Prometheus. Perchance no thought can count them. Yet they pass.

Mercury. If thou mightst dwell among the Gods the while, Lapped in voluptuous joy?

Prometheus.

I would not quit

This bleak ravine, these unrepentant pains.

Mercury. Alas! I wonder at, yet pity thee.

Prometheus. Pity the self-despising slaves of Heaven,Not me, within whose mind sits peace serene,

As light in the sun, throned.

Call up the fiends.

Ione.

How vain is talk!

O sister, look! White fire

Has cloven to the roots yon huge snow-loaded cedar!

How fearfully God's thunder howls behind!

Mercury. I must obey his words and thine: alas!

Most heavily remorse hangs at my heart!

Panthea. See where the Child of Heaven, with winged feet,

Runs down the slanted sunlight of the dawn.

lone. Dear sister, close thy plumes over thine eyes, Lest thou behold and die. They come, they come,

Blackening the birth of day with countless wings,
And hollow underneath like death!

First Fury.

Second Fury. Immortal Titan!
Third Fury.

Prometheus!

Champion of Heaven's slaves!

Prometheus. He whom some dreadful voice invokes is here, Prometheus, the chained Titan. Horrible forms,

What and who are ye? Never yet there came
Phantasms so foul through monster-teeming hell
From the all-miscreative brain of Jove.
Whilst I behold such execrable shapes,
Methinks I grow like what I contemplate,

And laugh and stare in loathsome sympathy.

First Fury. We are the ministers of pain and fear, And disappointment and mistrust and hate,

And clinging crime; and, as lean dogs pursue

Through wood and lake some struck and sobbing fawn,
We track all things that weep and bleed and live,

When the great King betrays them to our will.

Prometheus. O many fearful natures in one name!

I know ye; and these lakes and echoes know
The darkness and the clangour of your wings.
But why more hideous than your loathed selves
Gather ye up in legions from the deep?

Second Fury.

We knew not that. Sisters, rejoice, rejoice! Prometheus. Can aught exult in its deformity? Second Fury The beauty of delight makes lovers glad, Gazing on one another: so are we.

As from the rose which the pale priestess kneels

To gather for her festal crown of flowers

The aerial crimson falls, flushing her cheek,

So from our victim's destined agony

The shade which is our form invests us round,

Else we are shapeless as our mother Night.

Prometheus. I laugh your power, and his who sent you here, To lowest scorn. Pour forth the cup of pain.

First Fury. Thou thinkest we will rend thee bone from bone, And nerve from nerve, working like fire within?

Prometheus. Pain is my element, as hate is thine.

Ye rend me now: I care not.

Second Fury.

.

Dost imagine

We will but laugh into thy lidless eyes?

Prometheus. I weigh not what ye do, but what ye suffer, Being evil. Cruel was the power which called

You, or aught else so wretched, into light.

Third Fury. Thou think'st we will live through thee, one by one,

Like animal life; and, though we can obscure not
The soul which burns within, that we will dwell
Beside it, like a vain loud multitude

Vexing the self-content of wisest men ;

That we will be dread thought beneath thy brain,
And foul desire round thine astonished heart,

And blood within thy labyrinthine veins

Crawling like agony.

Prometheus.

Why, ye are thus now :

Yet am I king over myself, and rule

The torturing and conflicting throngs within,

As Jove rules you when Hell grows mutinous.

CHORUS OF FURIES.

From the ends of the earth, from the ends of the earth,
Where the night has its grave and the morning its birth,
Come, come, come!

O ye who shake hills with the scream of your mirth
When cities sink howling in ruin! and ye
Who with wingless footsteps trample the sea,
And close upon Shipwreck and Famine's track
Sit chattering with joy on the foodless wreck,
Come, come, come !

Leave the bed, low, cold, and red,
Strewed beneath a nation dead;

Leave the hatred, as in ashes

Fire is left for future burning-
It will burst in bloodier flashes
When ye stir it, soon returning:
Leave the self-contempt implanted
In young spirits, sense-enchanted,
Misery's yet unkindled fuel:
Leave Hell's secrets half unchanted
To the maniac dreamer,-cruel,
More than ye can be with hate,
Is he with fear.

Come, come, come!

We are steaming up from hell's wide gate,
And we burthen the blasts of the atmosphere,
But vainly we toil till ye come here!

Ione. Sister, I hear the thunder of new wings.

Panthea. These solid mountains quiver with the sound,

Even as the tremulous air: their shadows make

The space within my plumes more black than night,

FOURTH FURY.

Your call was as a winged car
Driven on whirlwinds fast and far;
It rapt us from red gulfs of war ;

FIFTH FURY.

From wide cities famine-wasted;

SIXTH FURY.

Groans half heard, and blood untasted;

SEVENTH FURY.

Kingly conclaves, stern and cold,

Where blood with gold is bought and sold;

EIGHTH FURY

From the furnace, white and hot,

In which

A FURY.

Speak not, whisper not!

