On direst storms? What unaccustomed sounds
Are hovering on my lips, unlike the voice
With which our pallid race hold ghastly talk
In darkness? And, proud sufferer, who art thou?
Prometheus. Tremendous Image! as thou art must be
He whom thou shadowest forth. I am his foe,
The Titan. Speak the words which I would hear,
Although no thought inform thine empty voice.

The Earth. Listen! and, though your echoes must be mute,
Grey mountains, and old woods, and haunted springs,
Prophetic caves, and isle-surrounding streams,
Rejoice to hear what yet ye cannot speak!

Phantasm. A spirit seizes me and speaks within :

It tears me as fire tears a thunder-cloud.

Panthea. See how he lifts his mighty looks! the heaven Darkens above!

lone.

He speaks! Oh shelter me!
Prometheus. I see the curse, on gestures proud and cold,
And looks of firm defiance and calm hate,

And such despair as mocks itself with smiles,
Written as on a scroll. Yet speak! Oh speak!

PHANTASM.

"Fiend, I defy thee! with a calm fixed mind,
All that thou canst inflict I bid thee do;
Foul Tyrant both of Gods and Humankind,
One only being shalt thou not subdue!
Rain then thy plagues upon me here,
Ghastly disease and frenzying fear;
And let alternate frost and fire

Eat into me, and be thine ire

Lightning, and cutting hail, and legioned forms Of Furies driving by upon the wounding storms.

"Ay, do thy worst! Thou art omnipotent.

O'er all things but thyself I gave thee power,
And my own will. Be thy swift mischiefs sent
To blast mankind from yon etherial tower.
Let thy malignant spirit move
In darkness over those I love:
On me and mine I imprecate
The utmost torture of thy hate;

And thus devote to sleepless agony

This undeclining head while thou must reign on high.

"But thou, who art the God and Lord! Oh thou
Who fillest with thy soul this world of woe,
To whom all things of earth and heaven do bow
In fear and worship, all-prevailing foe!

I curse thee! Let a sufferer's curse
Clasp thee, his torturer, like remorse!
Till thine infinity shall be

A robe of envenomed agony;

And thine omnipotence a crown of pain,

To cling like burning gold round thy dissolving brain!
"Heap on thy soul, by virtue of this curse,

Ill deeds,-- then be thou damned, beholding good:
Both infinite as is the universe,

And thou, and thy self-torturing solitude!
An awful image of calm Power
Though now thou sittest, let the hour
Come when thou must appear to be
That which thou art internally :

And, after many a false and fruitless crime,

Scorn track thy lagging fall through boundless space and time!"

Prometheus. Were these my words, O Parent?

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. Misery, oh misery to me,
That Jove at length should vanquish thee!
Wail, howl aloud, Land and Sea,-

The Earth's rent heart shall answer ye!

Howl, Spirits of the living and the dead!
Your refuge, your defence, lies fallen and vanquishèd !

Fear not

'tis but some passing spasm,-
The Titan is unvanquished still.—
But see where through the azure chasm
Of yon forked and snowy hill,
Trampling the slant winds on high
With golden-sandalled 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 vapours steaming up behind,
Clanging loud, an endless crowd?

PANTHEA.

These are Jove's tempest-walking hounds,

Whom he gluts with groans and blood
When, charioted on sulphurous cloud,
He bursts heaven's bounds.

IONE.

Are they now led from the thin dead,
On new pangs to be fed?

Panthea. The Titan looks, as ever, firm, not proud.
First Fury. Ha! I scent life!

Second Fury. Let me but look into his eyes!
Third Fury.

The hope of torturing him smells like a heap

Of corpses to a death-bird after battle!

First Fury. Darest thou delay, O Herald! Take cheer, Hounds

Of Hell! What if the Son of Maia soon

Should make us food and sport?-Who can please long
The Omnipotent?

Mercury.

Back to your towers of iron,

And gnash, beside the streams of fire and wail,
Your foodless teeth!-Geryon, arise! and Gorgon,
Chimæra, and thou Sphinx, subtlest of fiends,
Who ministered to Thebes heaven's poisoned wine-
Unnatural love, and more unnatural hate!—
These shall perform your task.

First Fury.

Oh! mercy! mercy!

We die with our desire: drive us not back!
Mercury. Crouch then in silence.

To thee unwilling, most unwillingly

Awful Sufferer!

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 fone,
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 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.
But hark, the Hell-hounds clamour.

I wait,

Fear delay!

Behold! heaven lours 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 wingè‹ seet,

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.

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,