Enduring thus, the retributive hour
Which since we spake is even nearer now.
But hark, the hell-hounds clamor: fear delay:
Behold! Heaven lowers under thy Father’s frown.
MERCURY
Oh, that we might be spared; I to inflict, 410
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, 420
Till it sink, dizzy, blind, lot, 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, 430
As light in the sun, throned. How vain is talk!
Call up the fiends.
IONE
Oh, 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 wingèd 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 — 440
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, 450
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 clangor of your wings! 460
But why more hideous than your loathèd 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 470
The shade which is our form invests us round;
Else we are shapeless as our mother Night.
PROMETHEUS
I laugh your power, and his who sent you here,
To lowest scorn. Pour forth the cup of pain.
FIRST FURY
Thou thinkest we will rend thee bone from bone
And nerve from nerve, working like fire within?
PROMETHEUS
Pain is my element, as hate is thine;
Ye rend me now; I care not.
SECOND FURY
Dost imagine
We will but laugh into thy lidless eyes?
PROMETHEUS
I weigh not what ye do, but what ye suffer, 480
Being evil. Cruel was the power which called
You, or aught else so wretched, into light.
THIRD FURY
Thou think’st we will live through thee, one by one,
Like animal life, and though we can obscure not
The soul which burns within, that we will dwell
Beside it, like a vain loud multitude,
Vexing the self-content of wisest men;
That we will be dread thought beneath thy brain,
And foul desire round thine astonished heart,
And blood within thy labyrinthine veins 490
Crawling like agony?
PROMETHEUS
Why, ye are thus now;
Yet am I king over myself, and rule
The torturing and conflicting throngs within,
As Jove rules you when Hell grows mutinous.
CHORUS OF FURIES
From the ends of the earth, from the ends of the earth,
Where the night has its grave and the morning its birth,
Come, come, come!
O ye who shake hills with the scream of your mirth
When cities sink howling in ruin; and ye
Who with wingless footsteps trample the sea, 500
And close upon Shipwreck and Famine’s track
Sit chattering with joy on the foodless wreck;
Come, come, come!
Leave the bed, low, cold, and red,
Strewed beneath a nation dead;
Leave the hatred, as in ashes
Fire is left for future burning;
It will burst in bloodier flashes
When ye stir it, soon returning;
Leave the self-contempt implanted 510
In young spirits, sense-enchanted,
Misery’s yet unkindled fuel;
Leave Hell’s secrets half unchanted
To the maniac dreamer; cruel
More than ye can be with hate
Is he with fear.
Come, come, come!
We are steaming up from Hell’s wide gate
And we burden the blasts of the atmosphere,
But vainly we toil till ye come here. 520
IONE.
Sister, I hear the thunder of new wings.
PANTHEA
These solid mountains quiver with the sound
Even as the tremulous air; their shadows make
The space within my plumes more black than night.
FIRST FURY
Your call was as a wingèd car,
Driven on whirlwinds fast and far;
It rapt us from red gulfs of war.
SECOND FURY
From wide cities, famine-wasted;
THIRD FURY
Groans half heard, and blood untasted;
FOURTH FURY
Kingly conclaves stern and cold, 530
Where blood with gold is bought and sold;
FIFTH FURY
In which —
A FURY
Speak not; whisper not;
I know all that ye would tell,
But to speak might break the spell
Which must bend the Invincible,
The stern of thought;
He yet defies the deepest power of Hell.
FURY
Tear the veil!
ANOTHER FURY
It is torn.
CHORUS
The pale stars of the morn
Shine on a misery, dire to be borne. 540
Dost thou faint, mighty Titan? We laugh thee to scorn.
Dost thou boast the clear knowledge thou waken’dst for man?
Then was kindled within him a thirst which outran
Those perishing waters; a thirst of fierce fever,
Hope, love, doubt, desire, which consume him forever.
One came forth of gentle worth,
Smiling on the sanguine earth;
His words outlived him, like swift poison
Withering up truth, peace, and pity.
Look! where round the wide horizon 550
Many a million-peopled city
Vomits smoke in the bright air!
Mark that outcry of despair!
‘T is his mild and gentle ghost
Wailing for the faith he kindled.
Look again! the flames almost
To a glow-worm’s lamp have dwindled;
The survivors round the embers
Gather in dread.
Joy, joy, joy! 560
Past ages crowd on thee, but each one remembers,
And the future is dark, and the present is spread
Like a pillow of thorns for thy slumberless head.
SEMICHORUS I
Drops of bloody agony flow
From his white and quivering brow.
Grant a little respite now.
See! a disenchanted nation
Spring like day from desolation;
To Truth its state is dedicate,
And Freedom leads it forth, her mate; 570
A legioned band of linkèd brothers,
Whom Love calls children —
SEMICHORUS II
‘T is another’s.
See how kindred murder kin!
‘T is the vintage-time for Death and Sin;
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
Of the good Titan, as storms tear the deep, 580
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 woful sight: a youth
With 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,
For men were slowly killed by frowns and smiles; 590
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
Deep wrongs for man, and scorn, and chains, but heap
Thousand-fold 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, 600
So thy sick throes shake not that crucifix,
So those pale fingers play not with thy gore.
Oh, 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 linked to corpses in unwholesome cells; 610
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.
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 ruin it has gorged: the loftiest fear
All that they would disdain to think were true. 620
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 630
As if none felt; they know not what they do.
PROMETHEUS
Thy words are like a cloud of wingèd snakes;
And yet I pity those they torture not.
FURY
Thou pitiest them? I speak no more!
[Vanishes.
PROMETHEUS
Ah woe!
Ah woe! Alas! pain, pain ever, forever!
I close my tearless eyes, but see more clear
Thy works within my woe-illumèd mind,
Thou subtle tyrant! Peace is in the grave.
The grave hides all things beautiful and good.
I am a God and cannot find it there, 640
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.
Names are there, Nature’s sacred watchwords, they
Were borne aloft in bright emblazonry;
The nations thronged around, and cried aloud, 650
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.
This 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,
And who inhabit, as birds wing the wind, 660
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 scattered lines.
And hark! is it the music of the pines?
Is it the lake? Is it the waterfall? 670
PANTHEA
‘T is something sadder, sweeter far than all.
CHORUS OF SPIRITS
From unremembered ages we
Gentle guides and guardians be
Of heaven-oppressed mortality;
And we breathe, and sicken not,
The atmosphere of human thought:
Be it dim, and dank, and gray,
Like a storm-extinguished day,
Travelled o’er by dying gleams;
Be it bright as all between 680
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 there our liquid lair,
Voyaging cloudlike and unpent
Through the boundless element:
Thence we bear the prophecy 690
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 — 700
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;
‘T was the hope, the prophecy,
Which begins and ends in thee.
SECOND SPIRIT
A rainbow’s arch stood on the sea,
Which rocked beneath, immovably;
And the triumphant storm did flee,
Like a conqueror, swift and proud,
Begirt 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 720
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
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