From Herè unaware,
To waste and pierce me with its maddening goad?
Ah — ah — I leap
With the pang of the hungry — I bound on the road —
I am driven by my doom —
I am overcome
By the wrath of an enemy strong and deep!
Are any of those who have tasted pain,
Alas, as wretched as I?
Now tell me plain, doth aught remain
For my soul to endure beneath the sky?
Is there any help to be holpen by?
If knowledge be in thee, let it be said!
Cry aloud — cry
To the wandering, woful maid!
Prometheus. Whatever thou wouldst learn I will declare,
No riddle upon my lips, but such straight words
As friends should use to each other when they talk.
Thou seest Prometheus, who gave mortals fire.
Io. O common Help of all men, known of all,
O miserable Prometheus, — for what cause
Dost thou endure thus?
Prometheus. I have done with wail
For my own griefs, but lately.
Io. Wilt thou not
Vouchsafe the boon to me?
Prometheus. Say what thou wilt,
For I vouchsafe all.
Io. Speak then, and reveal
Who shut thee in this chasm.
Prometheus. The will of Zeus,
The hand of his Hephaestus.
Io. And what crime
Dost expiate so?
Prometheus. Enough for thee I have told
In so much only.
Io. Nay, but show besides
The limit of my wandering, and the time
Which yet is lacking to fulfil my grief.
Prometheus. Why, not to know were better than to know
For such as thou.
Io. Beseech thee, blind me not
To that which I must suffer.
Prometheus. If I do,
The reason is not that I grudge a boon.
Io. What reason, then, prevents thy speaking out?
Prometheus. No grudging; but a fear to break thine heart.
Io. Less care for me, I pray thee. Certainty
I count for advantage.
Prometheus. Thou wilt have it so,
And therefore I must speak. Now here —
Chorus. Not yet.
Give half the guerdon my way. Let us learn
First, what the curse is that befell the maid, —
Her own voice telling her own wasting woes:
The sequence of that anguish shall await
The teaching of thy lips.
Prometheus. It doth behove
That thou, Maid Io, shouldst vouchsafe to these
The grace they pray — the more, because they are called
Thy father’s sisters: since to open out
And mourn out grief where it is possible
To draw a tear from the audience, is a work
That pays its own price well.
Io. I cannot choose
But trust you, nymphs, and tell you all ye ask,
In clear words — though I sob amid my speech
In speaking of the storm-curse sent from Zeus,
And of my beauty, from what height it took
Its swoop on me, poor wretch! left thus deformed
And monstrous to your eyes. For evermore
Around my virgin-chamber, wandering went
The nightly visions which entreated me
With syllabled smooth swetness.— “Blessed maid,
Why lengthen out thy maiden hours when fate
Permits the noblest spousal in the world?
When Zeus burns with the arrow of thy love
And fain would touch thy beauty? — Maiden, thou
Despise not Zeus! depart to Lerné’s mead
That’s green around thy father’s flocks and stalls,
Until the passion of the heavenly Eye
Be quenched in sight.” Such dreams did all night long
Constrain me — me, unhappy! — till I dared
To tell my father how they trod the dark
With visionary steps. Whereat he sent
His frequent heralds to the Pythian fane,
And also to Dodona, and inquired
How best, by act or speech, to please the gods.
The same returning brought back oracles
Of doubtful sense, indefinite response,
Dark to interpret; but at last there came
To Inachus an answer that was clear,
Thrown straight as any bolt, and spoken out —
This— “he should drive me from my home and land,
And bid me wander to the extreme verge
Of all the earth — or, if he willed it not,
Should have a thunder with a fiery eye
Leap straight from Zeus to burn up all his race
To the last root of it.” By which Loxian word
Subdued, he drove me forth and shut me out,
He loth, me loth — but Zeus’s violent bit
Compelled him to the deed: when instantly
My body and soul were changèd and distraught,
And, hornèd as ye see, and spurred along
By the fanged insect, with a maniac leap
I rushed on to Cenchrea’s limpid stream
And Lerné’s fountain-water. There, the earth-born,
The herdsman Argus, most immitigable
Of wrath, did find me out, and track me out
With countless eyes set staring at my steps:
And though an unexpected sudden doom
Drew him from life, I, curse-tormented still,
Am driven from land to land before the scourge
The gods hold o’er me. So thou hast heard the past,
And if a bitter future thou canst tell,
Speak on. I charge thee, do not flatter me
Through pity, with false words; for, in my mind,
Deceiving works more shame than torturing doth.
Chorus. Ah! silence here!
