29.-MAHMOUD.
LEIGH HUNT.
[See page 425.]
THERE came a man, making his hasty moan Before the Sultan Mahmoud on his throne, And crying out-" My sorrow is my right, And I will see the Sultan, and to-night."
Sorrow," said Mahmoud, "is a reverend thing: I recognise its right, as king with king;
Speak on." "A fiend has got into my house," Exclaim'd the staring man, "and tortures us: One of thine officers; he comes, the abhorr'd, And takes possession of my house, my board, My bed;—I have two daughters and a wife,
And the wild villain comes and makes me mad with life." "Is he there now ?" said Mahmoud.-"No;-he left
The house when I did, of my wits bereft;
And laugh'd me down the street, because I vow'd
I'd bring the prince himself to lay him in his shroud.
I'm mad with want-I'm mad with misery,
And oh, thou Sultan Mahmoud, God cries out for thee!" The Sultan comforted the man, and said,
"Go home, and I will send thee wine and bread,”
(For he was poor)" and other comforts. Go;
And should the wretch return, let Sultan Mahmoud know."
In three days' time, with haggard eyes and beard,
And shaken voice, the suitor re-appeared,
And said, "He's come."-Mahmoud said not a word, But rose and took four slaves, each with a sword,
And went with the vex'd man. They reach the place, And hear a voice, and see a woman's face, That to the window flutter'd in affright:
"Go in," said Mahmoud, "and put out the light; But tell the females first to leave the room; And when the drunkard follows them, we come." The man went in. There was a cry, and hark! A table falls, the window is struck dark: Forth rush the breathless women; and behind With curses comes the fiend in desperate mind. In vain the sabres soon cut short the strife,
And chop the shrieking wretch, and drink his bloody life. Now light the light," the Sultan cried aloud.
'Twas done; he took it in his hand and bow'd
Over the corpse, and look'd upon the face; Then turn'd and knelt, and to the throne of grace Put up a prayer, and from his lips there crept Some gentle words of pleasure, and he wept.
In reverent silence the beholders wait, Then bring him at his call both wine and meat; And when he had refresh'd his noble heart, He bade his host be blest, and rose up to depart. The man amaz'd, all mildness now and tears, Fell at the Sultan's feet with many prayers, And begg'd him to vouchsafe to tell his slave The reason first of that command he gave About the light; then, when he saw the face, Why he knelt down; and lastly, how it was That fare so poor as his detain'd him in the place. The Sultan said, with a benignant eye, "Since first I saw thee come, and heard thy cry, I could not rid me of a dread, that one
By whom such daring villanies were done,
Must be some lord of mine,-ay, e'en perhaps a son. For this I had the light put out: but when I saw the face, and found a stranger slain, I knelt and thanked the sovereign Arbiter, Whose work I had perform'd through pain and fear; And then I rose and was refresh'd with food, The first time since thy voice had marr'd
THE judgment was at hand. Before the sun Gathered tempestuous clouds, which, blackening, spread Until their blended masses overwhelmed
The hemisphere of day: and adding gloom To night's dark empire, swift from zone to zone Swept the vast shadow, swallowing up all light, And covering the encircling firmament As with a mighty pall! Low in the dust Bowed the affrighted nations, worshipping. Anon the o'ercharged garners of the storm Burst with their growing burden; fierce and fast Shot down the ponderous rain, a sheeted flood, That slanted not before the baffled winds, But with an arrowy and unwavering rush, Dashed hissing earthward. Soon the rivers rose, And roaring, fled their channels; the calm lakes Awoke exulting from their lethargy,
And poured destruction on their peaceful shores.
The lightning flickered on the deluged air, And feebly through the shout of gathering waves Muttered the stifled thunder. Day nor night Ceased the descending streams; and if the gloom
A little brightened, when the lurid morn Rose on the starless midnight, 'twas to show The lifting up of waters. Bird and beast Forsook the flooded plains, and wearily The shivering multitudes of human doomed Toiled up before the insatiate element.
Oceans were blent, and the leviathan Was borne aloft on the ascending seas
To where the eagle nestled. Mountains now
Were the sole land-marks, and their sides were clothed With clustering myriads, from the weltering waste Whose surges clasped them, to their topmost peaks, Swathed in the stooping cloud. The hand of death Smote millions as they climbed; yet denser grew The crowded nations, as the encroaching waves Narrowed their little world.
Did no man aid his fellow. Love of life Was the sole instinct, and the strong-limbed son, With imprecations, smote the palsied sire That clung to him for succour.
