Of Venice, and its aspect, was the same.
But Maddalo was travelling, far away,
Among the mountains of Armenia:
His dog was dead: his child had now become
A woman, such as it has been my doom
To meet with few; a wonder of this earth,
Where there is little of transcendent worth,-
Like one of Shakspeare's women. Kindly she,
And with a manner beyond courtesy,
Received her father's friend; and, when I asked
Of the lorn maniac, she her memory tasked,
And told, as she had heard, the mournful tale
That the poor sufferer's health began to fail
Two years from my departure; but that then
The lady who had left him came again.
"Her mien had been imperious, but she now
Looked meek; perhaps remorse had brought her low.
Her coming made him better; and they stayed
Together at my father's-(for I played,
As I remember, with the lady's shawl;
I might be six years old).-But, after all,
She left him."
Why, her heart must have been tough!
"And was not this enough?
"Child, is there no more?"
"Something within that interval which bore
The stamp of why they parted, how they met.
Yet, if thine aged eyes disdain to wet
Those wrinkled cheeks with youth's remembered tears, Ask me no more; but let the silent years
Be closed and cered over their memory,
As yon mute marble where their corpses lie."
I urged and questioned still. She told me how
All happened-But the cold world shall not know.
As then ere misery made me wise. The curse
Once breathed on thee I would recall. Ye Mountains,
Whose many-voiced Echoes through the mist
Of cataracts flung the thunder of that spell!
Ye icy Springs, stagnant with wrinkling frost,
Which vibrated to hear me, and then crept
Shuddering through India! thou serenest Air,
Through which the Sun walks burning without beams!
And ye swift Whirlwinds who on poised wings
Hung mute and moveless o'er yon hushed abyss,
As thunder, louder than your own, made rock
The orbed world! if then my words had power,—
Though I am changed so that aught evil wish
Is dead within, although no memory be
Of what is hate,-let them not lose it now!
What was that curse? for ye all heard me speak.
FIRST VOICE, from the Mountains.
Thrice three hundred thousand years
O'er the Earthquake's couch we stood:
Oft, as men convulsed with fears,
We trembled in our multitude :
SECOND VOICE, from the Springs.
Thunderbolts had parched our water,
We had been stained with bitter blood,
And had run mute, 'mid shrieks of slaughter,
Through a city and a solitude :—
THIRD VOICE, from the Air.
I had clothed since Earth uprose
Its wastes in colours not their own;
And oft had my serene repose
Been cloven by many a rending groan :—
FOURTH VOICE, from the Whirlwinds.
We had soared beneath these mountains
Unresting ages; nor had thunder,
Nor yon volcano's flaming fountains,
Nor any power above or under,
Ever made us mute with wonder :-
But never bowed our snowy crest
As at the voice of thine unrest.
Never such a sound before
To the Indian waves we bore.
A pilot asleep on the howling sea
Leaped up from the deck in agony,
And heard, and cried "Ah! woe is me!"
And died as mad as the wild waves be.
By such dread words from Earth to Heaven
My still realm was never riven :
When its wound was closed, there stood
Darkness o'er the day like blood.
And we sinrank back: for dreams of ruin
To frozen caves our flight pursuing
Made us keep silence-thus-and thus-
Though silence is a hell to us.
The Earth. The tongueless Caverns of the craggy hills Cried "Misery!" then; the hollow Heaven replied
Misery!" and the Ocean's purple waves,
Climbing the land, howled to the lashing winds,
And the pale nations heard it, "Misery!"
Prometheus. I hear a sound of voices: not the voice
Which I gave forth. Mother, thy sons and thou
Scorn him without whose all-enduring will
Beneath the fierce omnipotence of Jove
Both they and thou had vanished, like thin mist
Unrolled on the morning wind. Know ye not me,
The Titan? he who made his agony
The barrier to your else all-conquering Foe?
O rock-embosomed lawns and snow-fed streams,
Now seen athwart frore vapours, deep below,
Through whose o'ershadowing woods I wandered once
With Asia, drinking life from her loved eyes;
Why scorns the spirit which informs ye now
To commune with me? me alone who checked,
As one who checks a fiend-drawn charioteer,
The falsehood and the force of him who reigns
Supreme, and with the groans of pining slaves
Fills your dim glens and liquid wildernesses.
Why answer ye not, still, Brethren?
Prometheus. Who dares? for I would hear that curse again.Ha! what an awful whisper rises up!
'Tis scarce like sound: it tingles through the frame
As lightning tingles, hovering ere it strike.
