Prometheus Unbound Read Online

Ocean is discovered reclining near the Shore; Apollo stands beside him.

OCEAN.

He fell, thou sayest, beneath his conqueror's frown?

APOLLO.

Ay, when the strife was ended which made dim

The orb I rule, and shook the solid stars,

The terrors of his eye illumined heaven

With sanguine light, through the thick ragged skirts

Of the victorious darkness, as he fell:

Like the last glare of day's red agony,

Which, from a rent among the fiery clouds,

Burns far along the tempest-wrinkled deep.

OCEAN.

He sunk to the abyss? To the dark void?

APOLLO.

An eagle so caught in some bursting cloud

On Caucasus, his thunder-baffled wings

Entangled in the whirlwind, and his eyes

Which gazed on the undazzling sun, now blinded

By the white lightning, while the ponderous hail

Beats on his struggling form, which sinks at length

Prone, and the aëreal ice clings over it.

OCEAN.

Henceforth the fields of heaven-reflecting sea

Which are my realm, will heave, unstained with blood,

Beneath the uplifting winds, like plains of corn

Swayed by the summer air; my streams will flow

Round many-peopled continents, and round

Fortunate isles; and from their glassy thrones

Blue Proteus and his humid nymphs shall mark

The shadow of fair ships, as mortals see

The floating bark of the light-laden moon

With that white star, its sightless pilot's crest,

Borne down the rapid sunset's ebbing sea;

Tracking their path no more by blood and groans,

And desolation, and the mingled voice

Of slavery and command; but by the light

Of wave-reflected flowers, and floating odours,

And music soft, and mild, free, gentle voices,

And sweetest music, such as spirits love.

APOLLO.

And I shall gaze not on the deeds which make

My mind obscure with sorrow, as eclipse

Darkens the sphere I guide; but list, I hear

The small, clear, silver lute of the young Spirit

That sits i' the morning star.

OCEAN.

Thou must away;

Thy steeds will pause at even, till when farewell:

The loud deep calls me home even now to feed it

With azure calm out of the emerald urns

Which stand for ever full beside my throne.

Behold the Nereids under the green sea,

Their wavering limbs borne on the wind-like stream,

Their white arms lifted o'er their streaming hair

With garlands pied and starry sea-flower crowns,

Hastening to grace their mighty sister's joy.

A sound of waves is heard.

It is the unpastured sea hungering for calm.

Peace, monster; I come now. Farewell.

APOLLO.

Farewell.

Scene III.

Caucasus. Prometheus, Hercules, Ione, the Earth, Spirits, Asia, and Panthea, borne in the Car with the Spirit of the Hour. Hercules unbinds Prometheus, who descends.

HERCULES.

Most glorious among Spirits, thus doth strength

To wisdom, courage, and long-suffering love,

And thee, who art the form they animate,

Minister like a slave.

PROMETHEUS.

Thy gentle words

Are sweeter even than freedom long desired

And long delayed.

Asia, thou light of life,

Shadow of beauty unbeheld: and ye,

Fair sister nymphs, who made long years of pain

Sweet to remember, through your love and care:

Henceforth we will not part. There is a cave,

All overgrown with trailing odorous plants,

Which curtain out the day with leaves and flowers,

And paved with veined emerald, and a fountain

Leaps in the midst with an awakening sound.

From its curved roof the mountain's frozen tears

Like snow, or silver, or long diamond spires,

Hang downward, raining forth a doubtful light:

And there is heard the ever-moving air,

Whispering without from tree to tree, and birds,

And bees; and all around are mossy seats,

And the rough walls are clothed with long soft grass;

A simple dwelling, which shall be our own;

Where we will sit and talk of time and change,

As the world ebbs and flows, ourselves unchanged.

What can hide man from mutability?

And if ye sigh, then I will smile; and thou,

Ione, shalt chant fragments of sea-music,

Until I weep, when ye shall smile away

The tears she brought, which yet were sweet to shed.

We will entangle buds and flowers and beams

Which twinkle on the fountain's brim, and make

Strange combinations out of common things,

Like human babes in their brief innocence;

And we will search, with looks and words of love,

For hidden thoughts, each lovelier than the last,

Our unexhausted spirits; and like lutes

Touched by the skill of the enamoured wind,

Weave harmonies divine, yet ever new,

From difference sweet where discord cannot be;

And hither come, sped on the charmed winds,

Which meet from all the points of heaven, as bees

From every flower aëreal Enna feeds,

At their known island-homes in Himera,

The echoes of the human world, which tell

Of the low voice of love, almost unheard,

And dove-eyed pity's murmured pain, and music,

Itself the echo of the heart, and all

That tempers or improves man's life, now free;

And lovely apparitions, – dim at first,

Then radiant, as the mind, arising bright

From the embrace of beauty (whence the forms

Of which these are the phantoms) casts on them

The gathered rays which are reality –

Shall visit us, the progeny immortal

Of Painting, Sculpture, and rapt Poesy,

And arts, though unimagined, yet to be.

