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Despre Boierism: manifest si razie
Tavola Rotonda
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- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 2005-10-26 | [Questo testo si dovrebbe leggere in english] | Submited by Ionescu Bogdan Introductory Note Prometheus Unbound best combines the various elements of Shelley's genius in their most complete expression, and unites harmoniously his lyrically creative power of imagination and his 'passion for reforming the world.' It is the fruit of an outburst of poetic energy under the double stimulus of his enthusiastic Greek studies, begun under Peacock's influence, and of his delight in the beauty of Italy, whither he had removed for health and rest. It marks his full mastery of his powers. It is, not less than Queen Mab and The Revolt of Islam, a poem of the moral perfection of man; and, not less than Alastor and Epipsychidion, a poem of spiritual ideality. He was himself in love with it: 'a poem of a higher character than anything I have yet attempted and perhaps less an imitation of anything that has gone before it,' he writes to Ollier; and again, 'a poem in my best style, whatever that may amount to,... the most perfect of my productions,' and 'the best thing I ever wrote;' and finally he says, 'Prometheus Unbound, I must tell you, is my favorite poem; I charge you, therefore, especially to pet him and feed him with fine ink and good paper.... I think, if I can judge by its merits, the Prometheus cannot sell beyond twenty copies.' Nor did he lose his affection for it. Trelawny records him as saying, 'If that is not durable poetry, tried by the severest test, I do not know what is. It is a lofty subject, not inadequately treated, and should not perish with me.'... 'My friends say my Prometheus is too wild, ideal, and perplexed with imagery. It may be so. It has no resemblance to the Greek drama. It is original; and cost me severe mental labor. Authors, like mothers, prefer the children who have given them most trouble.' The drama was begun in the summer-house of his garden at Este about September, 1818, and the first Act had been finished as early as October 8; it was apparently laid aside, and again taken up at Rome in the spring of 1819, where, under the circumstances described in the preface, the second and third Acts were added, and the work, in its first form, was thus completed by April 6. The fourth Act was an afterthought, and was composed at Florence toward the end of the year. The whole was published, with other poems, in the summer of 1820. The following extracts from Mrs. Shelley's long and admirable note show the progress of the poem during its composition, the atmosphere of its creation, and its general scheme: 'The first aspect of Italy enchanted Shelley; it seemed a garden of delight placed beneath a clearer and brighter heaven than any he had lived under before. He wrote long descriptive letters during the first year of his residence in Italy, which, as compositions, are the most beautiful in the world, and show how truly he appreciated and studied the wonders of nature and art in that divine land. 'The poetical spirit within him speedily revived with all the power and with more than all the beauty of his first attempts. He meditated three subjects as the groundwork for lyrical Dramas. One was the story of Tasso: of this a slight fragment of a song of Tasso remains. The other was one founded on the book of Job, which he never abandoned in idea, but of which no trace remains among his papers. The third was the Prometheus Unbound. The Greek tragedians were now his most familiar companions in his wanderings, and the sublime majesty of Æschylus filled him with wonder and delight. The father of Greek tragedy does not possess the pathos of Sophocles, nor the variety and tenderness of Euripides; the interest on which he founds his dramas is often elevated above human vicissitudes into the mighty passions and throes of gods and demigods--such fascinated the abstract imagination of Shelley. 'We spent a month at Milan, visiting the Lake of Como during that interval. Thence we passed in succession to Pisa, Leghorn, the Baths of Lucca, Venice, Este, Rome, Naples, and back again to Rome, whither we returned early in March, 1819. During all this time Shelley meditated the subject of his drama, and wrote portions of it. Other poems were composed during this interval, and while at the Bogni di Lucca he translated Plato's Symposium. But though he diversified his studies, his thoughts centred in the Prometheus. At last, when at Rome, during a bright and beautiful spring, he gave up his whole time to the composition. The spot selected for his study was, as he mentions in his preface, the mountainous ruins of the Baths of Caracalla. These are little known to the ordinary visitor at Rome. He describes them in a letter, with that poetry, and delicacy, and truth of description, which rendered his narrated impressions of scenery of unequalled beauty and interest. 'At first he completed the drama in three acts. It was not till several months after, when at Florence, that he conceived that a fourth act, a sort of hymn of rejoicing in the fulfilment of the prophecies with regard to Prometheus, ought to be added to complete the composition. 'The prominent feature of Shelley's theory of the destiny of the human species was, that evil is not inherent in the system of the creation, but an accident that might be expelled. This also forms a portion of Christianity; God made earth and man perfect, till he, by his fall, '"Brought death into the world and all our woe." Shelley believed that mankind had only to will that there should be no evil, and there would be none. It is not my part in these notes to notice the arguments that have been urged against this opinion, but to mention the fact that he entertained it, and was indeed attached to it with fervent enthusiasm. That man could be so perfectionized as to be able to expel evil from his own nature, and from the greater part of the creation, was the cardinal point of his system. And the subject he loved best to dwell on, was the image of One warring with the Evil Principle, oppressed not only by it, but by all, even the good, who were deluded into considering evil a necessary portion of humanity; a victim full of fortitude and hope, and the spirit of triumph emanating from a reliance in the ultimate omnipotence of good. Such he had depicted in his last poem, when he made Laon the enemy and the victim of tyrants. He now took a more idealized image of the same subject. He followed certain classical authorities in figuring Saturn as the good principle, Jupiter the usurping evil one, and Prometheus as the regenerator, who, unable to bring mankind back to primitive innocence, used knowledge as a weapon to defeat evil, by leading mankind beyond the state wherein they are sinless through ignorance, to that in which they are virtuous through wisdom. Jupiter punished the temerity of the Titan by chaining him to a rock of Caucasus, and causing a vulture to devour his still-renewed heart. There was a prophecy afloat in heaven portending the fall of Jove, the secret of averting which was known only to Prometheus; and the god offered freedom from torture on condition of its being communicated to him. According to the mythological story, this referred to the offspring of Thetis, who was destined to be greater than his father. Prometheus at last bought pardon for his crime of enriching mankind with his gifts, by revealing the prophecy. Hercules killed the vulture and set him free, and Thetis was married to Peleus the father of Achilles. 