Nevermore, nevermore
Would I languish for
The stranger’s word
To thrill in mine ear —
Nevermore for the wrong and the woe and the fear
So hard to behold,
So cruel to bear,
Piercing my soul with a double-edged sword
Of a sliding cold.
Ah Fate! ah me!
I shudder to see
This wandering maid in her agony.
Prometheus. Grief is too quick in thee and fear too full:
Be patient till thou hast learnt the rest.
Chorus. Speak: teach.
To those who are sad already, it seems sweet,
By clear foreknowledge to make perfect, pain.
Prometheus. The boon ye asked me first was lightly won, —
For first ye asked the story of this maid’s grief
As her own lips might tell it. Now remains
To list what other sorrows she so young
Must bear from Herè. Inachus’s child,
O thou! drop down thy soul my weighty words,
And measure out the landmarks which are set
To end thy wandering. Toward the orient sun
First turn thy face from mine and journey on
Along the desert flats till thou shalt come
Where Scythia’s shepherd peoples dwell aloft,
Perched in wheeled wagons under woven roofs,
And twang the rapid arrow past the bow —
Approach them not; but siding in thy course
The rugged shore-rocks resonant to the sea,
Depart that country. On the left hand dwell
The iron-workers, called the Chalybes,
Of whom beware, for certes they are uncouth
And nowise bland to strangers. Reaching so
The stream Hybristes (wel
l the scorner called),
Attempt no passage — it is hard to pass —
Or ere thou come to Caucasus itself,
That highest of mountains, where the river leaps
The precipice in his strength. Thou must toil up
Those mountain-tops that neighbor with the stars,
And tread the south way, and draw near, at last,
The Amazonian host that hateth man,
Inhabitants of Themiscyra, close
Upon Thermodon, where the sea’s rough jaw
Doth gnash at Salmydessa and provide
A cruel host to seamen, and to ships
A stepdame. They with unreluctant hand
Shall lead thee on and on, till thou arrive
Just where the ocean-gates show narrowest
On the Cimmerian isthmus. Leaving which,
Behoves thee swim with fortitude of soul
The strait Mæotis. Ay, and evermore
That traverse shall be famous on men’s lips,
That strait, called Bosphorus, the horned-one’s road,
So named because of thee, who so wilt pass
From Europe’s plain to Asia’s continent.
How think ye, nymphs? the king of gods appears
Impartial in ferocious deeds? Behold!
The god desirous of this mortal’s love
Hath cursed her with these wanderings.
Ah, fair child,
Thou hast met a bitter groom for bridal troth!
For all thou yet hast heard can only prove
The incompleted prelude of thy doom.
Io. Ah! ah!
Prometheus. Is’t thy turn, now, to shriek and moan?
How wilt thou, when thou hast hearkened what remains
Chorus. Besides the grief thou hast told can aught remain?
Prometheus. A sea — of foredoomed evil worked to storm.
Io. What boots my life, then? why not cast myself
Down headlong from this miserable rock,
That, dashed against the flats, I may redeem
My soul from sorrow? Better once to die
Than day by day to suffer.
Prometheus. Verily,
It would be hard for thee to bear my woe
For whom it is appointed not to die.
Death frees from woe: but I before me see
In all my far prevision not a bound
To all I suffer, ere that Zeus shall fall
From being a king.
Io. And can it ever be
That Zeus shall fall from empire?
Prometheus. Thou, methinks,
Wouldst take some joy to see it.
Io. Could I choose?
I who endure such pangs now, by that god!
Prometheus. Learn from me, therefore, that the event shall
be.
Io. By whom shall his imperial sceptred hand
Be emptied so?
Prometheus. Himself shall spoil himself,
Through his idiotic counsels.
Io. How? declare:
Unless the word bring evil.
Prometheus. He shall wed;
And in the marriage-bond be joined to grief.
Io. A heavenly bride — or human? Speak it out
If it be utterable.
Prometheus. Why should I say which?
It ought not to be uttered, verily.
Io. Then
It is his wife shall tear him from his throne?
Prometheus. It is his wife shall bear a son to him,
More mighty than the father.
Io. From this doom
Hath he no refuge?
Prometheus. None: or ere that I,
Loosed from these fetters —
Io. Yea — but who shall loose
While Zeus is adverse?
Prometheus. One who is born of thee:
It is ordained so.
Io. What is this thou sayest?
A son of mine shall liberate thee from woe?
Prometheus. After ten generations, count three more,
And find him in the third.
Io. The oracle
Remains obscure.