The wandering voices and the shadows these

Of all that man becomes, the mediators

Of that best worship love, by him and us

Given and returned; swift shapes and sounds, which grow

More fair and soft as man grows wise and kind,

And, veil by veil, evil and error fall:

Such virtue has the cave and place around.

Turning to the Spirit of the Hour.

For thee, fair Spirit, one toil remains. Ione,

Give her that curved shell, which Proteus old

Made Asia's nuptial boon, breathing within it

A voice to be accomplished, and which thou

Didst hide in grass under the hollow rock.

IONE.

Thou most desired Hour, more loved and lovely

Than all thy sisters, this is the mystic shell;

See the pale azure fading into silver

Lining it with a soft yet glowing light:

Looks it not like lulled music sleeping there?

SPIRIT.

It seems in truth the fairest shell of Ocean:

Its sound must be at once both sweet and strange.

PROMETHEUS.

Go, borne over the cities of mankind

On whirlwind-footed coursers: once again

Outspeed the sun around the orbed world;

And as thy chariot cleaves the kindling air,

Thou breathe into the many-folded shell,

Loosening its mighty music; it shall be

As thunder mingled with clear echoes: then

Return; and thou shalt dwell beside our cave.

And thou, O, Mother Earth! –

THE EARTH.

I hear, I feel;

Thy lips are on me, and their touch runs down

Even to the adamantine central gloom

Along these marble nerves; 'tis life, 'tis joy,

And through my withered, old, and icy frame

The warmth of an immortal youth shoots down

Circling. Henceforth the many children fair

Folded in my sustaining arms; all plants,

And creeping forms, and insects rainbow-winged,

And birds, and beasts, and fish, and human shapes,

Which drew disease and pain from my wan bosom,

Draining the poison of despair, shall take

And interchange sweet nutriment; to me

Shall they become like sister-antelopes

By one fair dam, snow-white and swift as wind,

Nursed among lilies near a brimming stream.

The dew-mists of my sunless sleep shall float

Under the stars like balm: night-folded flowers

Shall suck unwithering hues in their repose:

And men and beasts in happy dreams shall gather

Strength for the coming day, and all its joy:

And death shall be the last embrace of her

Who takes the life she gave, even as a mother

Folding her child, says, »Leave me not again.«

ASIA.

Oh, mother! wherefore speak the name of death?

Cease they to love, and move, and breathe, and speak,

Who die?

THE EARTH.

It would avail not to reply:

Thou art immortal, and this tongue is known

But to the uncommunicating dead.

Death is the veil which those who live call life:

They sleep, and it is lifted: and meanwhile

In mild variety the seasons mild

With rainbow-skirted showers, and odorous winds,

And long blue meteors cleansing the dull night,

And the life-kindling shafts of the keen sun's

All-piercing bow, and the dew-mingled rain

Of the calm moonbeams, a soft influence mild,

Shall clothe the forests and the fields, ay, even

The crag-built deserts of the barren deep,

With ever-living leaves, and fruits, and flowers.

And thou! There is a cavern where my spirit

Was panted forth in anguish whilst thy pain

Made my heart mad, and those who did inhale it

Became mad too, and built a temple there,

And spoke, and were oracular, and lured

The erring nations round to mutual war,

And faithless faith, such as Jove kept with thee;

Which breath now rises, as amongst tall weeds

A violet's exhalation, and it fills

With a serener light and crimson air

Intense, yet soft, the rocks and woods around;

It feeds the quick growth of the serpent vine,

And the dark linked ivy tangling wild,

And budding, blown, or odour-faded blooms

Which star the winds with points of coloured light,

As they rain through them, and bright golden globes

Of fruit, suspended in their own green heaven,

And through their veined leaves and amber stems

The flowers whose purple and translucid bowls

Stand ever mantling with aëreal dew,

The drink of spirits: and it circles round,

Like the soft waving wings of noonday dreams,

Inspiring calm and happy thoughts, like mine,

Now thou art thus restored. This cave is thine.

Arise! Appear!

A Spirit rises in the likeness of a winged child.

This is my torch-bearer;

Who let his lamp out in old time with gazing

On eyes from which he kindled it anew

With love, which is as fire, sweet daughter mine,

For such is that within thine own. Run, wayward,

And guide this company beyond the peak

Of Bacchic Nysa, Mænad-haunted mountain,

And beyond Indus and its tribute rivers,

Trampling the torrent streams and glassy lakes

With feet unwet, unwearied, undelaying,

And up the green ravine, across the vale,

Beside the windless and crystalline pool,

Where ever lies, on unerasing waves,

The image of a temple, built above,

Distinct with column, arch, and architrave,

And palm-like capital, and over-wrought,

And populous with most living imagery,

Praxitelean shapes, whose marble smiles

Fill the hushed air with everlasting love.

