The headlong bolt of thunder breathing flame,
And struck him downward from his eminence
Of boastful exaltation! Through the soul,
It struck him mainly; and his strength was shrunk
To ashes, thunder-blasted. Now, he lies
A helpless trunk supinely, at full length,
Beside the strait of ocean; over-ridden
By roots of Ætna,—high upon
Hephaestus sits and strikes the flashing ore,
From which the great fire-rivers shall burst away
Hereafter, and devour with savage jaws
The equal plains of fruitful Sicily!-
Such passion he shall boil back in hot darts
Of an insatiate fury and sough of flame,-
Fallen Typhon ;-howsoever struck and charred
By Zeus's bolted thunder! But for thee,
Thou art not so unlearned as to need
My teaching-let thy knowledge save thyself.
I quaff the full cup of a present doom,
And wait till Zeus's soul hath quenched its wrath.
Oceanus. Hast thou no knowledge, then, of this,
Prometheus-
That words do medicine anger?
With seasonable softness touch the heart,
And, where the soul is ulcerous, sear it not
With any rudeness.
To dare as nobly—is there harm in that?
Dost thou discern it? Teach me.
An empty wish,—and unresultive work.
Oceanus. Then let me bear the harm of punishment!
Since it most profits that the truly wise
Should seem not wise at all.
Who sits a new king on the general throne? Prometheus. Beware of him,-lest thine heart grieve by him.
Oceanus. Thy doom, Prometheus, be my teacher! Prometheus. Go! Depart-beware!-and keep the mind thou hast. Oceanus. Thy words drive after, as I rush before— Lo! my four-footed Bird sweeps smooth and wide The flats of air with balanced pinions, glad
To bend his knee at home, in the ocean-stall.
I moan thy fate, I moan for thee,
Prometheus! From my restless eyes,
Drop by drop intermittently,
A trickling stream of tears supplies
My cheeks all wet from fountains free,—
Because that Zeus, the sternly bold,
Whose law is taken from his breast,
Uplifts his sceptre manifest
Over the gods of old.
1st Antistrophe.
All the land is moaning
With a murmured plaint to-day!
All the mortal nations,
Having habitations
Near the holy Asia,
Are a dirge entoning
For thine honor and thy brother's,
Once majestic beyond others
In the old belief,
Now are groaning in the groaning
Of thy deep-voiced grief.
Mourn the virgins, 'habitant
Of the Colchian land,
Who with white, calm bosoms, stand
In the battle's roar―
Mourn the Scythian tribes that haunt
The verge of earth, Mæotis' shore—
2d Antistrophe.
And Arabia's battle crown,
And dwellers in the lofty town
Mount Caucasus sublimely nears,—
An iron squadron, thundering down
With the sharp-prowed spears.
But one other before, have I seen to remain,
By invincible pain
Bound and vanquished,—one Titan!-'twas Atlas
In a curse from the gods, by that strength of his own
Which he evermore wears,
The weight of the heaven on his shoulder alone,
While he sighs up the stars!
And the ocean-tides bellow, in bursting their bars,—
Murmurs stir the profound,—
And black Hades roars up through the chasm of the
And the founts of the pure-running rivers moan low In the pathos of woe.
Prometheus. Beseech you, think not I am silent
Through pride or scorn! I only gnaw my heart
With meditation, seeing myself so wronged!
For so-their honors to these new-made gods,
What other gave but I,-and shared them out
With distribution? Ay-but here I am dumb;
For here, I should repeat your knowledge to you,
If I spake aught. List rather to the works
I did for mortals, and how, fools before,
I made them wise and true in aim of soul !—
And I will tell you-not as taunting them,
But teaching you the intention of my gifts;
How, first beholding, they beheld in vain,
And hearing, heard not, but, like shapes in dreams,
Mixed all things wildly down the tedious time;
Nor knew to build a house against the sun,
With wicketed sides; nor any woodwork knew;
But lived, like silly ants, beneath the ground
In hollow caves unsunned. There, came to them
No steadfast sign of winter, nor of spring
Flower-perfumed, nor of autumn full of fruit,-*
But all things they did blindly and lawlessly,
Until I taught them how the stars do rise
And set in mystery; and devised for them
Number, the inducer of philosophies,
The synthesis of Letters, and beside
The artificer of all things, Memory,
That sweet Muse-mother. I was first to yoke
The servile beasts in couples, carrying
An heirdom of man's burdens on their backs!
I joined to chariots, steeds, that love the bit
They champ at the chief pomp of golden ease!
And no one else but I, achieved, beside,
The seaman's chariots, wandering on the brine
With linen wings! And I-oh, miserable!—
Who did devise for mortals all these arts,
Have no device left now to save myself
From the woe I suffer!
Thou sufferest, and dost stagger from the sense, Bewildered! Like a bad leech falling sick,
Thou'rt faint at heart, and canst not find the drugs Required to save thyself.
And marvel further-what more arts and means
I did invent,—this, greatest!—if a man
Fell sick, there was no cure, nor esculent,
Nor chrism, nor liquid; but, for lack of drugs,
Men pined and wasted, till I showed to them
Those mixtures of emollient remedies
Whereby they might be rescued from disease.
I fixed the various rules of mantic art,
Discerned the vision from the common dream,
And made them wise in vocal auguries
Hard to interpret; and defined as plain
The wayside omens,-flights of crook-clawed birds,
Showed which are, by their nature, fortunate,
And which not so, and what the food of each,
And what the hates, affections, social needs,
Of all to one another; and what sign
Of visceral lightness, colored to a shade,
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