And the brine of the ocean in rapid emotion,

Be it driven in the face

Of the stars up in heaven, as they walk to and fro!

Let him hurl me anon, into Tartarus

on

To the blackest degree,

With Necessity's vortices strangling me down!

But he cannot join death to a fate meant for me!

Hermes. Why the words that he speaks and the thoughts that he thinks,

Are maniacal-add,

If the Fate who hath bound him, should loose not the links,

He were utterly mad.

Then depart ye who groan with him, Leaving to moan with him

Go in haste! lest the roar of the thunder ancaring

Should blast you to idiocy, living and hearing.

Chorus. Change thy speech for another, thy thought for a new,

If to move me and teach me, indeed be thy care!

For thy words swerve so far from the loyal and true,

That the thunder of Zeus seems more

easy to bear.

How! couldst teach me to venture such vileness? Behold!

I choose, with this victim, this anguish foretold!

I recoil from the traitor in hate and disdain,

And I know that the curse of the treason is worse

Than the pang of the chain. Hermes. Then remember, O nymphs, what I tell you before,

Nor, when pierced by the arrows that
Atè will throw you,

Cast blame on your fate and declare

No abruptness of doom!-but by madness alone,

In the great net of Atè, whence none cometh out,

Ye are wound and undone ! Prometheus. Ay! in act, now-in word, now, no more!

Earth is rocking in space!

And the thunders crash up with a roar upon roar

And the eddying lightnings flash fires in my face,

And the whirlwinds are whirling the dust round and round

And the blasts of the winds universal, leap free

And blow each upon each, with a passion of sound,

And æther goes mingling in storm with the sea!

Such a curse on my head, in a manifest dread,

From the hand of your Zeus has been hurtled along!

O my mother's fair glory! O, Æther, enringing,

All eyes, with the sweet common light of thy bringing.

Dost thou see how I suffer this wrong?