I know all that ye would tell,-
But to speak might break the spell
Which must bend the Invincible,

The stern of thought;

He yet defies the deepest power of Hell.

A FURY.

Tear the veil !

ANOTHER FURY.
It is torn.

CHORUS.

The pale stars of the morn

Shine on a misery dire to be borne.

Dost thou faint, mighty Titan? We laugh thee to scorn!
Dost thou boast the clear knowledge thou wakenedst for man?

Then was kindled within him a thirst which outran

Those perishing waters; a thirst of fierce fever,

Hope, love, doubt, desire, which consume him for ever.

One came forth of gentle worth,

Smiling on the sanguine earth:

His words outlived him, like swift poison

Withering up truth, peace, and pity.

Look! where round the wide horizon

Many a million-peopled city
Vomits smoke in the bright air!
Mark that outcry of despair!
'Tis his mild and gentle ghost

Wailing for the faith he kindled.
Look again! the flames almost

To a glow-worm's lamp have dwindled :
The survivors round the embers

Gather in dread.

Joy, joy, joy!

Past ages crowd on thee, but each one remembers;
And the future is dark, and the present is spread
Like a pillow of thorns for thy slumberless head!

SEMICHORUS I.

Drops of bloody agony flow

From his white and quivering brow.
Grant a little respite now.

See! a disenchanted nation

Springs like day from desolation;

To Truth its state is dedicate,

And Freedom leads it forth, her mate ;

A legioned band of linkèd brothers,

Whom Love calls children

SEMICHORUS II.

See how kindred murder kin !

'Tis another's!

'Tis the vintage-time for Death and Sin.
Blood, like new wine, bubbles within :
Till despair smothers

The struggling world, which slaves and tyrants win.

[All the FURIES vanish, except one.

Ione. Hark, sister! what a low yet dreadful groan, Quite unsuppressed, is tearing up the heart

Of the good Titan, as storms tear the deep,

And beasts hear the sea moan in inland caves!

Darest thou observe how the fiends torture him?

Panthea. Alas! I looked forth twice, but will no more.
Ione. What didst thou see?
Panthea.

A woful sight: a youth

With patient looks nailed to a crucifix.

Ione. What next?

Panthea.

The heaven around, the earth below,

Was peopled with thick shapes of human death,
All horrible, and wrought by human hands:
And some appeared the work of human hearts,
For men were slowly killed by frowns and smiles.
And other sights too foul to speak and live
Were wandering by. Let us not tempt worse fear
By looking forth those groans are grief enough.

Fury. Behold an emblem: those who do endure
Deep wrongs for man, and scorn, and chains, but heap

Thousandfold torment on themselves and him.

Prometheus. Remit the anguish of that lighted stare; Close those wan lips; let that thorn-wounded brow Stream not with blood; it mingles with thy tears!

Fix, fix those tortured orbs in peace and death,—
So thy sick throes shake not that crucifix,
So those pale fingers play not with thy gore!
Oh horrible! Thy name I will not speak,
It hath become a curse! I see, I see
The wise, the mild, the lofty, and the just,
Whom thy slaves hate for being like to thee,
Some hunted by foul lies from their heart's home,
An early-chosen, late-lamented home,-
As hooded ounces cling to the driven hind;
Some linked to corpses in unwholesome cells;
Some-hear I not the multitude laugh loud?—
Impaled in lingering fire: and mighty realms
Float by my feet, like sea-uprooted isles,

Whose sons are kneaded down in common blood
By the red light of their own burning homes.

Fury. Blood thou canst see, and fire; and canst hear groans:Worse things, unheard, unseen, remain behind.

Prometheus. Worse?

Fury.
The ravin it has gorged. The loftiest fear
All that they would disdain to think were true:
Hypocrisy and Custom make their minds
The fanes of many a worship now outworn.
They dare not devise good for man's estate,
And yet they know not that they do not dare.

In each human heart terror survives

The good want power but to weep barren tears:

The powerful goodness want,-
-worse need for them:

The wise want love: and those who love want wisdom:

And all best things are thus confused to ill.

Many are strong and rich, and would be just,

But live among their suffering fellow-men

As if none felt: they know not what they do.

Prometheus. Thy words are like a cloud of wingèd snakes ;
And yet I pity those they torture not.

Fury. Thou pitiest them? I speak no more!
Prometheus.

Ah woe! Alas! pain, pain, ever, for ever!
I close my tearless eyes, but see more clear
Thy works within my woe-illumined mind,
Thou subtle Tyrant! Peace is in the grave:
The grave hides all things beautiful and good.
I am a God, and cannot find it there,

Nor would I seek it: for, though dread revenge,
This is defeat, fierce king! not victory.

The sights with which thou torturest gird my soul
With new endurance, till the hour arrives
When they shall be no types of things which are.
Panthea. Alas! what sawest thou?

[Vanishes. Ah woe!

There are two woes :

Prometheus.
To speak, and to behold :-thou spare me one.