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Now shall the blazon of the cross be veiled,

And British skill directing Othman might,

Thunder-strike rebel victory. Oh, keep holy

This jubilee of unrevengèd blood! Kill! crush! despoil! Let not a Greek escape!

Semichorus I.

Darkness has dawned in the East

On the noon of time:

The death-birds descend to their feast, From the hungry clime.

Let Freedom and Peace flee far

To a sunnier strand,

And follow Love's folding star
To the Evening land!

Semichorus II.

The young moon has fed
Her exhausted horn,

With the sunset's fire:
The weak day is dead,

But the night is not born;

And, like loveliness panting with wild desire

While it trembles with fear and delight, Hesperus flies from awakening night, And pants in its beauty and speed with light

Fast flashing, soft, and bright. Thou beacon of love! thou lamp of the free!

Guide us far, far away,

To climes where now veiled by the ardour of day

Thou art hidden

From waves on which weary noon, Faints in her summer swoon, Between Kingless continents sinless as Eden,

Around mountains and islands inviolably

Prankt on the sapphire sea.

Semichorus I. Through the sunset of hope, Like the shapes of a dream,

What Paradise islands of glory gleam!

Beneath Heaven's cope,

Their shadows more clear float by— The sound of their oceans, the light of their sky,

The music and fragrance their solitudes breathe

Burst, like morning on dream, or like Heaven on death

Through the walls of our prison; And Greece, which was dead, is arisen!

Chorus.

The world's great age begins anew,
The golden years return,

The earth doth like a snake renew
Her winter weeds outworn:

Heaven smiles, and faiths and empires gleam,

Like wrecks of a dissolving dream.

A brighter Hellas rears its mountains
From waves serener far;

A new Peneus rolls his fountains
Against the morning star.
Where fairer Tempes bloom, there
sleep

Young Cyclads on a sunnier deep.

A loftier Argo cleaves the main,
Fraught with a later prize;
Another Orpheus sings again,

And loves, and weeps, and dies. A new Ulysses leaves once more Calypso for his native shore.

Oh, write no more the tale of Troy, If earth Death's scroll must be! Nor mix with Laian rage the joy

Which dawns upon the free: Although a subtler Sphinx renew Riddles of death Thebes never knew.

Another Athens shall arise,

And to remoter time

Bequeath, like sunset to the skies,

The splendour of its prime; And leave, if nought so bright may live, All earth can take or Heaven can give.

Saturn and Love their long repose Shall burst, more bright and good Than all who fell, than One who rose,

Than many unsubdued:

Not gold, not blood, their altar dowers,

But votive tears and symbol flowers.

Oh, cease! must hate and death return?

Cease! must men kill and die? Cease! drain not to its dregs the urn Of bitter prophecy.

The world is weary of the past,
Oh, might it die or rest at last!

NOTES

(1) The quenchless ashes of Milan [p. 434]. MILAN was the centre of the resistance of the Lombard league against the Austrian tyrant. Frederic Barbarossa burnt the city to the ground, but liberty lived in its ashes, and it rose like an exhalation from its ruin. See Sismondi's Histoire des Républiques Italiennes, a book which has done much towards awakening the Italians to an imitation of their great ancestors.

(2) The Chorus [p. 434].

The popular notions of Christianity are represented in this chorus as true in their relation to the worship they superseded, and that which in all probability they will supersede, without considering their merits in a relation more universal. The first stanza contrasts the immortality of the living and thinking beings which inhabit the planets, and to use a common and inadequate phrase, clothe themselves in matter, with the transience of the noblest manifestations of the external world.

the moral attributes of his nature, having called us out of non-existence, and after inflicting on us the misery of the commission of error, should superadd that of the punishment and the privations consequent upon it, still would remain inexplicable and incredible. That there is a true solution of the riddle, and that in our present state that solution is unattainable by us, are propositions which may be regarded as equally certain: meanwhile, as it is the province of the poet to attach himself to those ideas which exalt and ennoble humanity, let him be permitted to have conjectured the condition of that futurity towards which we are all impelled by an inextinguishable thirst for immortality. Until better arguments can be produced than sophisms which disgrace the cause, this desire itself must remain the strongest and the only presumption that eternity is the inheritance of every thinking being. (3) No hoary priests after that Patriarch [p. 437].

The Greek Patriarch after having been compelled to fulminate an anathema against the insurgents was put to death by the Turks.

Fortunately the Greeks have been taught that they cannot buy security by degradation, and the Turks, though equally cruel, are less cunning than the smooth-faced tyrants of Europe. As to the anathema, his mitre at Mount Athos for any effect his Holiness might as well have thrown that it produced. The chiefs of the sion and enlightened views on religion and Greeks are almost all men of comprehenpolitics.

(4) The freedman of a western poet chief [P. 443].