Prometheus. And search it not, to learn
Thine own griefs from it.
Io. Point me not to a good,
To leave me straight bereaved.
Prometheus. I am prepared
To grant thee one of two things.
Io. But which two?
Set them before me; grant me power to choose.
Prometheus. I grant it; choose now: shall I name aloud
What griefs remain to wound thee, or what hand
Shall save me out of mine?
Chorus. Vouchsafe, O god,
The one grace of the twain to her who prays;
The next to me; and turn back neither prayer
Dishonor’d by denial. To herself
Recount the future wandering of her feet;
Then point me to the looser of thy chain,
Because I yearn to know him.
Prometheus. Since ye will,
Of absolute will, this knowledge, I will set
No contrary against it, nor keep back
A word of all ye ask for. Io, first
To thee I must relate thy wandering course
Far winding. As I tell it, write it down
In thy soul’s book of memories. When thou hast past
The refluent bound that parts two continents,
Track on the footsteps of the orient sun
In his own fire, across the roar of seas —
Fly till thou hast reached the Gorgonæan flats
Beside Cisthené. There, the Phorcides,
Three ancient maidens, live, with shape of swan,
One tooth between them, and one common eye:
On whom the sun doth never look at all
With all his rays, nor evermore the moon
When she looks through the night. Anear to whom
Are the Gorgon sisters three, enclothed with wings,
With twisted snakes for ringlets, man-abhorred:
There is no mortal gazes in their face
And gazing can breathe on. I speak of such
To guard thee from their horror. Ay, and list
Another tale of a dreadful sight; beware
The Griffins, those unbarking dogs of Zeus,
Those sharp-mouthed dogs! — and the Arimaspian host
Of one-eyed horsemen, habiting beside
The river of Pluto that runs bright with gold:
Approach them not, beseech thee! Presently
Thou’lt come to a distant land, a dusky tribe
Of dwellers at the fountain of the Sun,
Whence flows the river Æthiops; wind along
Its banks and turn off at the cataracts,
Just as the Nile pours from the Bybline hills
His holy and sweet wave; his course shall guide
Thine own to that triangular Nile-ground
Where, Io, is ordained for thee and thine
A lengthened exile. Have I said in this
Aught darkly or incompletely? — now repeat
The question, make the knowledge fuller! Lo,
I have more leisure than I covet, here.
Chorus. If thou canst tell us aught that’s left untold,
Or loosely told, of her most dreary flight,
Declare it straight: but if thou hast uttered all,
Grant us that latter grace for which we prayed,
Remembering how we prayed it.
Prometheus. She has heard
The uttermost of her wandering. There it ends.
But that she may be certain not to have heard
All vainly, I will speak what she endured
Ere coming hither, and invoke the past
To prove my prescience true. And so — to leave
A multitude of words and pass at once
To the subject of thy course — when thou hadst gone
To those
Molossian plains which sweep around
Dodona shouldering Heaven, whereby the fane
Of Zeus Thesprotian keepeth oracle,
And, wonder past belief, where oaks do wave
Articulate adjurations — (ay, the same
Saluted thee in no perplexèd phrase
But clear with glory, noble wife of Zeus
That shouldst be — there some sweetness took thy sense
Thou didst rush further onward, stung along
The ocean-shore, toward Rhea’s mighty bay
And, tost back from it, wast tost to it again
In stormy evolution: — and, know well,
In coming time that hollow of the sea
Shall bear the name Ionian and present
A monument of Io’s passage through
Unto all mortals. Be these words the signs
Of my soul’s power to look beyond the veil
Of visible things. The rest, to you and her
I will declare in common audience, nymphs,
Returning thither where my speech brake off.
There is a town Canopus, built upon
The earth’s fair margin at the mouth of Nile
And on the mound washed up by it; Io, there
Shall Zeus give back to thee thy perfect mind,
And only by the pressure and the touch
Of a hand not terrible; and thou to Zeus
Shalt bear a dusky son who shall be called
Thence, Epaphus, Touched. That son shall pluck the fruit
Of all that land wide-watered by the flow
Of Nile; but after him, when counting out
As far as the fifth full generation, then
Full fifty maidens, a fair woman-race,
Shall back to Argos turn reluctantly,
To fly the proffered nuptials of their kin,
Their father’s brothers. These being passion-struck,
Like falcons bearing hard on flying doves,
Shall follow, hunting at a quarry of love
They should not hunt; till envious Heaven maintain
A curse betwixt that beauty and their desire,
And Greece receive them, to be overcome
Complete Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning Page 23