'Shelley adapted the catastrophe of this story to his peculiar views. The son, greater than his father, born of the nuptials of Jupiter and Thetis, was to dethrone Evil and bring back a happier reign than that of Saturn. Prometheus defies the power of his enemy, and endures centuries of torture, till the hour arrives when Jove, blind to the real event, but darkly guessing that some great good to himself will flow, espouses Thetis. At the moment, the Primal Power of the world drives him from his usurped throne, and Strength, in the person of Hercules, liberates Humanity, typified in Prometheus, from the tortures generated by evil done or suffered. Asia, one of the Oceanides, is the wife of Prometheus--she was, according to other mythological interpretations, the same as Venus and Nature. When the Benefactor of Mankind is liberated, Nature resumes the beauty of her prime, and is united to her husband, the emblem of the human race, in perfect and happy union. In the fourth Act, the poet gives further scope to his imagination, and idealizes the forms of creation, such as we know them, instead of such as they appeared to the Greeks. Maternal Earth, the mighty Parent, is superseded by the Spirit of the Earth--the guide of our planet through the realms of sky--while his fair and weaker companion and attendant, the Spirit of the Moon, receives bliss from the annihilation of Evil in the superior sphere. 'Shelley develops, more particularly in the lyrics of this drama, his abstruse and imaginative theories with regard to the Creation. It requires a mind as subtle and penetrating as his own to understand the mystic meanings scattered throughout the poem. They elude the ordinary reader by their abstraction and delicacy of distinction, but they are far from vague. It was his design to write prose metaphysical essays on the nature of Man, which would have served to explain much of what is obscure in his poetry; a few scattered fragments of observations and remarks alone remain. He considered these philosophical views of mind and nature to be instinct with the intensest spirit of poetry. 'More popular poets clothe the ideal with familiar and sensible imagery. Shelley loved to idealize the real--to gift the mechanism of the material universe with a soul and a voice, and to bestow such also on the most delicate and abstract emotions and thoughts of the mind.... 'Through the whole Poem there reigns a sort of calm and holy spirit of love; it soothes the tortured, and is hope to the expectant, till the prophecy is fulfilled, and Love, untainted by any evil, becomes the law of the world.... 'The charm of the Roman climate helped to clothe his thoughts in greater beauty than they had ever worn before; and as he wandered among the ruins, made one with nature in their decay, or gazed on the Praxitelean shapes that throng the Vatican, the Capitol, and the palaces of Rome, his soul imbibed forms of loveliness which became a portion of itself. There are many passages in the Prometheus which show the intense delight he received from such studies, and give back the impression with a beauty of poetical description peculiarly his own.' Author's Preface The Greek tragic writers, in selecting as their subject any portion of their national history or mythology, employed in their treatment of it a certain arbitrary discretion. They by no means conceived themselves bound to adhere to the common interpretation or to imitate in story as in title their rivals and predecessors. Such a system would have amounted to a resignation of those claims to preference over their competitors which incited the composition. The Agamemnonian story was exhibited on the Athenian theatre with as many variations as dramas. I have presumed to employ a similar license. The Prometheus Unbound of Æschylus supposed the reconciliation of Jupiter with his victim as the price of the disclosure of the danger threatened to his empire by the consummation of his marriage with Thetis. Thetis, according to this view of the subject, was given in marriage to Peleus, and Prometheus, by the permission of Jupiter, delivered from his captivity by Hercules. Had I framed my story on this model, I should have done no more than have attempted to restore the lost drama of Æschylus; an ambition which, if my preference to this mode of treating the subject had incited me to cherish, the recollection of the high comparison such an attempt would challenge might well abate. But, in truth, I was averse from a catastrophe so feeble as that of reconciling the Champion with the Oppressor of mankind. The moral interest of the fable, which is so powerfully sustained by the sufferings and endurance of Prometheus, would be annihilated if we could conceive of him as unsaying his high language and quailing before his successful and perfidious adversary. The only imaginary being, resembling in any degree Prometheus, is Satan; and Prometheus is, in my judgment, a more poetical character than Satan, because, in addition to courage, and majesty, and firm and patient opposition to omnipotent force, he is susceptible of being described as exempt from the taints of ambition, envy, revenge, and a desire for personal aggrandizement, which, in the hero of Paradise Lost, interfere with the interest. The character of Satan engenders in the mind a pernicious casuistry which leads us to weigh his faults with his wrongs, and to excuse the former because the latter exceed all measure. In the minds of those who consider that magnificent fiction with a religious feeling it engenders something worse. But Prometheus is, as it were, the type of the highest perfection of moral and intellectual nature impelled by the purest and the truest motives to the best and noblest ends. This Poem was chiefly written upon the mountainous ruins of the Baths of Caracalla, among the flowery glades and thickets of odoriferous blossoming trees, which are extended in ever winding labyrinths upon its immense platforms and dizzy arches suspended in the air. The bright blue sky of Rome, and the effect of the vigorous awakening spring in that divinest climate, and the new life with which it drenches the spirits even to intoxication, were the inspiration of this drama. The imagery which I have employed will be found, in many instances, to have been drawn from the operations of the human mind, or from those external actions by which they are expressed. This is unusual in modern poetry, although Dante and Shakespeare are full of instances of the same kind; Dante indeed more than any other poet, and with greater success. But the Greek poets, as writers to whom no resource of awakening the sympathy of their contemporaries was unknown, were in the habitual use of this power; and it is the study of their works (since a higher merit would probably be denied me) to which I am willing that my readers should impute this singularity. One word is due in candor to the degree in which the study of contemporary writings may have tinged my composition, for such has been a topic of censure with regard to poems far more popular, and indeed more deservedly popular, than mine. It is impossible that any one, who inhabits the same age with such writers as those who stand in the foremost ranks of our own, can conscientiously assure himself that his language and tone of thought may not have been modified by the study of the productions of those extraordinary intellects. It is true that, not the spirit of their genius, but the forms in which it has manifested itself, are due less to the peculiarities of their own minds than to the peculiarity of the moral and intellectual condition of the minds among which they have been produced. Thus a number of writers possess the form, whilst they want the spirit of those whom, it is alleged, they imitate; because the former is the endowment of the age in which they live, and the latter must be the uncommunicated lightning of their own mind. The peculiar style of intense and comprehensive imagery which distinguishes the modern literature of England has not been, as a general power, the product of the imitation of any particular writer. The mass of capabilities remains at every period materially the same; the circumstances which awaken it to action perpetually change. If England were divided into forty republics, each equal in population and extent to Athens, there is no reason to suppose but that, under institutions not more perfect than those of Athens, each would produce philosophers and poets equal to those who (if we except