THE EARTH.

They were thine.

PROMETHEUS.

It doth repent me: words are quick and vain:
Grief for awhile is blind, and so was mine.
I wish no living thing to suffer pain.

THE EARTH.

FIRST ECHO.

Lies fallen and vanquished!

SECOND ECHO.

Fallen and vanquished!

IONE.

Fear not 'tis but some passing spasm,
The Titan is unvanquish'd still.

But see, where through the azure chasm
Of
yon fork'd and snowy hill
Trampling the slant winds on high

With golden-sandall'd feet, that glow
Under plumes of purple dye,
Like rose-ensanguined ivory,
A Shape comes now,

Stretching on high from his right hand A serpent-cinctured wand.

PANTHEA.

'Tis Jove's world-wandering herald, Mercury.

IONE.

And who are those with hydra tresses And iron wings that climb the wind, Whom the frowning God represses

Like vapors steaming up behind, Clanging loud, an endless crowd

PANTHEA.

To thee unwilling, most unwillingly
I come, by the great Father's will driven down,
To execute a doom of new revenge.
Alas! I pity thee, and hate myself
That I can do no more: aye from thy sight
Returning, for a season, Heaven seems hell,
So thy worn form pursues me night and day,
Smiling reproach. Wise art thou, firm and good,
But vainly wouldst stand forth alone in strife
Against the Omnipotent; as yon clear lamps
That measure and divide the weary years
From which there is no refuge, long have taught
And long must teach. Even now thy Torturer arms
With the strange might of unimagined pains
The powers who scheme slow agonies in Hell,
And my commission is to lead them here,
Or what more subtle, foul, or savage fiends
People the abyss, and leave them to their task.
Be it not so! there is a secret known
To thee, and to none else of living things,
Which may transfer the sceptre of wide Heaven,
The fear of which perplexes the Supreme:
Clothe it in words, and bid it clasp his throne
In intercession; bend thy soul in prayer,
And like a suppliant in some gorgeous fane,
Let the will kneel within thy haughty heart:
For benefits and meek submission tame
The fiercest and the mightiest.

PROMETHEUS.

Evil minds Change good to their own nature. I gave all He has; and in return he chains me here Years, ages, night and day: whether the Sun Split my parch'd skin, or in the moony night The crystal-winged snow cling round my hair: Whilst my beloved race is trampled down By his thought-executing ministers. Such is the tyrant's recompense: 'tis just: He who is evil can receive no good; And for a world bestow'd, or a friend lost, He can feel hate, fear, shame; not gratitude: He but requites me for his own misdeed. Kindness to such is keen reproach, which breaks With bitter stings the light sleep of Revenge. Submission, thou dost know I cannot try: For what submission but that fatal word, The death-seal of mankind's captivity, Like the Sicilian's hair-suspended sword, Which trembles o'er his crown, would he accept,

and plunge Into Eternity, where recorded time, Even all that we imagine, age on age, Seems but a point, and the reluctant mind Flags wearily in its unending flight, Till it sink, dizzy, blind, lost, shelterless; Perchance it has not number'd the slow years Which thou must spend in torture, unreprieved?

PROMETHEUS.

THIRD FURY.

Champion of Heaven's slaves!

PROMETHEUS.

He whom some dreadful voice invokes is here,
Prometheus, the chain'd 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 lothesome 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.

Oh! many fearful natures in one name,
I know ye; and these lakes and echoes know
The darkness and the clangor of your wings.
But why more hideous than your lothed 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.

MERCURY.

If thou might'st dwell among the Gods the while, Lapp'd 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: how vain is talk! Call up the fiends.

IONE.

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.

IONE.

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.

Prometheus!

SECOND FURY.

Immortal Titan!

PANTHEA.

The heaven around, the earth below Was peopled with thick shapes of human death, All horrible, and wrought by human hands, And some appear'd the work of human hearts, For men were slowly kill'd 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

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?

PROMETHEUS.

There are two woes; To speak and to behold; thou spare me one.

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.
O, 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 link'd 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.

In each human heart terror survives
The ruin 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.
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.

Were borne aloft in bright emblazonry;
The nations throng'd around, and cried aloud,
As with one voice, Truth, liberty, and love!
Suddenly fierce confusion fell from heaven
Among them: there was strife, deceit, and fear:
Tyrants rush'd in, and did divide the spoil.
This was the shadow of the truth I saw.

THE EARTH.

I felt thy torture, son, with such mix'd joy
As pain and virtue give. To cheer thy state
I bid ascend those subtle and fair spirits,
Whose homes are the dim caves of human thought,
And who inhabit, as birds wing the wind,

Its world-surrounding ether: they behold
Beyond that twilight realm, as in a glass,
The future: may they speak comfort to thee!

PANTHEA.

Look, sister, where a troop of spirits gather,
Like flocks of clouds in spring's delightful weather
Thronging in the blue air!

IONE.

