Call at will
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.
215Ask, 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
220My lips, or those of aught resembling me.
Phantasm of Jupiter, arise, appear!
Ione
My wings are folded o’er mine ears:
My wings are crossed over mine eyes:
Yet through their silver shade appears,
225 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,
230Ever thus we watch and wake.
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.
235 A sceptre of pale gold
To stay steps proud, o’er the slow cloud
His veined hand doth hold.
Cruel he looks, but calm and strong,
Like one who does, not suffers wrong.
Phantasm of Jupiter
240Why have the secret powers of this strange world
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
245In 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
250Listen! And though your echoes must be mute,
Grey 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:
255It tears me as fire tears a thunder-cloud.
Panthea
See, how he lifts his mighty looks, the Heaven
Darkens above.
Ione
He speaks! O shelter me!
Prometheus
I see the curse on gestures proud and cold,
And looks of firm defiance, and calm hate,
260And such despair as mocks itself with smiles,
Written as on a scroll … yet speak—O speak!
Phantasm
Fiend, I defy thee! with a calm, fixed mind,
All that thou canst inflict I bid to do;
Foul Tyrant both of Gods and Human-kind,
265 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
270Lightning, and cutting hail, and legioned forms
Of furies, driving by upon the wounding storms.
Aye, 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
275 To blast mankind, from yon ethereal tower.
Let thy malignant spirit move
Its darkness over those I love:
On me and mine I imprecate
The utmost torture of thy hate;
280And thus devote to sleepless agony
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
285 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;
290And thine Omnipotence a crown of pain,
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,
295 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,
300And after many a false and fruitless crime
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 a while is blind, and so was mine.
305 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.
310Howl, Spirits of the living and the dead,
Your refuge, your defence lies fallen and vanquished.
First Echo
Lies fallen and vanquished?
Second Echo
Fallen and vanquished?
Ione
Fear not: ’tis but some passing spasm,
315 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
320Under plumes of purple dye,
Like rose-ensanguined ivory,
A Shape comes now,
Stretching on high from his right hand
A serpent-cinctured wand.
Panthea
325’Tis 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 vapours steaming up behind,
330Clanging loud, an endless crowd—
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
335Are 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
340Of corpses, to a death-bird after battle.
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,
345And gnash, beside the streams of fire and wail,
Your foodless teeth … Geryon, arise! and Gorgon,
Chimaera, and thou Sphinx, subtlest of fiends,
Who ministered to Thebes Heaven’s poisoned wine,
Unnatural love, and more unnatural hate:
350These shall perform your task.
First Fury
Oh, mercy! mercy!
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
355To 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,
360Smiling reproach. Wise art thou, firm and good,
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
365And 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
370People the abyss, and leave them to their task.
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:
375Clothe 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
380The fiercest and the mightiest.
Prometheus
Evil minds
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
385The crystal-winged snow cling round my hair—
Whilst my beloved race is trampled down
By his thought-executing ministers.
Such is the tyrant’s recompense—’tis just:
He who is evil can receive no good;
390And for a world bestowed, or a friend lost,
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.
395Submission, 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,
400Or could I yield? Which yet I will not yield.
Let others flatter Crime, where it sits throned
In brief Omnipotence; secure are they:
For Justice, when triumphant, will weep down
Pity, not punishment, on her own wrongs,
405Too 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 clamour: fear delay!
Behold! Heaven lowers under thy Father’s frown.
Mercury
410Oh, that we might be spared: I to inflict,
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
415They 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
420Flags wearily in its unending flight
Till it sink, dizzy, blind, lost, 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
425If thou might’st 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,
430Not me, within whose mind sits peace serene
As light in the sun, throned … How vain is talk!
Call up the fiends.
Ione
O, sister, look! White fire
Has cloven to the roots yon huge snow-loaded cedar;
How fearfully God’s thunder howls behind!
Mercury
435I must obey his words and thine—alas!
Most heavily remorse hangs at my heart!
Panthea
See where the child of Heaven, with winged feet,
Runs down the slanted sunlight of the dawn.
Ione
Dear sister, close thy plumes over thine eyes
440Lest thou behold and die—they come, they come
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,
445Prometheus, 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,
450Methinks I grow like what I contemplate,
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
455Through 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
460The darkness and the clangour of your wings.