Speak, Spirit! From thine inorganic voice,
I only know that thou art moving near,
And love. How cursed I him?
Who knowest not the language of the dead?
Prometheus. Thou art a living spirit; speak as they.
The Earth. I dare not speak like life, lest heaven's fell King
Should hear, and link me to some wheel of pain
More torturing than the one whereon I roll.
Subtle thou art and good; and, though the Gods
Hear not this voice, yet thou art more than God,
Being wise and kind: earnestly hearken now.
Prometheus. Obscurely through my brain, like shadows dim, Sweep awful thoughts, rapid and thick. I feel
Faint, like one mingled in entwining love;
Yet 'tis not pleasure.
The Earth.
No, thou canst not hear :
Thou art immortal, and this tongue is known
Only to those who die.
Prometheus.
O melancholy Voice?
The Earth.
Thy mother; she within whose stony veins,
To the last fibre of the loftiest tree
Whose thin leaves trembled in the frozen air,
Joy ran, as blood within a living frame,
When thou didst from her bosom like a cloud
Of glory arise,—a spirit of keen joy!
And at thy voice her pining sons uplifted
Their prostrate brows from the polluting dust;
And our almighty Tyrant with fierce dread
Grew pale,-until his thunder chained thee here.
Then,-see those million worlds which burn and roll
Around us-their inhabitants beheld
My sphered light wane in wide heaven; the sea
Was lifted by strange tempest, and new fire
From earthquake-rifted mountains of bright snow
Shook its portentous hair beneath heaven's frown;
Lightning and inundation vexed the plains;
Blue thistles bloomed in cities, foodless toads
Within voluptuous chambers panting crawled,
When Plague had fallen on man and beast and worm,
And Famine; and black blight on herb and tree;
And in the corn and vines and meadow-grass
Teemed ineradicable poisonous weeds,
Draining their growth,-for my wan breast was dry
With grief; and the thin air, my breath, was stained
With the contagion of a mother's hate
Breathed on her child's destroyer. Ay, I heard
Thy curse, the which, if thou rememberest not,
Yet my innumerable seas and streams,
Mountains and caves and winds, and yon wide air,
And the inarticulate people of the dead,
Preserve, a treasured spell. We meditate
In secret joy and hope those dreadful words,
But dare not speak them.
All else who live and suffer take from thee
Some comfort; flowers and fruits and happy sounds,
And love, though fleeting: these may not be mine.
But mine own words, I pray, deny me not.
The Earth. They shall be told. Ere Babylon was dust,
The Magus Zoroaster, my dead child,
Met his own image walking in the garden :
That apparition, sole of men, he saw.
For know, there are two worlds of life and death :-
One, that which thou beholdest; but the other
Is underneath the grave, where do inhabit
The shadows of all forms that think and live,
Till death unite them and they part no more;
Dreams and the light imaginings of men,
And all that faith creates or love desires,
Terrible, strange, sublime, and beauteous shapes.
There thou art, and dost hang, a writhing shade,
'Mid whirlwind-peopled mountains. All the Gods
Are there; and all the Powers of nameless worlds-
Vast, sceptred phantoms; heroes men, and beasts;
And Demogorgon, a tremendous gloom;
And he, the Supreme Tyrant, on his throne
Of burning gold. Son, one of these shall utter
The curse which all remember. Call at will
Thine own ghost, or the ghost of Jupiter,
Hades or Typhon, or what mightier Gods
From all-prolific Evil, since thy ruin,
Have sprung, and trampled on my prostrate sons.
Ask, and they must reply: so the revenge
Of the Supreme may sweep through vacant shades,
As rainy wind through the abandoned gate
Of a fallen palace.
Of that which may be evil pass again
My lips, or those of aught resembling me.
Phantasm of Jupiter, arise, appear!
My wings are folded o'er mine ears:
My wings are crossèd o'er mine eyes:
Yet through their silver shade appears,
And through their lulling plumes arise,
A Shape, a throng of sounds.
May it be no ill to thee
O thou of many wounds,
Near whom, for our sweet Sister's sake,
Ever thus we watch and wake!
The sound is of whirlwind underground,
Earthquake, and fire, and mountains cloven:
The shape is awful like the sound,
Clothed in dark purple, star-inwoven.
A sceptre of pale gold,
To stay steps proud o'er the slow cloud,
His veined hand doth hold.
Cruel he looks, but calm and strong,
Like one who does, not suffers, wrong.
Phantasm of Jupiter. Why have the secret powers of this
Driven me, a frail and empty phantom, hither
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