It is deserted now, but once it bore

Thy name, Prometheus; there the emulous youths

Bore to thy honour through the divine gloom

The lamp which was thine emblem; even as those

Who bear the untransmitted torch of hope

Into the grave, across the night of life,

As thou hast borne it most triumphantly

To this far goal of Time. Depart, farewell.

Beside that temple is the destined cave.

Scene IV.

A Forest. In the Background a Cave. Prometheus, Asia, Panthea, Ione, and the Spirit of the Earth.

IONE.

Sister, it is not earthly: how it glides

Under the leaves! how on its head there burns

A light, like a green star, whose emerald beams

Are twined with its fair hair! how, as it moves,

The splendour drops in flakes upon the grass!

Knowest thou it?

PANTHEA.

It is the delicate spirit

That guides the earth through heaven. From afar

The populous constellations call that light

The loveliest of the planets; and sometimes

It floats along the spray of the salt sea,

Or makes its chariot of a foggy cloud,

Or walks through fields or cities while men sleep,

Or o'er the mountain tops, or down the rivers,

Or through the green waste wilderness, as now,

Wondering at all it sees. Before Jove reigned

It loved our sister Asia, and it came

Each leisure hour to drink the liquid light

Out of her eyes, for which it said it thirsted

As one bit by a dipsas, and with her

It made its childish confidence, and told her

All it had known or seen, for it saw much,

Yet idly reasoned what it saw; and called her –

For whence it sprung it knew not, nor do I –

Mother, dear mother.

THE SPIRIT OF THE EARTH running to Asia.

Mother, dearest mother;

May I then talk with thee as I was wont?

May I then hide my eyes in thy soft arms,

After thy looks have made them tired of joy?

May I then play beside thee the long noons,

When work is none in the bright silent air?

ASIA.

I love thee, gentlest being, and henceforth

Can cherish thee unenvied: speak, I pray:

Thy simple talk once solaced, now delights.

SPIRIT OF THE EARTH.

Mother, I am grown wiser, though a child

Cannot be wise like thee, within this day;

And happier too; happier and wiser both.

Thou knowest that toads, and snakes, and loathly worms,

And venomous and malicious beasts, and boughs

That bore ill berries in the woods, were ever

An hindrance to my walks o'er the green world:

And that, among the haunts of humankind,

Hard-featured men, or with proud, angry looks,

Or cold, staid gait, or false and hollow smiles,

Or the dull sneer of self-loved ignorance,

Or other such foul masks, with which ill thoughts

Hide that fair being whom we spirits call man;

And women too, ugliest of all things evil,

(Though fair, even in a world where thou art fair,

When good and kind, free and sincere like thee),

When false or frowning made me sick at heart

To pass them, though they slept, and I unseen.

Well, my path lately lay through a great city

Into the woody hills surrounding it:

A sentinel was sleeping at the gate:

When there was heard a sound, so loud, it shook

The towers amid the moonlight, yet more sweet

Than any voice but thine, sweetest of all;

A long, long sound, as it would never end:

And all the inhabitants leaped suddenly

Out of their rest, and gathered in the streets,

Looking in wonder up to Heaven, while yet

The music pealed along. I hid myself

Within a fountain in the public square,

Where I lay like the reflex of the moon

Seen in a wave under green leaves; and soon

Those ugly human shapes and visages

Of which I spoke as having wrought me pain,

Passed floating through the air, and fading still

Into the winds that scattered them; and those

From whom they passed seemed mild and lovely forms

After some foul disguise had fallen, and all

Were somewhat changed, and after brief surprise

And greetings of delighted wonder, all

Went to their sleep again: and when the dawn

Came, wouldst thou think that toads, and snakes, and efts,

Could e'er be beautiful? yet so they were,

And that with little change of shape or hue:

All things had put their evil nature off:

I cannot tell my joy, when o'er a lake

Upon a drooping bough with nightshade twined,

I saw two azure halcyons clinging downward

And thinning one bright bunch of amber berries,

With quick long beaks, and in the deep there lay

Those lovely forms imaged as in a sky;

So, with my thoughts full of these happy changes,

We meet again, the happiest change of all.

ASIA.

And never will we part, till thy chaste sister

Who guides the frozen and inconstant moon

Will look on thy more warm and equal light

Till her heart thaw like flakes of April snow

And love thee.

SPIRIT OF THE EARTH.

What; as Asia loves Prometheus?

ASIA.

Peace, wanton, thou art yet not old enough.

Think ye by gazing on each other's eyes

To multiply your lovely selves, and fill

With sphered fires the interlunar air?

SPIRIT OF THE EARTH.

Nay, mother, while my sister trims her lamp

'Tis hard I should go darkling.

ASIA.

Listen; look!

The Spirit of the Hour enters.

PROMETHEUS.

We feel what thou hast heard and seen: yet speak.

SPIRIT OF THE HOUR.

Soon as the sound had ceased whose thunder filled

The abysses of the sky and the wide earth,

There was a change: the impalpable thin air

And the all-circling sunlight were transformed,

As if the sense of love dissolved in them

Had folded itself round the sphered world.