Shakespeare) have never been surpassed. We owe the great writers of the golden age of our literature to that fervid awakening of the public mind which shook to dust the oldest and most oppressive form of the Christian religion. We owe Milton to the progress and development of the same spirit: the sacred Milton was, let it ever be remembered, a republican and a bold inquirer into morals and religion. The great writers of our own age are, we have reason to suppose, the companions and forerunners of some unimagined change in our social condition or the opinions which cement it. The cloud of mind is discharging its collected lightning, and the equilibrium between institutions and opinions is now restoring or is about to be restored. As to imitation, poetry is a mimetic art. It creates, but it creates by combination and representation. Poetical abstractions are beautiful and new, not because the portions of which they are composed had no previous existence in the mind of man or in Nature, but because the whole produced by their combination has some intelligible and beautiful analogy with those sources of emotion and thought and with the contemporary condition of them. One great poet is a masterpiece of Nature which another not only ought to study but must study. He might as wisely and as easily determine that his mind should no longer be the mirror of all that is lovely in the visible universe as exclude from his contemplation the beautiful which exists in the writings of a great contemporary. The pretence of doing it would be a presumption in any but the greatest; the effect, even in him, would be strained, unnatural and ineffectual. A poet is the combined product of such internal powers as modify the nature of others, and of such external influences as excite and sustain these powers; he is not one, but both. Every man's mind is, in this respect, modified by all the objects of Nature and art; by every word and every suggestion which he ever admitted to act upon his consciousness; it is the mirror upon which all forms are reflected and in which they compose one form. Poets, not otherwise than philosophers, painters, sculptors and musicians, are, in one sense, the creators, and, in another, the creations, of their age. From this subjection the loftiest do not escape. There is a similarity between Homer and Hesiod, between Æschylus and Euripides, between Virgil and Horace, between Dante and Petrarch, between Shakespeare and Fletcher, between Dryden and Pope; each has a generic resemblance under which their specific distinctions are arranged. If this similarity be the result of imitation, I am willing to confess that I have imitated. Let this opportunity be conceded to me of acknowledging that I have what a Scotch philosopher characteristically terms a 'passion for reforming the world:' what passion incited him to write and publish his book he omits to explain. For my part I had rather be damned with Plato and Lord Bacon than go to Heaven with Paley and Malthus. But it is a mistake to suppose that I dedicate my poetical compositions solely to the direct enforcement of reform, or that I consider them in any degree as containing a reasoned system on the theory of human life. Didactic poetry is my abhorrence; nothing can be equally well expressed in prose that is not tedious and supererogatory in verse. My purpose has hitherto been simply to familiarize the highly refined imagination of the more select classes of poetical readers with beautiful idealisms of moral excellence; aware that, until the mind can love, and admire, and trust, and hope, and endure, reasoned principles of moral conduct are seeds cast upon the highway of life which the unconscious passenger tramples into dust, although they would bear the harvest of his happiness. Should I live to accomplish what I purpose, that is, produce a systematical history of what appear to me to be the genuine elements of human society, let not the advocates of injustice and superstition flatter themselves that I should take Æschylus rather than Plato as my model. The having spoken of myself with unaffected freedom will need little apology with the candid; and let the uncandid consider that they injure me less than their own hearts and minds by misrepresentation. Whatever talents a person may possess to amuse and instruct others, be they ever so inconsiderable, he is yet bound to exert them: if his attempt be ineffectual, let the punishment of an unaccomplished purpose have been sufficient; let none trouble themselves to heap the dust of oblivion upon his efforts; the pile they raise will betray his grave which might otherwise have been unknown. Act I SCENE, a Ravine of Icy Rocks in the Indian Caucasus. PROMETHEUS is discovered bound to the Precipice. PANTEA and IONE are seated at his feet. Time, Night. During the Scene morning slowly breaks. PROMETHEUS MONARCH of Gods and Dæmons, and all Spirits But One, who throng those bright and rolling worlds Which Thou and I alone of living things Behold with sleepless eyes! regard this Earth Made multitudinous with thy slaves, whom thou Requitest for knee-worship, prayer, and praise, And toil, and hecatombs of broken hearts, With fear and self-contempt and barren hope; Whilst me, who am thy foe, eyeless in hate, Hast thou made reign and triumph, to thy scorn, 10 O'er mine own misery and thy vain revenge. Three thousand years of sleep-unsheltered hours, And moments aye divided by keen pangs Till they seemed years, torture and solitude, Scorn and despair--these are mine empire: More glorious far than that which thou surveyest From thine unenvied throne, O Mighty God! Almighty, had I deigned to share the shame Of thine ill tyranny, and hung not here Nailed to this wall of eagle-baffling mountain, 20 Black, wintry, dead, unmeasured; without herb, Insect, or beast, or shape or sound of life. Ah me! alas, pain, pain ever, forever! No change, no pause, no hope! Yet I endure. I ask the Earth, have not the mountains felt? I ask yon Heaven, the all-beholding Sun, Has it not seen? The Sea, in storm or calm, Heaven's ever-changing shadow, spread below, Have its deaf waves not heard my agony? Ah me! alas, pain, pain ever, forever! 30 The crawling glaciers pierce me with the spears Of their moon-freezing crystals; the bright chains Eat with their burning cold into my bones. Heaven's wingèd hound, polluting from thy lips His beak in poison not his own, tears up My heart; and shapeless sights come wandering by, The ghastly people of the realm of dream, Mocking me; and the Earthquake-fiends are charged To wrench the rivets from my quivering wounds When the rocks split and close again behind; 40 While from their loud abysses howling throng The genii of the storm, urging the rage Of whirlwind, and afflict me with keen hail. And yet to me welcome is day and night, Whether one breaks the hoar-frost of the morn, Or starry, dim, and slow, the other climbs The leaden-colored east; for then they lead The wingless, crawling hours, one among whom-- As some dark Priest hales the reluctant victim-- Shall drag thee, cruel King, to kiss the blood 50 From these pale feet, which then might trample thee If they disdained not such a prostrate slave. Disdain! Ah, no! I pity thee. What ruin Will hunt thee undefended through the wide Heaven! How will thy soul, cloven to its depth with terror, Gape like a hell within! I speak in grief, Not exultation, for I hate no more, As then ere misery made me wise. The curse Once breathed on thee I would recall. Ye Mountains, Whose many-voicèd Echoes, through the mist 60 Of cataracts, flung the thunder of that spell! Ye icy Springs, stagnant with wrinkling frost, Which vibrated to hear me, and then crept Shuddering through India! Thou serenest Air Through which the Sun walks burning without beams! And ye swift Whirlwinds, who on poisèd wings Hung mute and moveless o'er yon hushed abyss, As thunder, louder than your own, made rock The orbèd world! If then my words had power, Though I am changed so that aught evil wish 70 Is dead within; although no memory be Of what is hate, let them not lose it now! What was that curse? for ye all heard me speak. FIRST VOICE: from the Mountains Thrice three hundred thousand years O'er the earthquake's couch we stood; Oft, as men convulsed with fears, We trembled in our multitude. SECOND VOICE: from the Springs Thunderbolts had parched our water, We had been stained with bitter blood, And had run mute, 'mid shrieks of slaughter 80 Through a city and a solitude. THIRD VOICE: from the Air I had clothed, since Earth uprose, Its wastes in colors not their own, And oft had my serene repose Been cloven by many a rending groan. FOURTH VOICE: from the Whirlwinds We had soared beneath these mountains Unresting ages; nor had thunder, Nor yon volcano's flaming fountains, Nor any power above or under Ever made us mute with wonder. 