With wavering steps the precipice's brow, And found no arm to grasp on the dread verge O'er which she leaned and trembled. Selfishness Sat like an incubus on every heart,
Smothering the voice of love. The giant's foot Was on the stripling's neck; and oft despair Grappled the ready steel, and kindred blood Polluted the last remnant of that earth Which God was deluging to purify.
Huge monsters from the plains, whose skeletons The mildew of succeeding centuries
Has failed to crumble, with unwieldy strength
Crush'd through the solid crowds; and fiercest birds Beat down by the ever-rushing rain,
With blinded eyes, drenched plumes, and trailing wings Staggered unconscious o'er the trampled prey.
The mountains were submerged; the barrier chains That mapped out nations, sank; until at length One Titan peak alone o'ertopped the waves, Beaconing a sunken world. And of the tribes That blackened every Alp, one man survived: And he stood shuddering, hopeless, shelterless, Upon that fragment of the universe.
The surges of the universal sea
Broke on his naked feet. On his grey head, Which fear, not time, had silvered, the black cloud Poured its unpitying torrents; while around, In the green twilight dimly visible,
Rolled the grim legions of the ghastly drowned, And seemed to beckon with their tossing arms Their brother to his doom.
And, maddened, would have leaped to their embrace, When, lo! before him riding on the deep, Loomed a vast fabric, and familiar sounds Proclaimed that it was peopled. Hope once more Cheered the wan outcast, and imploringly
He stretched his arms forth toward the floating walls, And cried aloud for mercy. But his prayer
Man might not answer, whom his God condemned. The ark swept onward, and the billows rose
And buried their last victim!
Broke from the face of heaven, and sunlight streamed Upon the shoreless sea, and on the roof
That rose for shelter o'er the living germ Whose increase should repopulate a world.
31. THE OCEAN.
LORD BYRON.
[See page 205.]
OH! that the desert were my dwelling-place, With one fair spirit for my minister, That I might all forget the human race, And, hating no one, love but only her! Ye elements!-in whose ennobling stir I feel myself exalted-Can ye not Accord me such a being? Do I err, In deeming such inhabit many a spot? Though with them to converse can rarely be our lot.
There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, There is a rapture on the lonely shore, There is society where none intrudes, By the deep sea, and music in its roar; I love not man the less, but nature more, From these our interviews, in which I steal From all I may be, or have been before, To mingle with the universe, and feel
What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal. Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean-roll! Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain; Man marks the earth with ruin-his control Stops with the shore;-upon the watery plain,
The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain A shadow of man's ravage, save his own, When, for a moment, like a drop of rain, He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan, Without a grave, unknell'd, uncoffin'd, and unknown.
His steps are not upon thy paths,―thy fields Are not a spoil for him,-thou dost arise
And shake him from thee; the vile strength he wields For earth's destruction thou dost all despise, Spurning him from thy bosom to the skies, And send'st him shivering in thy playful spray, And howling to his gods, where haply lies His petty hope in some near port or bay,
And dashest him again to earth:-there let him lay.
The armaments which thunderstrike the walls Of rock-built cities, bidding nations quake, And monarchs tremble in their capitals, The oak leviathans, whose huge ribs make Their clay creator the vain title take Of lord of thee, and arbiter of war;
These are thy toys, and, as the snowy flake, They melt into thy yeast of waves, which mar Alike the Armada's pride, or spoils of Trafalgar.
Thy shores are empires, changed in all save thee- Assyria, Greece, Rome, Carthage, what are they? Thy waters washed them power while they were free, And many a tyrant since; their shores obey The stranger, slave, or savage; their decay Has dried up realms to deserts:-not so thou;- Unchangeable save to thy wild waves' play— Time writes no wrinkle on thine azure brow- Such as creation's dawn beheld, thou rollest now.
Thou glorious mirror, where the Almighty's form Glasses itself in tempests; in all time,
Calm or convulsed—in breeze, or gale, or storm, Icing the pole, or in the torrid clime
Dark heaving;-boundless, endless, and sublime- The image of eternity-the throne
Of the Invisible; even from out thy slime The monsters of the deep are made; each zone Obeys thee; thou goest forth, dread, fathomless, alone.
And I have loved thee, Ocean! and my joy Of youthful sports was on thy breast to be Borne, like thy bubbles, onward from a boy I wanton'd with thy breakers-they to me Were a delight; and if the freshening sea
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