My vision then grew clear, and I could see

Into the mysteries of the universe:

Dizzy as with delight I floated down,

Winnowing the lightsome air with languid plumes,

My coursers sought their birthplace in the sun,

Where they henceforth will live exempt from toil,

Pasturing flowers of vegetable fire;

And where my moonlike car will stand within

A temple, gazed upon by Phidian forms

Of thee, and Asia, and the Earth, and me,

And you fair nymphs looking the love we feel, –

In memory of the tidings it has borne, –

Beneath a dome fretted with graven flowers,

Poised on twelve columns of resplendent stone,

And open to the bright and liquid sky.

Yoked to it by an amphisbaenic snake

The likeness of those winged steeds will mock

The flight from which they find repose. Alas,

Whither has wandered now my partial tongue

When all remains untold which ye would hear?

As I have said, I floated to the earth:

It was, as it is still, the pain of bliss

To move, to breathe, to be; I wandering went

Among the haunts and dwellings of mankind,

And first was disappointed not to see

Such mighty change as I had felt within

Expressed in outward things; but soon I looked,

And behold, thrones were kingless, and men walked

One with the other even as spirits do,

None fawned, none trampled; hate, disdain, or fear,

Self-love or self-contempt, on human brows

No more inscribed, as o'er the gate of hell,

»All hope abandon ye who enter here;«

None frowned, none trembled, none with eager fear

Gazed on another's eye of cold command,

Until the subject of a tyrant's will

Became, worse fate, the abject of his own,

Which spurred him, like an outspent horse, to death.

None wrought his lips in truth-entangling lines

Which smiled the lie his tongue disdained to speak;

None, with firm sneer, trod out in his own heart

The sparks of love and hope till there remained

Those bitter ashes, a soul self-consumed,

And the wretch crept a vampire among men,

Infecting all with his own hideous ill;

None talked that common, false, cold, hollow talk

Which makes the heart deny the yes it breathes,

Yet question that unmeant hypocrisy

With such a self-mistrust as has no name.

And women, too, frank, beautiful, and kind

As the free heaven which rains fresh light and dew

On the wide earth, past; gentle radiant forms,

From custom's evil taint exempt and pure;

Speaking the wisdom once they could not think,

Looking emotions once they feared to feel,

And changed to all which once they dared not be,

Yet being now, made earth like heaven; nor pride,

Nor jealousy, nor envy, nor ill shame,

The bitterest of those drops of treasured gall,

Spoilt the sweet taste of the nepenthe, love.

Thrones, altars, judgement-seats, and prisons; wherein,

And beside which, by wretched men were borne

Sceptres, tiaras, swords, and chains, and tomes

Of reasoned wrong, glozed on by ignorance,

Were like those monstrous and barbaric shapes,

The ghosts of a no-more-remembered fame,

Which, from their unworn obelisks, look forth

In triumph o'er the palaces and tombs

Of those who were their conquerors: mouldering round,

These imaged to the pride of kings and priests

A dark yet mighty faith, a power as wide

As is the world it wasted, and are now

But an astonishment; even so the tools

And emblems of its last captivity,

Amid the dwellings of the peopled earth,

Stand, not o'erthrown, but unregarded now.

And those foul shapes, abhorred by god and man, –

Which, under many a name and many a form

Strange, savage, ghastly, dark and execrable,

Were Jupiter, the tyrant of the world;

And which the nations, panic-stricken, served

With blood, and hearts broken by long hope, and love

Dragged to his altars soiled and garlandless,

And slain amid men's unreclaiming tears,

Flattering the thing they feared, which fear was hate, –

Frown, mouldering fast, o'er their abandoned shrines:

The painted veil, by those who were, called life,

Which mimicked, as with colours idly spread,

All men believed or hoped, is torn aside;

The loathsome mask has fallen, the man remains

Sceptreless, free, uncircumscribed, but man

Equal, unclassed, tribeless, and nationless,

Exempt from awe, worship, degree, the king

Over himself; just, gentle, wise: but man

Passionless? –– no, yet free from guilt or pain,

Which were, for his will made or suffered them,

Nor yet exempt, though ruling them like slaves,

From chance, and death, and mutability,

The clogs of that which else might oversoar

The loftiest star of unascended heaven,

Pinnacled dim in the intense inane.

End of the Third Act.

Act IV

Scene.

A Part of the Forest near the Cave of Prometheus. Panthea and Ione are sleeping: they awaken gradually during the first Song.

VOICE OF UNSEEN SPIRITS.

The pale stars are gone!

For the sun, their swift shepherd,

To their folds them compelling,

In the depths of the dawn,

Hastes, in meteor-eclipsing array, and they flee

Beyond his blue dwelling,

As fawns flee the leopard.

But where are ye?

A Train of dark Forms and Shadows passes by confusedly, singing.

Here, oh, here:

We bear the bier

Of the Father of many a cancelled year

Spectres we

Of the dead Hours be,

We bear Time to his tomb in eternity.

