The coming age is
shadowed
on the Past _805
As on a glass.
As on a glass.
Shelley
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.
Thou wouldst cite one out of the grave to tell _810
How what was born in blood must die.
MAHMUD:
Thy words
Have power on me! I see--
AHASUERUS:
What hearest thou?
MAHMUD:
A far whisper--
Terrible silence.
AHASUERUS:
What succeeds?
MAHMUD:
The sound
As of the assault of an imperial city, _815
The hiss of inextinguishable fire,
The roar of giant cannon; the earthquaking
Fall of vast bastions and precipitous towers,
The shock of crags shot from strange enginery,
The clash of wheels, and clang of armed hoofs, _820
And crash of brazen mail as of the wreck
Of adamantine mountains--the mad blast
Of trumpets, and the neigh of raging steeds,
The shrieks of women whose thrill jars the blood,
And one sweet laugh, most horrible to hear, _825
As of a joyous infant waked and playing
With its dead mother's breast, and now more loud
The mingled battle-cry,--ha! hear I not
'En touto nike! ' 'Allah-illa-Allah! '?
AHASUERUS:
The sulphurous mist is raised--thou seest--
MAHMUD:
A chasm, _830
As of two mountains in the wall of Stamboul;
And in that ghastly breach the Islamites,
Like giants on the ruins of a world,
Stand in the light of sunrise. In the dust
Glimmers a kingless diadem, and one _835
Of regal port has cast himself beneath
The stream of war. Another proudly clad
In golden arms spurs a Tartarian barb
Into the gap, and with his iron mace
Directs the torrent of that tide of men, _840
And seems--he is--Mahomet!
AHASUERUS:
What thou seest
Is but the ghost of thy forgotten dream.
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.
Thou wouldst cite one out of the grave to tell _810
How what was born in blood must die.
MAHMUD:
Thy words
Have power on me! I see--
AHASUERUS:
What hearest thou?
MAHMUD:
A far whisper--
Terrible silence.
AHASUERUS:
What succeeds?
MAHMUD:
The sound
As of the assault of an imperial city, _815
The hiss of inextinguishable fire,
The roar of giant cannon; the earthquaking
Fall of vast bastions and precipitous towers,
The shock of crags shot from strange enginery,
The clash of wheels, and clang of armed hoofs, _820
And crash of brazen mail as of the wreck
Of adamantine mountains--the mad blast
Of trumpets, and the neigh of raging steeds,
The shrieks of women whose thrill jars the blood,
And one sweet laugh, most horrible to hear, _825
As of a joyous infant waked and playing
With its dead mother's breast, and now more loud
The mingled battle-cry,--ha! hear I not
'En touto nike! ' 'Allah-illa-Allah! '?
AHASUERUS:
The sulphurous mist is raised--thou seest--
MAHMUD:
A chasm, _830
As of two mountains in the wall of Stamboul;
And in that ghastly breach the Islamites,
Like giants on the ruins of a world,
Stand in the light of sunrise. In the dust
Glimmers a kingless diadem, and one _835
Of regal port has cast himself beneath
The stream of war. Another proudly clad
In golden arms spurs a Tartarian barb
Into the gap, and with his iron mace
Directs the torrent of that tide of men, _840
And seems--he is--Mahomet!
AHASUERUS:
What thou seest
Is but the ghost of thy forgotten dream.