A Greek who had been Lord Byron's servant commands 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

The concluding verses indicate a progressive state of more or less exalted existence, according to the degree of perfection which every distinct intelligence may have attained. Let it not be supposed that I mean to dogmatise upon a subject, con-unenterprising person. It appears that cerning which all men are equally ignorant, circumstances make men what they are, or that I think the Gordian knot of the and that we all contain the germ of a origin of evil can be disentangled by that degree of degradation or of greatness or any similar assertions. The received whose connection with our character is hypothesis of a Being resembling men in | determined by events.

(5) The Greeks expect a Saviour from the omnia tellus." Let these great names be my authority and my excuse.

west [p. 443].

It is reported that this Messiah had arrived at a seaport near Lacedæmon 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.

(6) The sound as of the assault of an

Imperial city [p. 447].

For the vision of Mahmud of the taking of Constantinople in 1453, see Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, vol. xii. p. 223.

The manner of the invocation of the spirit of Mahomet the Second will be censured as over subtle. I could easily have made the Jew a regular conjuror, and the Phantom an ordinary ghost. I have preferred to represent the Jew as disclaiming all pretension, or even belief, in supernatural agency, and as tempting Mahmud to that state of mind in which ideas may be supposed to assume the force of sensations through the confusion of thought with the objects of thought, and the excess of passion animating the creations of imagination.

It is a sort of natural magic, susceptible of being exercised in a degree by any one who should have made himself master

of the secret associations of another's thoughts.

(7) The Chorus [p. 451]. The final chorus is indistinct and obscure, as the event of the living drama whose arrival it foretells. Prophecies of wars, and rumours of wars, etc., may safely be made by poet or prophet in any age, but to anticipate however darkly a period of regeneration and happiness is a more hazardous exercise of the faculty which bards possess or feign. It will remind the reader " magno nec proximus intervallo" of Isaiah and Virgil, whose ardent spirits overleaping the actual reign of evil which we endure and bewail, already saw the possible and perhaps approaching state of society in which the lion shall lie down with the lamb," and " omnis feret

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(8) Saturn and Love their long repose shall burst [p. 452].

Saturn and Love were among the deities of a real or imaginary state of innocence and happiness. All those who fell, or the Gods of Greece, Asia, and Egypt; the One who rose, or Jesus Christ, at whose appearance the idols of the Pagan World were amerced of their worship; and the of the idolatry of China, India, the Anmany unsubdued, or the monstrous objects tarctic islands, and the native tribes of America, certainly have reigned over the understandings of men in conjunction or in succession, during periods in which all

we know of evil has been in a state of

portentous, and, until the revival of learning and the arts, perpetually increasing

activity. The Grecian gods seem indeed to have been personally more innocent, although it cannot be said, that as far as they gave so edifying an example as their temperance and chastity are concerned,

successor. The sublime human character

of Jesus Christ was deformed by an imputed identification with a power, who tempted, betrayed, and punished the innocent beings who were called into existence by his sole will; and for the period of a thousand years, the spirit of this most just, wise, and benevolent of men, has been propitiated with myriads of hecatombs of those who approached the nearest to his innocence and wisdom, sacrificed under every aggravation of atrocity and variety of torture. The horrors of the Mexican, the Peruvian, and the Indian superstitions are well known.

NOTE ON HELLAS, BY MRS. SHELLEY

THE South of Europe was in a state of great political excitement at the beginning of the year 1821. The Spanish Revolution had been a signal to Italy; secret societies were formed; and, when Naples rose to declare the Constitution, the call was responded to from Brundusium to the foot of the Alps. To crush these

attempts to obtain liberty, early in 1821 come. The interest he took in the pro

the Austrians poured their armies into the Peninsula : at first their coming rather seemed to add energy and resolution to a people long enslaved. The Piedmontese asserted their freedom; Genoa threw off the yoke of the King of Sardinia; and, as if in playful imitation, the people of the little state of Massa and Carrara gave the congé to their sovereign, and set up a republic.

Tuscany alone was perfectly tranquil. It was said that the Austrian minister presented a list of sixty Carbonari to the Grand Duke, urging their imprisonment; and the Grand Duke replied, "I do not know whether these sixty men are Carbonari, but I know, if I imprison them, I shall directly have sixty-thousand start up." But, though the Tuscans had no desire to disturb the paternal government beneath whose shelter they slumbered, they regarded the progress of the various Italian revolutions with intense interest, and hatred for the Austrian was warm in every bosom. But they had slender hopes; they knew that the Neapolitans would offer no fit resistance to the regular German troops, and that the overthrow of the constitution in Naples would act as a decisive blow against all struggles for liberty in Italy.

of the north would

gress of affairs was intense. When Genoa declared itself free, his hopes were at their highest. Day after day he read the bulletins of the Austrian army, and sought eagerly to gather tokens of its defeat. He heard of the revolt of Genoa with emotions of transport. His whole heart and soul were in the triumph of the cause. We were living at Pisa at that time; and several well-informed Italians, at the head of whom we may place the celebrated Vaccà, were accustomed to seek for sympathy in their hopes from Shelley: they did not find such for the despair they too generally experienced, founded on contempt for their southern countrymen.