Strew, oh, strew

Hair, not yew!

Wet the dusty pall with tears, not dew!

Be the faded flowers

Of Death's bare bowers

Spread on the corpse of the King of Hours!

Haste, oh, haste!

As shades are chased,

Trembling, by day, from heaven's blue waste.

We melt away,

Like dissolving spray,

From the children of a diviner day,

With the lullaby

Of winds that die

On the bosom of their own harmony!

IONE.

What dark forms were they?

PANTHEA.

The past Hours weak and gray,

With the spoil which their toil

Raked together

From the conquest but One could foil.

IONE.

Have they passed?

PANTHEA.

They have passed;

They outspeeded the blast,

While 'tis said, they are fled:

IONE.

Whither, oh, whither?

PANTHEA.

To the dark, to the past, to the dead.

VOICE OF UNSEEN SPIRITS.

Bright clouds float in heaven,

Dew-stars gleam on earth,

Waves assemble on ocean,

They are gathered and driven

By the storm of delight, by the panic of glee!

They shake with emotion,

They dance in their mirth.

But where are ye?

The pine boughs are singing

Old songs with new gladness,

The billows and fountains

Fresh music are flinging,

Like the notes of a spirit from land and from sea;

The storms mock the mountains

With the thunder of gladness.

But where are ye?

IONE.

What charioteers are these?

PANTHEA.

Where are their chariots?

SEMICHORUS OF HOURS.

The voice of the Spirits of Air and of Earth

Have drawn back the figured curtain of sleep

Which covered our being and darkened our birth

In the deep.

A VOICE.

In the deep?

SEMICHORUS II.

Oh, below the deep.

SEMICHORUS I.

An hundred ages we had been kept

Cradled in visions of hate and care,

And each one who waked as his brother slept,

Found the truth –

SEMICHORUS II.

Worse than his visions were!

SEMICHORUS I.

We have heard the lute of Hope in sleep;

We have known the voice of Love in dreams;

We have felt the wand of Power, and leap –

SEMICHORUS II.

As the billows leap in the morning beams!

CHORUS.

Weave the dance on the floor of the breeze,

Pierce with song heaven's silent light,

Enchant the day that too swiftly flees,

To check its flight ere the cave of Night.

Once the hungry Hours were hounds

Which chased the day like a bleeding deer,

And it limped and stumbled with many wounds

Through the nightly dells of the desert year.

But now, oh weave the mystic measure

Of music, and dance, and shapes of light,

Let the Hours, and the spirits of might and pleasure,

Like the clouds and sunbeams, unite.

A VOICE.

Unite!

PANTHEA.

See, where the Spirits of the human mind

Wrapped in sweet sounds, as in bright veils, approach.

CHORUS OF SPIRITS.

We join the throng

Of the dance and the song,

By the whirlwind of gladness borne along;

As the flying-fish leap

From the Indian deep,

And mix with the sea-birds, half asleep.

CHORUS OF HOURS.

Whence come ye, so wild and so fleet,

For sandals of lightning are on your feet,

And your wings are soft and swift as thought,

And your eyes are as love which is veiled not?

CHORUS OF SPIRITS.

We come from the mind

Of human kind

Which was late so dusk, and obscene, and blind,

Now 'tis an ocean

Of clear emotion,

A heaven of serene and mighty motion.

From that deep abyss

Of wonder and bliss,

Whose caverns are crystal palaces;

From those skiey towers

Where Thought's crowned powers

Sit watching your dance, ye happy Hours!

From the dim recesses

Of woven caresses,

Where lovers catch ye by your loose tresses

From the azure isles,

Where sweet Wisdom smiles,

Delaying your ships with her siren wiles.

From the temples high

Of Man's ear and eye,

Roofed over Sculpture and Poesy;

From the murmurings

Of the unsealed springs

Where Science bedews her Dædal wings.

Years after years,

Through blood, and tears,

And a thick hell of hatreds, and hopes, and fears;

We waded and flew,

And the islets were few

Where the bud-blighted flowers of happiness grew.

Our feet now, every palm,

Are sandalled with calm,

And the dew of our wings is a rain of balm;

And, beyond our eyes,

The human love lies

Which makes all it gazes on Paradise.

CHORUS OF SPIRITS AND HOURS.

Then weave the web of the mystic measure;

From the depths of the sky and the ends of the earth,

Come, swift Spirits of might and of pleasure,

Fill the dance and the music of mirth,

As the waves of a thousand streams rush by

To an ocean of splendour and harmony!

CHORUS OF SPIRITS.

Our spoil is won,

Our task is done,

We are free to dive, or soar, or run;

Beyond and around,

Or within the bound

Which clips the world with darkness round.

We'll pass the eyes

Of the starry skies

Into the hoar deep to colonize:

Death, Chaos, and Night,

From the sound of our flight,

Shall flee, like mist from a tempest's might.

And Earth, Air, and Light,

And the Spirit of Might,

Which drives round the stars in their fiery flight;

And Love, Thought, and Breath,

The powers that quell Death,

Wherever we soar shall assemble beneath.