90 FIRST VOICE But never bowed our snowy crest As at the voice of thine unrest. SECOND VOICE Never such a sound before To the Indian waves we bore. A pilot asleep on the howling sea Leaped up from the deck in agony, And heard, and cried, 'Ah, woe is me!' And died as mad as the wild waves be. THIRD VOICE By such dread words from Earth to Heaven My still realm was never riven; 100 When its wound was closed, there stood Darkness o'er the day like blood. FOURTH VOICE And we shrank back: for dreams of ruin To frozen caves our flight pursuing Made us keep silence--thus--and thus-- Though silence is a hell to us. THE EARTH The tongueless caverns of the craggy hills Cried, 'Misery!' then; the hollow Heaven replied, 'Misery!' And the Ocean's purple waves, Climbing the land, howled to the lashing winds, 110 And the pale nations heard it, 'Misery!' PROMETHEUS I hear a sound of voices; not the voice Which I gave forth. Mother, thy sons and thou Scorn him, without whose all-enduring will Beneath the fierce omnipotence of Jove, Both they and thou had vanished, like thin mist Unrolled on the morning wind. Know ye not me, The Titan? He who made his agony The barrier to your else all-conquering foe? O rock-embosomed lawns and snow-fed streams, 120 Now seen athwart frore vapors, deep below, Through whose o'ershadowing woods I wandered once With Asia, drinking life from her loved eyes; Why scorns the spirit, which informs ye, now To commune with me? me alone who checked, As one who checks a fiend-drawn charioteer, The falsehood and the force of him who reigns Supreme, and with the groans of pining slaves Fills your dim glens and liquid wildernesses: Why answer ye not, still? Brethren! THE EARTH They dare not. 130 PROMETHEUS Who dares? for I would hear that curse again. Ha, what an awful whisper rises up! 'Tis scarce like sound; it tingles through the frame As lightning tingles, hovering ere it strike. Speak, Spirit! from thine inorganic voice I only know that thou art moving near And love. How cursed I him? THE EARTH How canst thou hear Who knowest not the language of the dead? PROMETHEUS Thou art a living spirit; speak as they. THE EARTH I dare not speak like life, lest Heaven's fell King 140 Should hear, and link me to some wheel of pain More torturing than the one whereon I roll. Subtle thou art and good; and though the Gods Hear not this voice, yet thou art more than God, Being wise and kind: earnestly hearken now. PROMETHEUS Obscurely through my brain, like shadows dim, Sweep awful thoughts, rapid and thick. I feel Faint, like one mingled in entwining love; Yet 't is not pleasure. THE EARTH No, thou canst not hear; Thou art immortal, and this tongue is known 150 Only to those who die. PROMETHEUS And what art thou, O melancholy Voice? THE EARTH I am the Earth, Thy mother; she within whose stony veins, To the last fibre of the loftiest tree Whose thin leaves trembled in the frozen air, Joy ran, as blood within a living frame, When thou didst from her bosom, like a cloud Of glory, arise, a spirit of keen joy! And at thy voice her pining sons uplifted Their prostrate brows from the polluting dust, 160 And our almighty Tyrant with fierce dread Grew pale, until his thunder chained thee here. Then--see those million worlds which burn and roll Around us--their inhabitants beheld My spherèd light wane in wide Heaven; the sea Was lifted by strange tempest, and new fire From earthquake-rifted mountains of bright snow Shook its portentous hair beneath Heaven's frown; Lightning and Inundation vexed the plains; Blue thistles bloomed in cities; foodless toads 170 Within voluptuous chambers panting crawled. When Plague had fallen on man and beast and worm, And Famine; and black blight on herb and tree; And in the corn, and vines, and meadow-grass, Teemed ineradicable poisonous weeds Draining their growth, for my wan breast was dry With grief, and the thin air, my breath, was stained With the contagion of a mother's hate Breathed on her child's destroyer; ay, I heard Thy curse, the which, if thou rememberest not, 180 Yet my innumerable seas and streams, Mountains, and caves, and winds, and yon wide air, And the inarticulate people of the dead, Preserve, a treasured spell. We meditate In secret joy and hope those dreadful words, But dare not speak them. PROMETHEUS Venerable mother! All else who live and suffer take from thee Some comfort; flowers, and fruits, and happy sounds, And love, though fleeting; these may not be mine. But mine own words, I pray, deny me not. 190 THE EARTH They shall be told. Ere Babylon was dust, The Magus Zoroaster, my dead child, Met his own image walking in the garden. That apparition, sole of men, he saw. For know there are two worlds of life and death: One that which thou beholdest; but the other Is underneath the grave, where do inhabit The shadows of all forms that think and live, Till death unite them and they part no more; Dreams and the light imaginings of men, 200 And all that faith creates or love desires, Terrible, strange, sublime and beauteous shapes. There thou art, and dost hang, a writhing shade, 'Mid whirlwind-peopled mountains; all the gods Are there, and all the powers of nameless worlds, Vast, sceptred phantoms; heroes, men, and beasts; And Demogorgon, a tremendous gloom; And he, the supreme Tyrant, on his throne Of burning gold. Son, one of these shall utter The curse which all remember. Call at will 210 Thine own ghost, or the ghost of Jupiter, Hades or Typhon, or what mightier Gods From all-prolific Evil, since thy ruin, Have sprung, and trampled on my prostrate sons. Ask, and they must reply: so the revenge Of the Supreme may sweep through vacant shades, As rainy wind through the abandoned gate Of a fallen palace. PROMETHEUS Mother, let not aught Of that which may be evil pass again My lips, or those of aught resembling me. 220 Phantasm of Jupiter, arise, appear! IONE My wings are folded o'er mine ears; My wings are crossèd o'er mine eyes; Yet through their silver shade appears, And through their lulling plumes arise, A Shape, a throng of sounds. May it be no ill to thee O thou of many wounds! Near whom, for our sweet sister's sake, Ever thus we watch and wake. 230 PANTHEA The sound is of whirlwind underground, Earthquake, and fire, and mountains cloven; The shape is awful, like the sound, Clothed in dark purple, star-inwoven. A sceptre of pale gold, To stay steps proud, o'er the slow cloud, His veinèd hand doth hold. Cruel he looks, but calm and strong, Like one who does, not suffers wrong. PHANTASM OF JUPITER Why have the secret powers of this strange world 240 Driven me, a frail and empty phantom, hither On direst storms? What unaccustomed sounds Are hovering on my lips, unlike the voice With which our pallid race hold ghastly talk In darkness? And, proud sufferer, who art thou? PROMETHEUS Tremendous Image! as thou art must be He whom thou shadowest forth. I am his foe, The Titan. Speak the words which I would hear, Although no thought inform thine empty voice. THE EARTH Listen! And though your echoes must be mute, 250 Gray mountains, and old woods, and haunted springs, Prophetic caves, and isle-surrounding streams, Rejoice to hear what yet ye cannot speak. PHANTASM A spirit seizes me and speaks within; It tears me as fire tears a thunder-cloud. PANTHEA See how he lifts his mighty looks! the Heaven Darkens