’Tis another’s—
See how kindred murder kin!
’Tis the vintage-time for Death and Sin:
575 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
580Of 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 woeful sight: a youth
585With 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,
590For 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
595Deep 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!
600Fix, 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
605The 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;
610Some 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
615By 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
In each human heart terror survives
The ravin it has gorged: the loftiest fear
620All 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.
625The 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,—
630But live among their suffering fellow-men
As if none felt: they know not what they do.
Prometheus
Thy words are like a cloud of winged snakes;
And yet, I pity those they torture not.
Fury
Thou pitiest them? I speak no more!
[Vanishes.
Prometheus
Ah woe!
635Ah woe! Alas! pain, pain ever, forever!
I close my tearless eyes, but see more clear
Thy works within my woe-illumed mind,
Thou subtle tyrant … Peace is in the grave—
The grave hides all things beautiful and good:
640I 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
645When 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.
Names are there, Nature’s sacred watch-words—they
Were borne aloft in bright emblazonry;
650The nations thronged 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 rushed in, and did divide the spoil.
655This was the shadow of the truth I saw.
The Earth
I felt thy torture, Son, with such mixed 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,
660And 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,
665Like flocks of clouds in spring’s delightful weather,
Thronging in the blue air!
Ione
And see! more come,
Like fountain-vapours when the winds are dumb,
That climb up the ravine in scattered lines.
And hark! is it the music of the pines?
670Is it the lake? Is it the waterfall?
Panthea
’Tis something sadder, sweeter far than all.
Chorus of Spirits
From unremembered ages we
Gentle guides and guardians be
Of Heaven-oppressed mortality;
675And we breathe, and sicken not,
The atmosphere of human thought:
Be it dim and dank and grey
Like a storm-extinguished day,
Travelled o’er by dying gleams;
680 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,
685As the thoughts of man’s own mind
Float through all above the grave,
We make there, our liquid lair,
Voyaging cloudlike and unpent
Through the boundless element—
690Thence 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
695I 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,
700There 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,
705Was moving; ’twas 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, immoveably;
710And 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:
715I 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,
720And speeded hither on the sigh
Of one who gave an enemy
His plank—then plunged aside to die.
Third Spirit
I sate beside a sage’s bed,
And the lamp was burning red
725Near 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
730Pity, 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:
735I 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;
740Nor 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
745The yellow bees i’ 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!—
750One of these awakened me,
And I sped to succour 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
755On swift still wings glide down the atmosphere?
And hark! their sweet, sad voices! ’tis despair
Mingled with love and then dissolved in sound.
Panthea
Canst thou speak, sister? all my words are drowned.
Ione
Their beauty gives me voice. See how they float
760On 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,
765That planet-crested Shape swept by on lightning-braided pinions,
Scattering the liquid joy of life from his ambrosial tresses:
His footsteps paved the world with light—but as I past ’twas fading,
And hollow Ruin yawned behind: great sages bound in madness,
And headless patriots, and pale youths who perished, unupbraiding,
770Gleamed in the night I wandered o’er—’till thou, O King of sadness,
Turned 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 lulling footstep, and fans with silent wing
775The 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
780Though 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,
785Man 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
790In the atmosphere we breathe,
As buds grow red when the snow-storms flee
From spring gathering up beneath,
Whose mild winds shake the elder brake,
And the wandering herdsmen know
795That the white-thorn soon will blow:
Wisdom, Justice, Love, and Peace,
When they struggle to increase,
Are to us as soft winds be
To shepherd boys—the prophecy
800Which begins and ends in thee.
Ione
Where are the Spirits fled?
Panthea
Only a sense
Remains of them, like the omnipotence
Of music, when the inspired voice and lute
Languish, ere yet the responses are mute
805Which through the deep and labyrinthine soul,
Like echoes through long caverns, wind and roll.
Prometheus
How fair these air-born shapes! and yet I feel
Most vain all hope but love; and thou art far,
Asia! who, when my being overflowed,
810Wert like a golden chalice to bright wine
Which else had sunk into the thirsty dust.
All things are still: alas! how heavily
This quiet morning weighs upon my heart;
Though I should dream, I could even sleep with grief
815If slumber were denied not … I would fain
Be what it is my destiny to be,
The saviour and the strength of suffering man,
Or sink into the original gulf of things …
There is no agony, and no solace left;
820Earth can console, Heaven can torment no more.
Panthea
Hast thou forgotten one who watches thee
The cold dark night, and never sleeps but when
The shadow of thy spirit falls on her?
Prometheus
I said all hope was vain but love: thou lovest.
Panthea
825Deeply in truth; but the Eastern star looks white,
And Asia waits in that far Indian vale
The scene of her sad exile—rugged once
And desolate and frozen like this ravine;
But now invested with fair flowers and herbs,
830And haunted by sweet airs and sounds, which flow
Among the woods and waters, from the ether
Of her transforming presence—which would fade
If it were mingled not with thine. Farewell!
End of the First Act
ACT II
Scene i
Morning. A lovely Vale in the Indian Caucasus. ASIA, alone.
Asia
From all the blasts of Heaven thou hast descended:
Yes, like a spirit, like a thought, which makes
Unwonted tears throng to the horny eyes,
And beatings haunt the desolated heart,
5Which should have learnt repose: thou hast descended
Cradled in tempests; thou dost wake, O Spring!
O child of many winds! As suddenly
Thou comest as the memory of a dream,
Which now is sad because it hath been sweet;
10Like genius, or like joy which riseth up
As from the earth, clothing with golden clouds
The desert of our life …
This is the season, this the day, the hour;
At sunrise thou shouldst come, sweet sister mine …
15Too long desired, too long delaying, come!
How like death-worms the wingless moments crawl!
The point of one white star is quivering still
Deep in the orange light of widening morn
Beyond the purple mountains; through a chasm
20Of wind-divided mist the darker lake
Reflects it—now it wanes—it gleams again
As the waves fade, and as the burning threads
Of woven cloud unravel in pale air …
’Tis lost! and through yon peaks of cloudlike snow
25The roseate sun-light quivers: hear I not
The Aeolian music of her sea-green plumes
Winnowing the crimson dawn?
[PANTHEA enters
I feel, I see
Those eyes which burn through smiles that fade in tears,
Like stars half quenched in mists of silver dew.
30Beloved and most beautiful, who wearest
The shadow of that soul by which I live,
How late thou art! the sphered sun had climbed
Selected Poems and Prose Page 26