And our singing shall build

In the void's loose field

A world for the Spirit of Wisdom to wield;

We will take our plan

From the new world of man,

And our work shall be called the Promethean.

CHORUS OF HOURS.

Break the dance, and scatter the song;

Let some depart, and some remain.

SEMICHORUS I.

We, beyond heaven, are driven along:

SEMICHORUS II.

Us the enchantments of earth retain:

SEMICHORUS I.

Ceaseless, and rapid, and fierce, and free,

With the Spirits which build a new earth and sea,

And a heaven where yet heaven could never be.

SEMICHORUS II.

Solemn, and slow, and serene, and bright,

Leading the Day and outspeeding the Night,

With the powers of a world of perfect light.

SEMICHORUS I.

We whirl, singing loud, round the gathering sphere,

Till the trees, and the beasts, and the clouds appear

From its chaos made calm by love, not fear.

SEMICHORUS II.

We encircle the ocean and mountains of earth,

And the happy forms of its death and birth

Change to the music of our sweet mirth.

CHORUS OF HOURS AND SPIRITS.

Break the dance, and scatter the song,

Let some depart, and some remain,

Wherever we fly we lead along

In leashes, like starbeams, soft yet strong,

The clouds that are heavy with love's sweet rain.

PANTHEA.

Ha! they are gone!

IONE.

Yet feel you no delight

From the past sweetness?

PANTHEA.

As the bare green hill

When some soft cloud vanishes into rain,

Laughs with a thousand drops of sunny water

To the unpavilioned sky!

IONE.

Even whilst we speak

New notes arise. What is that awful sound?

PANTHEA.

'Tis the deep music of the rolling world

Kindling within the strings of the waved air

Æolian modulations.

IONE.

Listen too,

How every pause is filled with under-notes,

Clear, silver, icy, keen, awakening tones,

Which pierce the sense, and live within the soul,

As the sharp stars pierce winter's crystal air

And gaze upon themselves within the sea.

PANTHEA.

But see where through two openings in the forest

Which hanging branches overcanopy,

And where two runnels of a rivulet,

Between the close moss violet-inwoven,

Have made their path of melody, like sisters

Who part with sighs that they may meet in smiles,

Turning their dear disunion to an isle

Of lovely grief, a wood of sweet sad thoughts;

Two visions of strange radiance float upon

The ocean-like enchantment of strong sound,

Which flows intenser, keener, deeper yet

Under the ground and through the windless air.

IONE.

I see a chariot like that thinnest boat,

In which the Mother of the Months is borne

By ebbing light into her western cave,

When she upsprings from interlunar dreams;

O'er which is curved an orblike canopy

Of gentle darkness, and the hills and woods,

Distinctly seen through that dusk aery veil,

Regard like shapes in an enchanter's glass;

Its wheels are solid clouds, azure and gold,

Such as the genii of the thunderstorm

Pile on the floor of the illumined sea

When the sun rushes under it; they roll

And move and grow as with an inward wind;

Within it sits a winged infant, white

Its countenance, like the whiteness of bright snow,

Its plumes are as feathers of sunny frost,

Its limbs gleam white, through the wind-flowing folds

Of its white robe, woof of ethereal pearl.

Its hair is white, the brightness of white light

Scattered in strings; yet its two eyes are heavens

Of liquid darkness, which the Deity

Within seems pouring, as a storm is poured

From jagged clouds, out of their arrowy lashes,

Tempering the cold and radiant air around,

With fire that is not brightness; in its hand

It sways a quivering moonbeam, from whose point

A guiding power directs the chariot's prow

Over its wheeled clouds, which as they roll

Over the grass, and flowers, and waves, wake sounds,

Sweet as a singing rain of silver dew.

PANTHEA.

And from the other opening in the wood

Rushes, with loud and whirlwind harmony,

A sphere, which is as many thousand spheres,

Solid as crystal, yet through all its mass

Flow, as through empty space, music and light:

Ten thousand orbs involving and involved,

Purple and azure, white, and green, and golden,

Sphere within sphere; and every space between

Peopled with unimaginable shapes,

Such as ghosts dream dwell in the lampless deep,

Yet each inter-transpicuous, and they whirl

Over each other with a thousand motions,

Upon a thousand sightless axles spinning,

And with the force of self-destroying swiftness,

Intensely, slowly, solemnly roll on,

Kindling with mingled sounds, and many tones,

Intelligible words and music wild.

With mighty whirl the multitudinous orb

Grinds the bright brook into an azure mist

Of elemental subtlety, like light;

And the wild odour of the forest flowers,

The music of the living grass and air,

The emerald light of leaf-entangled beams

Round its intense yet self-conflicting speed,

Seem kneaded into one aëreal mass

Which drowns the sense. Within the orb itself,

Pillowed upon its alabaster arms,

Like to a child o'erwearied with sweet toil,

On its own folded wings, and wavy hair,

The Spirit of the Earth is laid asleep,

And you can see its little lips are moving,

Amid the changing light of their own smiles,

Like one who talks of what he loves in dream.