above. IONE He speaks! Oh, shelter me! PROMETHEUS I see the curse on gestures proud and cold, And looks of firm defiance, and calm hate, And such despair as mocks itself with smiles, 260 Written as on a scroll: yet speak! Oh, speak! PHANTASM Fiend, I defy thee! with a calm, fixed mind, All that thou canst inflict I bid thee do; Foul tyrant both of Gods and humankind, One only being shalt thou not subdue. Rain then thy plagues upon me here, Ghastly disease, and frenzying fear; And let alternate frost and fire Eat into me, and be thine ire Lightning, and cutting hail, and legioned forms 270 Of furies, driving by upon the wounding storms. Ay, do thy worst! Thou art omnipotent. O'er all things but thyself I gave thee power, And my own will. Be thy swift mischiefs sent To blast mankind, from yon ethereal tower. Let thy malignant spirit move In darkness over those I love; On me and mine I imprecate The utmost torture of thy hate; And thus devote to sleepless agony, 280 This undeclining head while thou must reign on high. But thou, who art the God and Lord: O thou Who fillest with thy soul this world of woe, To whom all things of Earth and Heaven do bow In fear and worship--all-prevailing foe! I curse thee! let a sufferer's curse Clasp thee, his torturer, like remorse; Till thine Infinity shall be A robe of envenomed agony; And thine Omnipotence a crown of pain, 290 To cling like burning gold round thy dissolving brain! Heap on thy soul, by virtue of this Curse, Ill deeds; then be thou damned, beholding good; Both infinite as is the universe, And thou, and thy self-torturing solitude. An awful image of calm power Though now thou sittest, let the hour Come, when thou must appear to be That which thou art internally; And after many a false and fruitless crime, 300 Scorn track thy lagging fall through boundless space and time! PROMETHEUS Were these my words, O Parent? THE EARTH They were thine. PROMETHEUS It doth repent me; words are quick and vain; Grief for awhile is blind, and so was mine. I wish no living thing to suffer pain. THE EARTH Misery, oh, misery to me, That Jove at length should vanquish thee! Wail, howl aloud, Land and Sea, The Earth's rent heart shall answer ye! Howl, Spirits of the living and the dead, 310 Your refuge, your defence, lies fallen and vanquishèd! FIRST ECHO Lies fallen and vanquishèd! SECOND ECHO Fallen and vanquishèd! IONE Fear not: 't is but some passing spasm, The Titan is unvanquished still. But see, where through the azure chasm Of yon forked and snowy hill, Trampling the slant winds on high With golden-sandalled feet, that glow Under plumes of purple dye, 320 Like rose-ensanguined ivory, A Shape comes now, Stretching on high from his right hand A serpent-cinctured wand. PANTHEA 'T is Jove's world-wandering herald, Mercury. IONE And who are those with hydra tresses And iron wings, that climb the wind, Whom the frowning God represses,-- Like vapors steaming up behind, Clanging loud, an endless crowd? 330 PANTHEA These are Jove's tempest-walking hounds, Whom he gluts with groans and blood, When charioted on sulphurous cloud He bursts Heaven's bounds. IONE Are they now led from the thin dead On new pangs to be fed? PANTHEA The Titan looks as ever, firm, not proud. FIRST FURY Ha! I scent life! SECOND FURY Let me but look into his eyes! THIRD FURY The hope of torturing him smells like a heap Of corpses to a death-bird after battle. 340 FIRST FURY Darest thou delay, O Herald! take cheer, Hounds Of Hell: what if the Son of Maia soon Should make us food and sport--who can please long The Omnipotent? MERCURY Back to your towers of iron, And gnash, beside the streams of fire and wail, Your foodless teeth. Geryon, arise! and Gorgon, Chimæra, and thou Sphinx, subtlest of fiends, Who ministered to Thebes Heaven's poisoned wine, Unnatural love, and more unnatural hate: These shall perform your task. FIRST FURY Oh, mercy! mercy! 350 We die with our desire! drive us not back! MERCURY Crouch then in silence. Awful Sufferer! To thee unwilling, most unwillingly I come, by the great Father's will driven down, To execute a doom of new revenge. Alas! I pity thee, and hate myself That I can do no more; aye from thy sight Returning, for a season, Heaven seems Hell, So thy worn form pursues me night and day, Smiling reproach. Wise art thou, firm and good, 360 But vainly wouldst stand forth alone in strife Against the Omnipotent; as yon clear lamps, That measure and divide the weary years From which there is no refuge, long have taught And long must teach. Even now thy Torturer arms With the strange might of unimagined pains The powers who scheme slow agonies in Hell, And my commission is to lead them here, Or what more subtle, foul, or savage fiends People the abyss, and leave them to their task. 370 Be it not so! there is a secret known To thee, and to none else of living things, Which may transfer the sceptre of wide Heaven, The fear of which perplexes the Supreme. Clothe it in words, and bid it clasp his throne In intercession; bend thy soul in prayer, And like a suppliant in some gorgeous fane, Let the will kneel within thy haughty heart, For benefits and meek submission tame The fiercest and the mightiest. PROMETHEUS Evil minds 380 Change good to their own nature. I gave all He has; and in return he chains me here Years, ages, night and day; whether the Sun Split my parched skin, or in the moony night The crystal-wingèd snow cling round my hair; Whilst my belovèd race is trampled down By his thought-executing ministers. Such is the tyrant's recompense. 'T is just. He who is evil can receive no good; And for a world bestowed, or a friend lost, 390 He can feel hate, fear, shame; not gratitude. He but requites me for his own misdeed. Kindness to such is keen reproach, which breaks With bitter stings the light sleep of Revenge. Submission thou dost know I cannot try. For what submission but that fatal word, The death-seal of mankind's captivity, Like the Sicilian's hair-suspended sword, Which trembles o'er his crown, would he accept, Or could I yield? Which yet I will not yield. 400 Let others flatter Crime where it sis throned In brief Omnipotence; secure are they; For Justice, when triumphant, will weep down Pity, not punishment, on her own wrongs, Too much avenged by those who err. I wait, 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 From the furnace, white and hot, 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 To his pillow hovering came, And I knew it was the same Which had kindled long ago Pity, eloquence, and woe; 730 And the world awhile below Wore the shade its lustre made. It has borne me here as fleet As Desire's lightning feet; I 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; Nor seeks nor finds he mortal blisses, 740 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 The yellow bees in 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! One of these awakened me, 750 And I sped to succor thee. IONE Behold'st thou not two shapes from the east and west Come, as two doves to one belovèd nest, Twin nurslings of the all-sustaining air, On swift still wings glide down the atmosphere? And, hark! their sweet sad voices! 't is 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 On their sustaining wings of skyey grain, 760 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, That 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 passed 't was fading, And hollow Ruin yawned behind; great sages bound in madness, And headless patriots, and pale youths who perished, unupbraiding, Gleamed in the night. I wandered o'er, till thou, O King of sadness, 770 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 killing footstep, and fans with silent wing The 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 Though Ruin now Love's shadow be, 780 Following him, destroyingly, On Death's white and wingèd steed, Which the fleetest cannot flee, Trampling down both flower and weed, Man 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 In the atmosphere we breathe, 790 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 That 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 Which begins and ends in thee. 800 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, Which 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, Wert like a golden chalice to bright wine 810 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, If 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; Earth can console, Heaven can torment no more. 820 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 Deeply 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, And haunted by sweet airs and sounds, which flow 830 Among the woods and waters, from the ether Of her transforming presence, which would fade If it were mingled not with thine. Farewell! 