And see more come,

Like fountain vapors when the winds are dumb,
That climb up the ravine in scatter'd lines.
And, hark! is it the music of the pines?
Is it the lake? Is it the waterfall?

PANTHEA.

"Tis something sadder, sweeter far than all.

CHORUS OF SPIRITS. From unremember'd ages we Gentle guides and guardians be Of heaven-oppress'd mortality; And we breathe, and sicken not, The atmosphere of human thought: Be it dim, and dank, and gray, Like a storm-extinguish'd day, Travell'd o'er by dying gleams; Be it bright as all between Cloudless skies and windless streams, Silent, liquid, and serene;

As the birds within the wind,

As the fish within the wave As the thoughts of man's own mind Float through all above the grave; We make these our liquid lair, Voyaging cloudlike and unpent Through the boundless element: Therce we bear the prophecy Which begins and ends in thee!

IONE.

More yet come, one by one: the air around them Looks radiant as the air around a star.

FIRST SPIRIT.

On a battle-trumpet's blast
I fled hither, fast, fast, fast,
'Mid the darkness upward cast.
From the dust of creeds outworn,
From the tyrant's banner torn,
Gathering round me, onward borne,
There was mingled many a cry—
Freedom! Hope! Death! Victory!
Till they faded through the sky;
And one sound above, around,
One sound beneath, around, above,
Was moving; 't was the soul of love;
"Twas the hope, the prophecy,
Which begins and ends in thee.

SECOND SPIRIT.

A rainbow's arch stood on the sea,
Which rock'd beneath, immovably;
And the triumphant storm did flee,
Like a conqueror, swift and proud,
Between with many a captive cloud
A shapeless, dark and rapid crowd,
Each by lightning riven in half:

I heard the thunder hoarsely laugh :
Mighty fleets were strewn like chaff
And spread beneath a hell of death
O'er the white waters. I alit
On a great ship lightning-split,
And speeded hither on the sigh
Of one who gave an enemy

His plank, then plunged aside to die.

THIRD SPIRIT.

I sat beside a sage's bed,

And the lamp was burning red
Near the book where he had fed,

When a Dream with plumes of flame,

To his pillow hovering came,
And I knew it was the same
Which had kindled long ago
Pity, eloquence, and woe;
And the world awhile below
Wore the shade its lustre made.
It has borne me here as fleet
As Desire's lightning feet:
I must ride it back ere morrow,
Or the sage will wake in sorrow.

FOURTH SPIRIT.

On a poet's lips I slept,

Dreaming like a love-adept

In the sound his breathing kept;

Nor seeks nor finds he mortal blisses,

But feeds on the aërial kisses

Of shapes that haunt thought's wildernesses.
He will watch from dawn to gloom
The lake-reflected sun illume
The yellow bees in the ivy-bloom,

Nor heed nor see, what things they be;
But from these create he can
Forms more real than living man,
Nurslings of immortality!
One of these awaken'd me,

And I sped to succor thee.

IONE.

Behold'st thou not two shapes from the east and west
Come, as two doves to one beloved nest,
Twin nurslings of the all-sustaining air
On swift still wings glide down the atmosphere?
And, hark! their sweet, sad voices! 't is despair
Mingled with love and then dissolved in sound.

PANTHEA.

Canst thou speak, sister? all my words are drown'd.

IONE

Their beauty gives me voice. See how they float
On their sustaining wings of skiey grain,

Orange and azure deepening into gold:
Their soft smiles light the air like a star's fire.

CHORUS OF SPIRITS.

Hast thou beheld the form of Love?

FIFTH SPIRIT.

As over wide dominions

I sped, like some swift cloud that wings the wide air's wildernesses,

That planet-crested shape swept by on lightningbraided pinions,

Scattering the liquid joy of life from his ambrosial

tresses:

His footsteps paved the world with light; but as I pass'd 't was fading,

And hollow Ruin yawn'd behind: great sages bound in madness,

And headless patriots, and pale youths who perish'd. unupbraiding,

Gleam'd in the night. I wander'd o'er, till thou, O King of sadness,

Turn'd by thy smile the worst I saw to recollected gladness.

SIXTH SPIRIT.

Ah, sister! Desolation is a delicate thing:

It walks not on the earth, it floats not on the air, But treads with silent footstep, and fans with silent

wing

The tender hopes which in their hearts the best and gentlest bear;

Who, soothed to false repose by the fanning plumes

above,

And the music-stirring motion of its soft and busy feet, Dream visions of aërial joy, and call the monster, Love, And wake and find the shadow Pain, as he whom now we greet.

CHORUS.

Though Ruin now Love's shadow be,
Following him, destroyingly,

On Death's white and winged steed,
Which the fleetest cannot flee,

Trampling down both flower and weed, Man and beast, and foul and fair, Like a tempest through the air; Thou shalt quell this horseman grim, Woundless though in heart or limb.

PROMETHEUS.

Spirits! how know ye this shall be?

CHORUS.

In the atmosphere we breathe,

As buds grow red when the snow-storms flee,