But why more hideous than your loathed 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
465The 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 aerial crimson falls, flushing her cheek,
470So from our victim’s destined agony
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
475Thou 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
480I weigh not what ye do, but what ye suffer,
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
485The 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,
490And blood within thy labyrinthine veins
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
495From 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
500Who with wingless footsteps trample the sea,
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,
505 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:
510 Leave the self-contempt implanted
In young spirits, sense-enchanted,
Misery’s yet unkindled fuel:
Leave Hell’s secrets half unchanted
To the maniac dreamer: cruel
515 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 burthen the blasts of the atmosphere,
520But vainly we toil till ye come here.
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
525Your call was as a winged 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
530Kingly conclaves stern and cold,
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,
535But to speak might break the spell
Which must bend the Invincible,
The stern of thought;
He yet defies the deepest power of Hell.
A Fury
Tear the veil!
Another Fury
It is torn.
Chorus
The pale stars of the morn
540Shine on a misery dire to be borne.
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,
545Hope, love, doubt, desire—which consume him for ever.
One came forth of gentle worth
Smiling on the sanguine earth;
His words outlived him, like swift poison
Withering up truth, peace, and pity.
550Look! where round the wide horizon
Many a million-peopled city
Vomits smoke in the bright air—
Hark that outcry of despair!
’Tis his mild and gentle ghost
555 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.
560 Joy, joy, joy!
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
565From his white and quivering brow.
Grant a little respite now—
See! a disenchanted nation
Springs like day from desolation;
To Truth its state is dedicate,
570 And Freedom leads it forth, her mate;
A legioned band of linked brothers
Whom Love calls children—
Semichorus II
’Tis another’s—
See how kindred murder kin!
’Tis the vintage-time for Death and Sin:
575 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
580Of the good Titan, as storms tear the deep,
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 woeful sight: a youth
585With 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,
590For men were slowly killed by frowns and smiles:
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
595Deep wrongs for man, and scorn, and chains, but heap
Thousandfold 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!
600Fix, fix those tortured orbs in peace and death,
So thy sick throes shake not that crucifix,
So those pale fingers play not with thy gore.
O, horrible! Thy name I will not speak,
It hath become a curse. I see, I see
605The 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;
610Some linked to corpses in unwholesome cells:
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
615By 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 ravin it has gorged: the loftiest fear
620All that they would disdain to think were true:
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.
625The 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,—
630But live among their suffering fellow-men
As if none felt: they know not what they do.
Prometheus
Thy words are like a cloud of winged snakes;
And yet, I pity those they torture not.
Fury
Thou pitiest them? I speak no more!
[Vanishes.
Prometheus
Ah woe!
635Ah woe! Alas! pain, pain ever, forever!
I close my tearless eyes, but see more clear
Thy works within my woe-illumed mind,
Thou subtle tyrant … Peace is in the grave—
The grave hides all things beautiful and good:
640I am a God and cannot find it there—
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
645When 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 watch-words—they
Were borne aloft in bright emblazonry;
650The nations thronged around, and cried aloud,
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.
655This 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,
660And who inhabit, as birds wing the wind,
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,
665Like flocks of clouds in spring’s delightful weather,
Thronging in the blue air!
Ione
And see! more come,
Like fountain-vapours when the winds are dumb,
That climb up the ravine in scattered lines.
And hark! is it the music of the pines?
670Is it the lake? Is it the waterfall?
Panthea
’Tis something sadder, sweeter far than all.
Chorus of Spirits
From unremembered ages we
Gentle guides and guardians be
Of Heaven-oppressed mortality;
675And we breathe, and sicken not,
The atmosphere of human thought:
Be it dim and dank and grey
Like a storm-extinguished day,
Travelled o’er by dying gleams;
680 Be it bright as all between
Cloudless skies and windless streams,
Silent, liquid, and serene—
As the birds within the wind,
As the fish within the wave,
685As 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—
690Thence we bear the prophecy
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
695I 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,
700There was mingled many a cry—
Freedom! Hope! Death! Victory!
Till they faded through the sky
And one sound above, around,
One sound beneath, around, above,
705Was moving; ’twas the soul of love;
’Twas the hope, the prophecy
Which begins and ends in thee.