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, Which should have learned 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; Like genius, or like joy which riseth up 10 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, Too 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 Of wind-divided mist the darker lake 20 Reflects it; now it wanes; it gleams again As the waves fade, and as the burning threads Of woven cloud unravel in pale air; 'T is lost! and through yon peaks of cloudlike snow The roseate sunlight quivers; hear I not The Æolian 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. Belovèd and most beautiful, who wearest 30 The shadow of that soul by which I live, How late thou art! the spherèd sun had climbed The sea; my heart was sick with hope, before The printless air felt thy belated plumes. PANTHEA Pardon, great Sister! but my wings were faint With the delight of a remembered dream, As are the noontide plumes of summer winds Satiate with sweet flowers. I was wont to sleep Peacefully, and awake refreshed and calm, Before the sacred Titan's fall and thy 40 Unhappy love had made, through use and pity, Both love and woe familiar to my heart As they had grown to thine: erewhile I slept Under the glaucous caverns of old Ocean Within dim bowers of green and purple moss, Our young Ione's soft and milky arms Locked then, as now, behind my dark, moist hair, While my shut eyes and cheek were pressed within The folded depth of her life-breathing bosom: But not as now, since I am made the wind 50 Which fails beneath the music that I bear Of thy most wordless converse; since dissolved Into the sense with which love talks, my rest Was troubled and yet sweet; my waking hours Too full of care and pain. ASIA Lift up thine eyes, And let me read thy dream. PANTHEA As I have said, With our sea-sister at his feet I slept. The mountain mists, condensing at our voice Under the moon, had spread their snowy flakes, From the keen ice shielding our linkèd sleep. 60 Then two dreams came. One I remember not. But in the other his pale wound-worn limbs Fell from Prometheus, and the azure night Grew radiant with the glory of that form Which lives unchanged within, and his voice fell Like music which makes giddy the dim brain, Faint with intoxication of keen joy: 'Sister of her whose footsteps pave the world With loveliness--more fair than aught but her, Whose shadow thou art--lift thine eyes on me.' 70 I lifted them; the overpowering light Of that immortal shape was shadowed o'er By love; which, from his soft and flowing limbs, And passion-parted lips, and keen, faint eyes, Steamed forth like vaporous fire; an atmosphere Which wrapped me in its all-dissolving power, As the warm ether of the morning sun Wraps ere it drinks some cloud of wandering dew. I saw not, heard not, moved not, only felt His presence flow and mingle through my blood 80 Till it became his life, and his grew mine, And I was thus absorbed, until it passed, And like the vapors when the sun sinks down, Gathering again in drops upon the pines, And tremulous as they, in the deep night My being was condensed; and as the rays Of thought were slowly gathered, I could hear His voice, whose accents lingered ere they died Like footsteps of weak melody; thy name Among the many sounds alone I heard 90 Of what might be articulate; though still I listened through the night when sound was none. Ione wakened then, and said to me: 'Canst thou divine what troubles me tonight? I always knew what I desired before, Nor ever found delight to wish in vain. But now I cannot tell thee what I seek; I know not; something sweet, since it is sweet Even to desire; it is thy sport, false sister; Thou hast discovered some enchantment old, 100 Whose spells have stolen my spirit as I slept And mingled it with thine; for when just now We kissed, I felt within thy parted lips The sweet air that sustained me; and the warmth Of the life-blood, for loss of which I faint, Quivered between our intertwining arms.' I answered not, for the Eastern star grew pale, But fled to thee. ASIA Thou speakest, but thy words Are as the air; I feel them not. Oh, lift Thine eyes, that I may read his written soul! 110 PANTHEA I lift them, though they droop beneath the load Of that they would express; what canst thou see But thine own fairest shadow imaged there? ASIA Thine eyes are like the deep, blue, boundless heaven Contracted to two circles underneath Their long, fine lashes; dark, far, measureless, Orb within orb, and line through line inwoven. PANTHEA Why lookest thou as if a spirit passed? ASIA There is a change; beyond their inmost depth I see a shade, a shape: 't is He, arrayed 120 In the soft light of his own smiles, which spread Like radiance from the cloud-surrounded moon. Prometheus, it is thine! depart not yet! Say not those smiles that we shall meet again Within that bright pavilion which their beams Shall build on the waste world? The dream is told. What shape is that between us? Its rude hair Roughens the wind that lifts it, its regard Is wild and quick, yet 't is a thing of air, For through its gray robe gleams the golden dew 130 Whose stars the noon has quenched not. DREAM Follow! Follow! PANTHEA It is mine other dream. ASIA It disappears. PANTHEA It passes now into my mind. Methought As we sate here, the flower-infolding buds Burst on yon lightning-blasted almond tree; When swift from the white Scythian wilderness A wind swept forth wrinkling the Earth with frost; I looked, and all the blossoms were blown down; But on each leaf was stamped, as the blue bells Of Hyacinth tell Apollo's written grief, 140 OH, FOLLOW, FOLLOW! ASIA As you speak, your words Fill, pause by pause, my own forgotten sleep With shapes. Methought among the lawns together We wandered, underneath the young gray dawn, And multitudes of dense white fleecy clouds Were wandering in thick flocks along the mountains, Shepherded by the slow, unwilling wind; And the white dew on the new-bladed grass, Just piercing the dark earth, hung silently; And there was more which I remember not; 150 But on the shadows of the morning clouds, Athwart the purple mountain slope, was written FOLLOW, OH, FOLLOW! as they vanished by; And on each herb, from which Heaven's dew had fallen, The like was stamped, as with a withering fire; A wind arose among the pines; it shook The clinging music from their boughs, and then Low, sweet, faint sounds, like the farewell of ghosts, Were heard: OH, FOLLOW, FOLLOW, FOLLOW ME! And then I said, 'Panthea, look on me.' 160 But in the depth of those belovèd eyes Still I saw, FOLLOW, FOLLOW! ECHO Follow, follow! PANTHEA The crags, this clear spring morning, mock our voices, As they were spirit-tongued. ASIA It is some being Around the crags. What fine clear sounds! Oh, list! ECHOES, unseen Echoes we: listen! We cannot stay: As dew-stars glisten Then fade away-- Child of Ocean! 