MAHMUD: 
Go! bid them pay themselves
With Christian blood!  Are there no Grecian virgins
Whose shrieks and spasms and tears they may enjoy? 
No infidel children to impale on spears? 
No hoary priests after that Patriarch 245
Who bent the curse against his country’s heart,
Which clove his own at last?  Go! bid them kill,
Blood is the seed of gold.

DAOOD: 
It has been sown,
And yet the harvest to the sicklemen
Is as a grain to each.

MAHMUD: 
Then, take this signet, 250
Unlock the seventh chamber in which lie
The treasures of victorious Solyman,—­
An empire’s spoil stored for a day of ruin. 
O spirit of my sires! is it not come? 
The prey-birds and the wolves are gorged and sleep; 255
But these, who spread their feast on the red earth,
Hunger for gold, which fills not.—­See them fed;
Then, lead them to the rivers of fresh death.
[EXIT DAOOD.]
O miserable dawn, after a night
More glorious than the day which it usurped! 260
O faith in God!  O power on earth!  O word
Of the great prophet, whose o’ershadowing wings
Darkened the thrones and idols of the West,
Now bright!—­For thy sake cursed be the hour,
Even as a father by an evil child, 265
When the orient moon of Islam rolled in triumph
From Caucasus to White Ceraunia! 
Ruin above, and anarchy below;
Terror without, and treachery within;
The Chalice of destruction full, and all 270
Thirsting to drink; and who among us dares
To dash it from his lips? and where is Hope?

HASSAN: 
The lamp of our dominion still rides high;
One God is God—­Mahomet is His prophet. 
Four hundred thousand Moslems, from the limits 275
Of utmost Asia, irresistibly
Throng, like full clouds at the Sirocco’s cry;
But not like them to weep their strength in tears: 
They bear destroying lightning, and their step
Wakes earthquake to consume and overwhelm, 280
And reign in ruin.  Phrygian Olympus,
Tmolus, and Latmos, and Mycale, roughen
With horrent arms; and lofty ships even now,
Like vapours anchored to a mountain’s edge,
Freighted with fire and whirlwind, wait at Scala 285
The convoy of the ever-veering wind. 
Samos is drunk with blood;—­the Greek has paid
Brief victory with swift loss and long despair. 
The false Moldavian serfs fled fast and far
When the fierce shout of ‘Allah-illa-Allah!’ 290
Rose like the war-cry of the northern wind
Which kills the sluggish clouds, and leaves a flock
Of wild swans struggling with the naked storm. 
So were the lost Greeks on the Danube’s day!