IONE.

'Tis only mocking the orb's harmony.

PANTHEA.

And from a star upon its forehead, shoot,

Like swords of azure fire, or golden spears

With tyrant-quelling myrtle overtwined,

Embleming heaven and earth united now,

Vast beams like spokes of some invisible wheel

Which whirl as the orb whirls, swifter than thought,

Filling the abyss with sun-like lightenings,

And perpendicular now, and now transverse,

Pierce the dark soil, and as they pierce and pass,

Make bare the secrets of the earth's deep heart;

Infinite mines of adamant and gold,

Valueless stones, and unimagined gems,

And caverns on crystalline columns poised

With vegetable silver overspread;

Wells of unfathomed fire, and water springs

Whence the great sea, even as a child is fed,

Whose vapours clothe earth's monarch mountain-tops

With kingly, ermine snow. The beams flash on

And make appear the melancholy ruins

Of cancelled cycles; anchors, beaks of ships;

Planks turned to marble; quivers, helms, and spears,

And gorgon-headed targes, and the wheels

Of scythed chariots, and the emblazonry

Of trophies, standards, and armorial beasts,

Round which death laughed, sepulchred emblems

Of dead destruction, ruin within ruin!

The wrecks beside of many a city vast,

Whose population which the earth grew over

Was mortal, but not human; see, they lie,

Their monstrous works, and uncouth skeletons,

Their statues, homes and fanes; prodigious shapes

Huddled in gray annihilation, split,

Jammed in the hard, black deep; and over these,

The anatomies of unknown winged things,

And fishes which were isles of living scale,

And serpents, bony chains, twisted around

The iron crags, or within heaps of dust

To which the tortuous strength of their last pangs

Had crushed the iron crags; and over these

The jagged alligator, and the might

Of earth-convulsing behemoth, which once

Were monarch beasts, and on the slimy shores,

And weed-overgrown continents of earth,

Increased and multiplied like summer worms

On an abandoned corpse, till the blue globe

Wrapped deluge round it like a cloak, and they

Yelled, gasped, and were abolished; or some God

Whose throne was in a comet, passed, and cried,

»Be not!« And like my words they were no more.

THE EARTH.

The joy, the triumph, the delight, the madness!

The boundless, overflowing, bursting gladness,

The vaporous exultation not to be confined!

Ha! ha! the animation of delight

Which wraps me, like an atmosphere of light,

And bears me as a cloud is borne by its own wind.

THE MOON.

Brother mine, calm wanderer,

Happy globe of land and air,

Some Spirit is darted like a beam from thee,

Which penetrates my frozen frame,

And passes with the warmth of flame,

With love, and odour, and deep melody

Through me, through me!

THE EARTH.

Ha! ha! the caverns of my hollow mountains,

My cloven fire-crags, sound-exulting fountains

Laugh with a vast and inextinguishable laughter.

The oceans, and the deserts, and the abysses,

And the deep air's unmeasured wildernesses,

Answer from all their clouds and billows, echoing after.

They cry aloud as I do. Sceptred curse,

Who all our green and azure universe

Threatenedst to muffle round with black destruction, sending

A solid cloud to rain hot thunderstones,

And splinter and knead down my children's bones,

All I bring forth, to one void mass battering and blending, –

Until each crag-like tower, and storied column,

Palace, and obelisk, and temple solemn,

My imperial mountains crowned with cloud, and snow, and fire;

My sea-like forests, every blade and blossom

Which finds a grave or cradle in my bosom,

Were stamped by thy strong hate into a lifeless mire:

How art thou sunk, withdrawn, covered, drunk up

By thirsty nothing, as the brackish cup

Drained by a desert-troop, a little drop for all;

And from beneath, around, within, above,

Filling thy void annihilation, love

Burst in like light on caves cloven by the thunder-ball.

THE MOON.

The snow upon my lifeless mountains

Is loosened into living fountains,

My solid oceans flow, and sing, and shine:

A spirit from my heart bursts forth,

It clothes with unexpected birth

My cold bare bosom: Oh! it must be thine

On mine, on mine!

Gazing on thee I feel, I know

Green stalks burst forth, and bright flowers grow,

And living shapes upon my bosom move:

Music is in the sea and air,

Winged clouds soar here and there,

Dark with the rain new buds are dreaming of:

'Tis love, all love!

THE EARTH.

It interpenetrates my granite mass,

Through tangled roots and trodden clay doth pass

Into the utmost leaves and delicatest flowers;

Upon the winds, among the clouds 'tis spread,

It wakes a life in the forgotten dead,

They breathe a spirit up from their obscurest bowers.

