,
When HE shall fall upon whose ripe gray hairs
Sit Care, and Sorrow, and Infirmity-- _905
The weight which Crime, whose wings are plumed with years,
Leaves in his flight from ravaged heart to heart
Over the heads of men, under which burthen
They bow themselves unto the grave: fond wretch!
He leans upon his crutch, and talks of years _910
To come, and how in hours of youth renewed
He will renew lost joys, and--

VOICE WITHOUT:
Victory! Victory!

[THE PHANTOM VANISHES. ]

MAHMUD:
What sound of the importunate earth has broken
My mighty trance?

VOICE WITHOUT:
Victory! Victory!

MAHMUD:
Weak lightning before darkness! poor faint smile _915
Of dying Islam! Voice which art the response
Of hollow weakness! Do I wake and live?
Were there such things, or may the unquiet brain,
Vexed by the wise mad talk of the old Jew,
Have shaped itself these shadows of its fear? _920
It matters not! --for nought we see or dream,
Possess, or lose, or grasp at, can be worth
More than it gives or teaches. Come what may,
The Future must become the Past, and I
As they were to whom once this present hour, _925
This gloomy crag of time to which I cling,
Seemed an Elysian isle of peace and joy
Never to be attained.
--I must rebuke
This drunkenness of triumph ere it die,
And dying, bring despair. Victory! poor slaves! _930

[EXIT MAHMUD. ]

VOICE WITHOUT:
Shout in the jubilee of death! The Greeks
Are as a brood of lions in the net
Round which the kingly hunters of the earth
Stand smiling. Anarchs, ye whose daily food
Are curses, groans, and gold, the fruit of death, _935
From Thule to the girdle of the world,
Come, feast! the board groans with the flesh of men;
The cup is foaming with a nation's blood,
Famine and Thirst await! eat, drink, and die!

SEMICHORUS 1:
Victorious Wrong, with vulture scream, _940
Salutes the rising sun, pursues the flying day!
I saw her, ghastly as a tyrant's dream,
Perch on the trembling pyramid of night,
Beneath which earth and all her realms pavilioned lay
In visions of the dawning undelight. _945
Who shall impede her flight?
Who rob her of her prey?

VOICE WITHOUT:
Victory! Victory! Russia's famished eagles
Dare not to prey beneath the crescent's light.