170 ASIA Hark! Spirits speak. The liquid responses Of their aërial tongues yet sound. PANTHEA I hear. ECHOES Oh, follow, follow, As our voice recedeth Through the caverns hollow, Where the forest spreadeth; (More distant) Oh, follow, follow! Through the caverns hollow, As the song floats thou pursue, Where the wild bee never flew, 180 Through the noontide darkness deep, By the odor-breathing sleep Of faint night-flowers, and the waves At the fountain-lighted caves, While our music, wild and sweet, Mocks thy gently falling feet, Child of Ocean! ASIA Shall we pursue the sound? It grows more faint And distant. PANTHEA List! the strain floats nearer now. ECHOES In the world unknown 190 Sleeps a voice unspoken; By thy step alone Can its rest be broken; Child of Ocean! ASIA How the notes sink upon the ebbing wind! ECHOES Oh, follow, follow! Through the caverns hollow, As the song floats thou pursue, By the woodland noontide dew; By the forests, lakes, and fountains, 200 Through the many-folded mountains; To the rents, and gulfs, and chasms, Where the Earth reposed from spasms, On the day when He and thou Parted, to commingle now; Child of Ocean! ASIA Come, sweet Panthea, link thy hand in mine, And follow, ere the voices fade away. SCENE II.--A Forest intermingled with Rocks and Caverns. ASIA and PANTHEA pass into it. Two young Fauns are sitting on a Rock, listening. SEMICHORUS I OF SPIRITS The path through which that lovely twain Have passed, by cedar, pine, and yew, And each dark tree that ever grew, Is curtained out from Heaven's wide blue; Nor sun, nor moon, nor wind, nor rain, Can pierce its interwoven bowers, Nor aught, save where some cloud of dew, Drifted along the earth-creeping breeze Between the trunks of the hoar trees, Hangs each a pearl in the pale flowers 10 Of the green laurel blown anew, And bends, and then fades silently, One frail and fair anemone; Or when some star of many a one That climbs and wanders through steep night, Has found the cleft through which alone Beams fall from high those depths upon,-- Ere it is borne away, away, By the swift Heavens that cannot stay, It scatters drops of golden light, 20 Like lines of rain that ne'er unite; And the gloom divine is all around; And underneath is the mossy ground. SEMICHORUS II There the voluptuous nightingales, Are awake through all the broad noon day: When one with bliss or sadness fails, And through the windless ivy-boughs, Sick with sweet love, droops dying away On its mate's music-panting bosom; Another from the swinging blossom, 30 Watching to catch the languid close Of the last strain, then lifts on high The wings of the weak melody, Till some new strain of feeling bear The song, and all the woods are mute; When there is heard through the dim air The rush of wings, and rising there, Like many a lake-surrounded flute, Sounds overflow the listener's brain So sweet, that joy is almost pain. 40 SEMICHORUS I There those enchanted eddies play Of echoes, music-tongued, which draw, By Demogorgon's mighty law, With melting rapture, or sweet awe, All spirits on that secret way, As inland boats are driven to Ocean Down streams made strong with mountain-thaw; And first there comes a gentle sound To those in talk or slumber bound, And wakes the destined; soft emotion 50 Attracts, impels them; those who saw Say from the breathing earth behind There steams a plume-uplifting wind Which drives them on their path, while they Believe their own swift wings and feet The sweet desires within obey; And so they float upon their way, Until, still sweet, but loud and strong, The storm of sound is driven along, Sucked up and hurrying; as they fleet 60 Behind, its gathering billows meet And to the fatal mountain bear Like clouds amid the yielding air. FIRST FAUN Canst thou imagine where those spirits live Which make such delicate music in the woods? We haunt within the least frequented caves And closest coverts, and we know these wilds, Yet never meet them, though we hear them oft: Where may they hide themselves? SECOND FAUN 'T is hard to tell; I have heard those more skilled in spirits say, 70 The bubbles, which the enchantment of the sun Sucks from the pale faint water-flowers that pave The oozy bottom of clear lakes and pools, Are the pavilions where such dwell and float Under the green and golden atmosphere Which noontide kindles through the woven leaves; And when these burst, and the thin fiery air, The which they breathed within those lucent domes, Ascends to flow like meteors through the night, They ride on them, and rein their headlong speed, 80 And bow their burning crests, and glide in fire Under the waters of the earth again. FIRST FAUN If such live thus, have others other lives, Under pink blossoms or within the bells Of meadow flowers or folded violets deep, Or on their dying odors, when they die, Or in the sunlight of the spherèd dew? SECOND FAUN Ay, many more which we may well divine. But should we stay to speak, noontide would come, And thwart Silenus find his goats undrawn, 90 And grudge to sing those wise and lovely songs Of Fate, and Chance, and God, and Chaos old, And Love and the chained Titan's woful doom, And how he shall be loosed, and make the earth One brotherhood; delightful strains which cheer Our solitary twilights, and which charm To silence the unenvying nightingales. SCENE III.--A Pinnacle of Rock among Mountains. ASIA and PANTHEA. PANTHEA Hither the sound has borne us--to the realm Of Demogorgon, and the mighty portal, Like a volcano's meteor-breathing chasm, Whence the oracular vapor is hurled up Which lonely men drink wandering in their youth, And call truth, virtue, love, genius, or joy, That maddening wine of life, whose dregs they drain To deep intoxication; and uplift, Like Mænads who cry loud, Evoe! Evoe! The voice which is contagion to the world. 10 ASIA Fit throne for such a Power! Magnificent! How glorious art thou, Earth! and if thou be The shadow of some spirit lovelier still, Though evil stain its work, and it should be Like its creation, weak yet beautiful, I could fall down and worship that and thee. Even now my heart adoreth. Wonderful! Look, sister, ere the vapor dim thy brain: Beneath is a wide plain of billowy mist, As a lake, paving in the morning sky, 20 With azure waves which burst in silver light, Some Indian vale. Behold it, rolling on Under the curdling winds, and islanding The peak whereon we stand, midway, around, Encinctured by the dark and blooming forests, Dim twilight-lawns, and stream-illumined caves, And wind-enchanted shapes of wandering mist; And far on high the keen sky-cleaving mountains From icy spires of sunlike radiance fling The dawn, as lifted Ocean's dazzling spray, 30 From some Atlantic islet scattered up, Spangles the wind with lamp-like waterdrops. The vale is girdled with their walls, a howl Of cataracts from their thaw-cloven ravines Satiates the listening wind, continuous, vast, Awful as silence. Hark! the rushing snow! The sun-awakened avalanche! whose mass, Thrice sifted by the storm, had gathered there Flake after flake, in heaven-defying minds As thought by thought is piled, till some great truth 40 Is loosened, and the nations echo round, Shaken to their roots, as do the mountains now. PANTHEA Look how the gusty sea of mist is breaking In crimson foam, even at our feet! it rises As Ocean at the enchantment of the moon Round foodless men wrecked on some oozy isle. ASIA The fragments of the cloud are scattered up; The wind that lifts them disentwines my hair; Its billows now sweep o'er mine eyes; my brain Grows dizzy; I see shapes within the mist. 50 PANTHEA A countenance with beckoning smiles; there burns An azure fire within its golden locks! Another and another: hark! they speak! SONG OF SPIRITS To the deep, to the deep, Down down! Through the shade of sleep, Through the cloudy strife Of Death and of Life; Through the veil and the bar Of things which seem and are, 60 Even to the steps of the remotest throne, Down, down! While the sound whirls around, Down, down! As the fawn draws the hound, As the lightning the vapor, As a weak moth the taper; Death, despair; love, sorrow; Time, both; to-day, to-morrow; As steel obeys the spirit of the stone, 70 Down, down! Through the gray, void abysm, Down, down! Where the air is no prism, And the moon and stars are not, And the cavern-crags wear not The radiance of Heaven, Nor the gloom to Earth given, Where there is one pervading, one alone, Down, down! 80 In the depth of the deep Down, down! Like veiled lightning asleep, Like the spark nursed in embers, The last look Love remembers, Like a diamond, which shines On the dark wealth of mines, A spell is treasured but for thee alone. Down, down! We have bound thee, we guide thee; 90 Down, down! With the bright form beside thee; Resist not the weakness, Such strength is in meekness That the Eternal, the Immortal, Must unloose through life's portal The snake-like Doom coiled underneath his throne By that alone. SCENE IV.