To pour my pray'rs for thy successful reign,
To quit the tumults of the noisy camp,
And sink into the silent grave in peace.
What! think of peace while haughty Scanderbeg, Elate with conquest, in his native mountains, Prowls o'er the wealthy spoils of bleeding Turkey! While fair Hungaria's unexhausted valleys
Pour forth their legions, and the roaring Danube Rolls half his floods unheard through shouting camps!
Nor could'st thou more support a life of sloth
Than Amurath-
Still full of Amurath!
МАНОМЕТ.
Than Amurath, accustom❜d to command,
Could bear his son upon the Turkish throne.
This pilgrimage our lawgiver ordain'd
For those who could not please by nobler service.
Our warlike Prophet loves an active faith,
The holy flame of enterprizing virtue,
Mocks the dull vows of solitude and penance,
And scorns the lazy hermit's cheap devotion.
Shine thou, distinguish'd by superior merit,
With wonted zeal pursue the task of war,
Till ev'ry nation reverence the Koran,
And ev'ry suppliant lift his eyes to Mecca.
This regal confidence, this pious ardour,
Let prudence moderate, though not suppress.
Is not each realm that smiles with kinder suns,
Or boasts a happier soil, already thine?
Extended empire, like expanded gold,
Exchanges solid strength for feeble splendour.
Preach thy dull politics to vulgar kings,
Thou know'st not yet thy master's future greatness,
His vast designs, his plans of boundless pow'r.
When ev'ry storm in my domain shall roar,
When ev'ry wave shall beat a Turkish shore ;
Then, Cali, shall the toils of battle cease,
Then dream of prayer, and pilgrimage, and peace.
ASPASIA, yet pursue the sacred theme ;
Exhaust the stores of pious eloquence,
And teach me to repel the Sultan's passion.
Still at Aspasia's voice a sudden rapture
Exalts my soul, and fortifies my heart.
The glitt ring vanities of empty greatness,
The hopes and fears, the joys and pains of life,
Dissolve in air, and vanish into nothing.
Let nobler hopes and juster fears succeed,
And bar the passes of Irene's mind
Death rises to my view, with all his terrors;
Then visions horrid, as a murd❜rer's dreams,
Chill my resolves, and blast my blooming virtue :
Stern Torture shakes his bloody scourge before me,
And Anguish gnashes on the fatal wheel.
Since fear predominates in ev'ry thought,
And sways thy breast with absolute dominion,
Think on th' insulting scorn, the conscious pangs,
The future mis'ries that wait th' apostate;
So shall Timidity assist thy reason,
And Wisdom into virtue turn thy frailty.
Will not that Power that form'd the heart of woman, And wove the feeble texture of her nerves, Forgive those fears that shake the tender frame?
The weakness we lament, ourselves create;
Instructed from our infant years to court,
With counterfeited fears, the aid of man,
We learn to shudder at the rustling breeze,
Start at the light, and tremble in the dark;
Till, affectation ripening to belief,
And Folly frighted at her own chimeras,
Habitual cowardice usurps the soul.
Not all like thee can brave the shocks of fate.
Thy soul by nature great, enlarg'd by knowledge, Soars unincumber'd with our idle cares,
And all Aspasia, but her beauty, 's man.
Each generous sentiment is thine, Demetrius,
Whose soul, perhaps, yet mindful of Aspasia,
Now hovers o'er this melancholy shade,
Well pleas'd to find thy precepts not forgotten.
O! could the grave restore the pious hero,
Soon would his art or valour set us free,
And bear us far from servitude and crimes.
Too well I know him; his immoderate courage, Th' impetuous sallies of excessive virtue,
strong for love, have hurried him on death.
ASPASIA, IRENE, CALI, ABDALLA.
CALI to ABDALLA, as they advance.
Behold our future Sultaness, Abdalla ;-
Let artful flatt'ry now, to lull suspicion,
Glide through Irene to the Sultan's ear.
Wouldst thou subdue th' obdurate cannibal
To tender friendship, praise him to his mistress.
[To IRENE.]
Well may those eyes that view these heav'nly charms
Reject the daughters of contending kings;
For what are pompous titles, proud alliance,
Empire or wealth, to excellence like thine?
Receive th' impateint Sultan to thy arms;
And may a long posterity of monarchs,
The pride and terror of succeeding days,
Rise from the happy bed; and future queens
Diffuse Irene's beauty through the world!
Can Mahomet's imperial hand descend
To clasp a slave? or can a soul like mine,
Unus'd to pow'r, and form'd for humbler scenes,
Support the splendid miseries of greatness?
No regal pageant deck'd with casual honours, Scorn'd by his subjects, trampled by his foes, No feeble tyrant of a petty state,
Courts thee to shake on a dependent throne; Born to command, as thou to charm mankind, The Sultan from himself derives his greatness. Observe, bright maid, as his resistless voice Drives on the tempest of destructive war, How nation after nation falls before him.
At his dread name the distant mountains shake
Their cloudy summits, and the sons of fierceness,
That range uncivilized from rock to rock,
Distrust th' eternal fortresses of Nature,
And wish their gloomy caverns more obscure.
Forbear this lavish pomp of dreadful praise;
The horrid images of war and slaughter
Renew our sorrows, and awake our fears.
Cali, methinks yon waving trees afford
A doubtful glimpse of our approaching friends;
Just as I mark'd them they forsook the shore,
And turn'd their hasty steps towards the garden
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