As an eagle fed with morning
Scorns the embattled tempest’s warning,
When she seeks her aerie hanging
In the mountain-cedar’s hair,
And her brood expect the clanging 80
Of her wings through the wild air,
Sick with famine:—­Freedom, so
To what of Greece remaineth now
Returns; her hoary ruins glow
Like Orient mountains lost in day; 85
Beneath the safety of her wings
Her renovated nurslings prey,
And in the naked lightenings
Of truth they purge their dazzled eyes. 
Let Freedom leave—­where’er she flies, 90
A Desert, or a Paradise: 
Let the beautiful and the brave
Share her glory, or a grave.

NOTES:  77 tempest’s]tempests edition 1822. 87 prey edition 1822; play editions 1839.

SEMICHORUS 1: 
With the gifts of gladness
Greece did thy cradle strew; 95

SEMICHORUS 2: 
With the tears of sadness
Greece did thy shroud bedew!

SEMICHORUS 1: 
With an orphan’s affection
She followed thy bier through Time;

SEMICHORUS 2: 
And at thy resurrection 100
Reappeareth, like thou, sublime!

SEMICHORUS 1: 
If Heaven should resume thee,
To Heaven shall her spirit ascend;

SEMICHORUS 2: 
If Hell should entomb thee,
To Hell shall her high hearts bend. 105

SEMICHORUS 1: 
If Annihilation—­

SEMICHORUS 2: 
Dust let her glories be! 
And a name and a nation
Be forgotten, Freedom, with thee!

INDIAN: 
His brow grows darker—­breathe not—­move not! 110
He starts—­he shudders—­ye that love not,
With your panting loud and fast,
Have awakened him at last.

MAHMUD [STARTING FROM HIS SLEEP]: 
Man the Seraglio-guard! make fast the gate! 
What! from a cannonade of three short hours? 115
’Tis false! that breach towards the Bosphorus
Cannot be practicable yet—­who stirs? 
Stand to the match; that when the foe prevails
One spark may mix in reconciling ruin
The conqueror and the conquered!  Heave the tower 120
Into the gap—­wrench off the roof!
[ENTER HASSAN.]
Ha! what! 
The truth of day lightens upon my dream
And I am Mahmud still.

HASSAN: 
Your Sublime Highness
Is strangely moved.

MAHMUD: 
The times do cast strange shadows
On those who watch and who must rule their course, 125
Lest they, being first in peril as in glory,
Be whelmed in the fierce ebb:—­and these are of them. 
Thrice has a gloomy vision hunted me
As thus from sleep into the troubled day;
It shakes me as the tempest shakes the sea,