And like a storm bursting its cloudy prison

With thunder, and with whirlwind, has arisen

Out of the lampless caves of unimagined being:

With earthquake shock and swiftness making shiver

Thought's stagnant chaos, unremoved for ever,

Till hate, and fear, and pain, light-vanquished shadows, fleeing,

Leave Man, who was a many-sided mirror,

Which could distort to many a shape of error,

This true fair world of things, a sea reflecting love;

Which over all his kind, as the sun's heaven

Gliding o'er ocean, smooth, serene, and even,

Darting from starry depths radiance and life, doth move:

Leave Man, even as a leprous child is left,

Who follows a sick beast to some warm cleft

Of rocks, through which the might of healing springs is poured;

Then when it wanders home with rosy smile,

Unconscious, and its mother fears awhile

It is a spirit, then, weeps on her child restored.

Man, oh, not men! a chain of linked thought,

Of love and might to be divided not,

Compelling the elements with adamantine stress;

As the sun rules, even with a tyrant's gaze,

The unquiet republic of the maze

Of planets, struggling fierce towards heaven's free wilderness.

Man, one harmonious soul of many a soul,

Whose nature is its own divine control,

Where all things flow to all, as rivers to the sea;

Familiar acts are beautiful through love;

Labour, and pain, and grief, in life's green grove

Sport like tame beasts, none knew how gentle they could be!

His will, with all mean passions, bad delights,

And selfish cares, its trembling satellites,

A spirit ill to guide, but mighty to obey,

Is as a tempest-winged ship, whose helm

Love rules, through waves which dare not overwhelm,

Forcing life's wildest shores to own its sovereign sway.

All things confess his strength. Through the cold mass

Of marble and of colour his dreams pass;

Bright threads whence mothers weave the robes their children wear;

Language is a perpetual Orphic song,

Which rules with Dædal harmony a throng

Of thoughts and forms, which else senseless and shapeless were.

The lightning is his slave; heaven's utmost deep

Gives up her stars, and like a flock of sheep

They pass before his eye, are numbered, and roll on!

The tempest is his steed, he strides the air;

And the abyss shouts from her depth laid bare,

Heaven, hast thou secrets? Man unveils me; I have none.

THE MOON.

The shadow of white death has passed

From my path in heaven at last,

A clinging shroud of solid frost and sleep;

And through my newly-woven bowers,

Wander happy paramours,

Less mighty, but as mild as those who keep

Thy vales more deep.

THE EARTH.

As the dissolving warmth of dawn may fold

A half unfrozen dew-globe, green, and gold,

And crystalline, till it becomes a winged mist,

And wanders up the vault of the blue day,

Outlives the noon, and on the sun's last ray

Hangs o'er the sea, a fleece of fire and amethyst.

THE MOON.

Thou art folded, thou art lying

In the light which is undying

Of thine own joy, and heaven's smile divine;

All suns and constellations shower

On thee a light, a life, a power

Which doth array thy sphere; thou pourest thine

On mine, on mine!

THE EARTH.

I spin beneath my pyramid of night,

Which points into the heavens dreaming delight,

Murmuring victorious joy in my enchanted sleep;

As a youth lulled in love-dreams faintly sighing,

Under the shadow of his beauty lying,

Which round his rest a watch of light and warmth doth keep.

THE MOON.

As in the soft and sweet eclipse,

When soul meets soul on lovers' lips,

High hearts are calm, and brightest eyes are dull;

So when thy shadow falls on me,

Then am I mute and still, by thee

Covered; of thy love, Orb most beautiful,

Full, oh, too full!

Thou art speeding round the sun

Brightest world of many a one;

Green and azure sphere which shinest

With a light which is divinest

Among all the lamps of Heaven

To whom life and light is given;

I, thy crystal paramour

Borne beside thee by a power

Like the polar Paradise,

Magnet-like of lovers' eyes;

I, a most enamoured maiden

Whose weak brain is overladen

With the pleasure of her love,

Maniac-like around thee move

Gazing, an insatiate bride,

On thy form from every side

Like a Mænad, round the cup

Which Agave lifted up

In the weird Cadmæan forest.

Brother, wheresoe'er thou soarest

I must hurry, whirl and follow

Through the heavens wide and hollow,

Sheltered by the warm embrace

Of thy soul from hungry space,

Drinking from thy sense and sight

Beauty, majesty, and might,

As a lover or a chameleon

Grows like what it looks upon,

As a violet's gentle eye

Gazes on the azure sky

Until its hue grows like what it beholds,

As a gray and watery mist

Glows like solid amethyst

Athwart the western mountain it enfolds,

When the sunset sleeps

Upon its snow –

THE EARTH.

And the weak day weeps

That it should be so.

Oh, gentle Moon, the voice of thy delight

Falls on me like thy clear and tender light

Soothing the seaman, borne the summer night,

Through isles for ever calm;

Oh, gentle Moon, thy crystal accents pierce

The caverns of my pride's deep universe,

Charming the tiger joy, whose tramplings fierce

Made wounds which need thy balm.

PANTHEA.

I rise as from a bath of sparkling water,

A bath of azure light, among dark rocks,

Out of the stream of sound.