While the fate of the progress of the Austrian armies then invading Naples was yet in suspense, the news of another revolution filled him with exultation. We had formed the acquaintance at Pisa of several Constantinopolitan Greeks, of the family of Prince Caradja, formerly Hospodar of Wallachia; who, hearing that the bowstring, the accustomed finale of his viceroyalty, was on the road to him, escaped with his treasures, and took up his abode in Tuscany. Among these was the gentleman to whom the drama of Hellas is dedicated. Prince Mavrocordato was warmed by those aspirations for the independence of his country which filled the hearts of many of his countrymen, He often intimated the possibility of an insurrection in Greece; but we had no idea of its being so near at hand, when, on the 1st of April 1821, he called on Shelley, bringing the proclamation of his cousin, Prince Ypsilanti, and, radiant with exultation and delight, declared that henceforth Greece would be free.

We have seen the rise and progress of reform. But the Holy Alliance was alive and active in those days, and few could dream of the peaceful triumph of liberty. | It seemed then that the armed assertion of freedom in the South of Europe was the only hope of the liberals, as, if it prevailed, the nations imitate the example. Happily the reverse has proved the fact. The countries accustomed to the exercise of the privileges Shelley had hymned the dawn of liberty of freemen, to a limited extent, have in Spain and Naples, in two odes dictated extended, and are extending, these limits. by the warmest enthusiasm; he felt himFreedom and knowledge have now a self naturally impelled to decorate with chance of proceeding hand in hand; and, poetry the uprise of the descendants of if it continue thus, we may hope for the that people whose works he regarded with durability of both. Then, as I have said- | deep admiration, and to adopt the vatiin 1821-Shelley, as well as every other cinatory character in prophesying their lover of liberty, looked upon the struggles in Spain and Italy as decisive of the destinies of the world, probably for centuries to

success.

Hellas was written in a moment of enthusiasm. It is curious to remark how well he overcomes the difficulty of

forming a drama out of such scant materials. His prophecies, indeed, came true in their general, not their particular, purport. He did not foresee the death of Lord Londonderry, which was to be the epoch of a change in English politics, particularly as regarded foreign affairs; nor that the navy of his country would fight for instead of against the Greeks, and by the battle of Navarino secure their enfranchisement from the Turks. Almost against reason, as it appeared to him, he resolved to believe that Greece would prove triumphant; and in this 'spirit, auguring ultimate good, yet grieving over the vicissitudes to be endured in the interval, he composed his drama.

Hellas was among the last of his compositions, and is among the most beautiful. The choruses are singularly imaginative, and melodious in their versification. There are some stanzas that beautifully exemplify Shelley's peculiar style; as, for instance, the assertion of the intellectual empire which must be for ever the inheritance of the country of Homer, Sophocles, and Plato:

"But Greece and her foundations are

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Of thought and its eternity."

the individuals who composed our intimate society, but left unfinished. I have preserved a sketch of the story as far as it had been shadowed in the poet's mind.

An Enchantress, living in one of the islands of the Indian Archipelago, saves the life of a Pirate, a man of savage but noble nature. She becomes enamoured of him; and he, inconstant to his mortal love, for a while returns her passion; but at length, recalling the memory of her whom he left, and who laments his loss, he escapes from the Enchanted Island, and returns to his lady. His mode of life makes him again go to sea, and the Enchantress seizes the opportunity to bring him, by a spirit-brewed tempest, back to her Island. M. W. S.

SCENE, BEFORE THE CAVERN OF THE INDIAN ENCHANTRESS. The ENCHANTRESS.comes forth.

Enchantress.

HE came like a dream in the dawn of

life,

He fled like a shadow before its noon;

And again, that philosophical truth felici- He is gone, and my peace is turned to

tously imaged forth

"Revenge and Wrong bring forth their kind: The foul cubs like their parents are; Their den is in the guilty mind,

And Conscience feeds them with despair." The conclusion of the last chorus is

strife,

And I wander and wane like the
weary moon.

Oh, sweet Echo, wake,
And for my sake

Make answer the while my heart shall break!

among the most beautiful of his lyrics.
The imagery is distinct and majestic;
the prophecy, such as poets love to dwell
upon, the Regeneration of Mankind-But
and that regeneration reflecting back
splendour on the foregone time, from
which it inherits so much of intellectual
wealth, and memory of past virtuous
deeds, as must render the possession of
happiness and peace of tenfold value.

FRAGMENTS OF

my heart has a music which Echo's lips,

Though tender and true, yet can answer not,

And the shadow that moves in the soul's eclipse

Can return not the kiss by his now forgot;

AN UNFINISHED DRAMA
THE following fragments are part of a Cast
Drama undertaken for the amusement of

Sweet lips! he who hath

On my desolate path

the darkness of absence, worse than death!

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