--The Cave of DEMOGORGON. ASIA and PANTHEA. PANTHEA What veilèd form sits on that ebon throne? ASIA The veil has fallen. PANTHEA I see a mighty darkness Filling the seat of power, and rays of gloom Dart round, as light from the meridian sun, Ungazed upon and shapeless; neither limb, Nor form, nor outline; yet we feel it is A living Spirit. DEMOGORGON Ask what thou wouldst know. ASIA What canst thou tell? DEMOGORGON All things thou dar'st demand. ASIA Who made the living world? DEMOGORGON God. ASIA Who made all That it contains? thought, passion, reason, will, 10 Imagination? DEMOGORGON God: Almighty God. ASIA Who made that sense which, when the winds of spring In rarest visitation, or the voice Of one belovèd heard in youth alone, Fills the faint eyes with falling tears which dim The radiant looks of unbewailing flowers, And leaves this peopled earth a solitude When it returns no more? DEMOGORGON Merciful God. ASIA And who made terror, madness, crime, remorse, Which from the links of the great chain of things 20 To every thought within the mind of man Sway and drag heavily, and each one reels Under the load towards the pit of death; Abandoned hope, and love that turns to hate; And self-contempt, bitterer to drink than blood; Pain, whose unheeded and familiar speech Is howling, and keen shrieks, day after day; And Hell, or the sharp fear of Hell? DEMOGORGON He reigns. ASIA Utter his name; a world pining in pain Asks but his name; curses shall drag him down. 30 DEMOGORGON He reigns. ASIA I feel, I know it: who? DEMOGORGON He reigns. ASIA Who reigns? There was the Heaven and Earth at first, And Light and Love; then Saturn, from whose throne Time fell, an envious shadow; such the state Of the earth's primal spirits beneath his sway, As the calm joy of flowers and living leaves Before the wind or sun has withered them And semivital worms; but he refused The birthright of their being, knowledge, power, The skill which wields the elements, the thought 40 Which pierces this dim universe like light, Self-empire, and the majesty of love; For thirst of which they fainted. Then Prometheus Gave wisdom, which is strength, to Jupiter, And with this law alone, 'Let man be free,' Clothed him with the dominion of wide Heaven. To know nor faith, nor love, nor law, to be Omnipotent but friendless, is to reign; And Jove now reigned; for on the race of man First famine, and then toil, and then disease, 50 Strife, wounds, and ghastly death unseen before, Fell; and the unseasonable seasons drove, With alternating shafts of frost and fire, Their shelterless, pale tribes to mountain caves; And in their desert hearts fierce wants he sent, And mad disquietudes, and shadows idle Of unreal good, which levied mutual war, So ruining the lair wherein they raged. Prometheus saw, and waked the legioned hopes Which sleep within folded Elysian flowers, 60 Nepenthe, Moly, Amaranth, fadeless blooms, That they might hide with thin and rainbow wings The shape of Death; and Love he sent to bind The disunited tendrils of that vine Which bears the wine of life, the human heart; And he tamed fire which, like some beast of prey, Most terrible, but lovely, played beneath The frown of man; and tortured to his will Iron and gold, the slaves and signs of power, And gems and poisons, and all subtlest forms 70 Hidden beneath the mountains and the waves. He gave man speech, and speech created thought, Which is the measure of the universe; And Science struck the thrones of earth and heaven, Which shook, but fell not; and the harmonious mind Poured itself forth in all-prophetic song; And music lifted up the listening spirit Until it walked, exempt from mortal care, Godlike, o'er the clear billows of sweet sound; And human hands first mimicked and then mocked, 80 With moulded limbs more lovely than its own, The human form, till marble grew divine; And mothers, gazing, drank the love men see Reflected in their race, behold, and perish. He told the hidden power of herbs and springs, And Disease drank and slept. Death grew like sleep. He taught the implicated orbits woven Of the wide-wandering stars; and how the sun Changes his lair, and by what secret spell The pale moon is transformed, when her broad eye 90 Gazes not on the interlunar sea. He taught to rule, as life directs the limbs, The tempest-wingèd chariots of the Ocean, And the Celt knew the Indian. Cities then Were built, and through their snow-like columns flowed The warm winds, and the azure ether shone, And the blue sea and shadowy hills were seen. Such, the alleviations of his state, Prometheus gave to man, for which he hangs Withering in destined pain; but who rains down 100 Evil, the immedicable plague, which, while Man looks on his creation like a god And sees that it is glorious, drives him on, The wreck of his own will, the scorn of earth, The outcast, the abandoned, the alone? Not Jove: while yet his frown shook heaven ay, when His adversary from adamantine chains Cursed him, he trembled like a slave. Declare Who is his master? Is he too a slave? DEMOGORGON All spirits are enslaved which serve things evil: 110 Thou knowest if Jupiter be such or no. ASIA Whom called'st thou God? DEMOGORGON I spoke but as ye speak, For Jove is the supreme of living things. ASIA Who is the master of the slave? DEMOGORGON If the abysm Could vomit forth its secrets--but a voice Is wanting, the deep truth is imageless; For what would it avail to bid thee gaze On the revolving world? What to bid speak Fate, Time, Occasion, Chance and Change? To these All things are subject but eternal Love. 120 ASIA So much I asked before, and my heart gave The response thou hast given; and of such truths Each to itself must be the oracle. One more demand; and do thou answer me As my own soul would answer, did it know That which I ask. Prometheus shall arise Henceforth the sun of this rejoicing world: When shall the destined hour arrive? DEMOGORGON Behold! ASIA The rocks are cloven, and through the purple night I see cars drawn by rainbow-wingèd steeds 130 Which trample the dim winds; in each there stands A wild-eyed charioteer urging their flight. Some look behind, as fiends pursued them there, And yet I see no shapes but the keen stars; Others, with burning eyes, lean forth, and drink With eager lips the wind of their own speed, As if the thing they loved fled on before, And now, even now, they clasped it. Their bright locks Stream like a comet's flashing hair; they all Sweep onward. DEMOGORGON These are the immortal Hours, 140 Of whom thou didst demand. One waits for thee. ASIA A Spirit with a dreadful countenance Checks its dark chariot by the craggy gulf. Unlike thy brethren, ghastly Charioteer, Who art thou? Whither wouldst thou bear me? Speak! SPIRIT I am the Shadow of a destiny More dread than is my aspect; ere yon planet Has set, the darkness which ascends with me Shall wrap in lasting night heaven's kingless throne. ASIA What meanest thou? PANTHEA That terrible Shadow floats 150 Up from its throne, as may the lurid smoke Of earthquake-ruined cities o'er the sea. Lo! it ascends the car; the coursers fly Terrified; watch its path among the stars Blackening the night! ASIA Thus I am answered: strange! PANTHEA See, near the verge, another chariot stays; An ivory shell inlaid with crimson fire, Which comes and goes within its sculptured rim Of delicate strange tracery; the young Spirit That guides it has the dove-like eyes of hope; 160 How it soft smiles attract the soul! as light Lures wingèd insects through the lampless air. SPIRIT My coursers are fed with the lightning, They drink of the whirlwind's stream, And when the red morning is bright'ning They bathe in the fresh sunbeam. They have strength for their swiftness I deem; Then ascend with me, daughter of Ocean. |
