Prometheus Unbound Read Online

See how they float

On their sustaining wings of skiey grain,

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 'twas 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,

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 lulling 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 aëreal 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,

Following him, destroyingly,

On Death's white and winged 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,

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.

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 airborn 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

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.

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

Among the woods and waters, from the aether

Of her transforming presence, which would fade

If it were mingled not with thine. Farewell!

End of the First Act.

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 learnt 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

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

Reflects it: now it wanes: it gleams again

As the waves fade, and as the burning threads

Of woven cloud unravel in pale air:

'Tis lost! and through yon peaks of cloud-like 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.

Beloved and most beautiful, who wearest

The shadow of that soul by which I live,

How late thou art! the sphered 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

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

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 linked sleep.

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.«

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 aether 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

Till it became his life, and his grew mine,

And I was thus absorbed, until it passed,

And like the vapours 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

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 to-night?

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,

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!

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: 'tis He, arrayed

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 o'er 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 'tis a thing of air,

For through its gray robe gleams the golden dew

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,

O, FOLLOW, FOLLOW!

ASIA.

As you speak, your words

Fill, pause by pause, my own forgotten sleep

With shapes. Methought among these 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:

But on the shadows of the morning clouds,

Athwart the purple mountain slope, was written

FOLLOW, O, 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: O, FOLLOW, FOLLOW, FOLLOW ME!

And then I said: »Panthea, look on me.«

But in the depth of those beloved 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! O, list!

ECHOES unseen.

Echoes we: listen!

We cannot stay:

As dew-stars glisten

Then fade away –

Child of Ocean!

ASIA.

Hark! Spirits speak. The liquid responses

Of their aëreal tongues yet sound.

PANTHEA.

I hear.

ECHOES.

O, follow, follow,

As our voice recedeth

Through the caverns hollow,

Where the forest spreadeth;

More distant.

O, follow, follow!

Through the caverns hollow,

As the song floats thou pursue,

Where the wild bee never flew,

Through the noontide darkness deep,

By the odour-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

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.

O, follow, follow!

Through the caverns hollow,

As the song floats thou pursue,

By the woodland noontide dew;

By the forest, lakes, and fountains,

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

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,

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 noonday.

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,

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.

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, –

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

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.

'Tis hard to tell:

I have heard those more skilled in spirits say,

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,

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 odours, when they die,

Or in the sunlight of the sphered 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,

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 vapour 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.

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 vapour dim thy brain:

Beneath is a wide plain of billowy mist,

As a lake, paving in the morning sky,

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-illumed caves,

And wind-enchanted shapes of wandering mist;

And far on high the keen sky-cleaving mountains

From icy spires of sun-like radiance fling

The dawn, as lifted Ocean's dazzling spray,

From some Atlantic islet scattered up,

Spangles the wind with lamp-like water-drops.

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

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; see'st thou shapes within the mist?

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

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 vapour,

As a weak moth the taper;

Death, despair; love, sorrow;

Time both; to-day, to-morrow;

As steel obeys the spirit of the stone,

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!

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;

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 veiled 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,

Imagination?

DEMOGORGON.

God: Almighty God.

ASIA.

Who made that sense which, when the winds of Spring

In rarest visitation, or the voice

Of one beloved 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,

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.

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

Which pierces this dim universe like light,

Self-empire, and the majesty of love;

For thirst of which they fainted.