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 parched 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 bestowed, 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,
Or could I yield? which yet I will not yield.
Let others flatter Crime, where it sits throned
In brief Omnipotence; secure are they :
For Justice, when triumphant, will weep down
Pity, not punishment, on her own wrongs,
Too much avenged by those who err.
Enduring thus, the retributive hour
Which since we spake is even nearer now.

I wait,

But hark, the hell-hounds clamour. Fear delay! Behold! Heaven lowers under thy Father's frown.

MERCURY.

Oh, that we might be spared: I to inflict,
And thou to suffer! once more answer me:
Thou knowest not the period of Jove's power?

PROMETHEUS.

I know but this, that it must come.

MERCURY.

Alas!

Thou canst not count thy years to come of pain?

PROMETHEUS.

They last while Jove must reign; nor more, nor

less

Do I desire or fear.

MERCURY.

Yet pause, 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 numbered the slow years

Which thou must spend in torture, unreprieved.

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. 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!

THIRD FURY.

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.

O many

PROMETHEUS.

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 aërial crimson falls, flushing her cheek,

So from our victim's destined agony.