Second Spirit
A rainbow’s arch stood on the sea
Which rock’d beneath, immoveably;
710And the triumphant storm did flee,
Like a conqueror swift and proud,
Between, with many a captive cloud,
A shapeless, dark and rapid crowd,
Each by lightning riven in half:
715I 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,
720And speeded hither on the sigh
Of one who gave an enemy
His plank—then plunged aside to die.
Third Spirit
I sate beside a sage’s bed,
And the lamp was burning red
725Near 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
730Pity, eloquence, and woe;
And the world awhile below
Wore the shade its lustre made.
It has borne me here as fleet
As Desire’s lightning feet:
735I 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;
740Nor seeks nor finds he mortal blisses,
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
745The yellow bees i’ 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!—
750One of these awakened me,
And I sped to succour thee.
Ione
Behold’st thou not two shapes from the east and west
Come, as two doves to one beloved nest,
Twin nurslings of the all-sustaining air
755On swift still wings glide down the atmosphere?
And hark! their sweet, sad voices! ’tis 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
760On 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,
765That 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 past ’twas fading,
And hollow Ruin yawned behind: great sages bound in madness,
And headless patriots, and pale youths who perished, unupbraiding,
770Gleamed 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
775The 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
780Though 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,
785Man 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
790In 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
795That 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
800Which 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
805Which 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,
810Wert 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
815If 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;
820Earth 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
825Deeply 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,
830And haunted by sweet airs and sounds, which flow
Among the woods and waters, from the ether
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,
5Which 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;
10Like 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 …
15Too 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
20Of 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 cloudlike snow
25The roseate sun-light quivers: hear I not
The Aeolian 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.
30Beloved 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
35Pardon, 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
40Before 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
45Within 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 …
50But 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
55Too 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,
60From 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
65Which 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
70Whose 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,
75Steamed forth like vaporous fire; an atmosphere
Which wrapt 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
80His 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,
85And 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 far melody: thy name
90Among 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?
95I 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!
100Thou 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
105Of 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
110Thine 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
115Contracted 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
120I 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
125Within 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
130For through its grey 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
135Burst 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
140Of 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 grey dawn,
145And 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—
150And there was more which I remember not;
But on the shadows of the moving 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,
155The 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!
160And 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
165Around the crags. What fine clear sounds! O, list!
Echoes (unseen)
Echoes we: listen!
We cannot stay:
As dew-stars glisten
Then fade away—
170 Child of Ocean!
Asia
Hark! Spirits speak. The liquid responses
Of their aërial tongues yet sound.
Panthea
I hear.
Echoes
O follow, follow,
As our voice recedeth
175Through the caverns hollow,
Where the forest spreadeth;
(More distant)
O follow, follow!
Through the caverns hollow,
As the song floats thou pursue,
180Where the wild bee never flew,
Through the noon-tide darkness deep,
By the odour-breathing sleep
Of faint night-flowers, and the waves
At the fountain-lighted caves,
185While 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
190In the world unknown
Sleeps a voice unspoken;
By thy step alone
Can its rest be broken;
Child of Ocean!
Asia
195How the notes sink upon the ebbing wind!
Echoes
O follow, follow!
Through the caverns hollow,
As the song floats thou pursue,
By the woodland noon-tide dew,
200By the forests, 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
205Parted, 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 past, by cedar, pine, and yew,
And each dark tree that ever grew,
Is curtained out from Heaven’s wide blue;
5Nor 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,
10 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
15That 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—
20It 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
25 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;
30Another 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
35 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
40So 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,
45All 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,
50And 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
55 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,
60 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
65Which 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:
70I 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
75Under the green and golden atmosphere
Which noon-tide 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,
80They 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
85Of 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,
90And 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
95One 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
5Which 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 Maenads who cry loud, Evoe! Evoe!
10The 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
15Like 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,
20As 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
25Encinctured 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
30The 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
35Satiates 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
40As 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
45As 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
50Grows dizzy—seest 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,
55 Down, down!
Through the shade of Sleep,
Through the cloudy strife
Of Death and of Life;
Through the veil and the bar
60 Of things which seem and are
Even to the steps of the remotest throne,
Down, down!
While the sound whirls around,
Down, down!
65 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;
70As steel obeys the spirit of the stone,
Down, down!
Through the grey, void Abysm,
Down, down!
Where the air is no prism,
75 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,
80 Down, down!
In the depth of the Deep,
Down, down!
Like veiled lightning asleep,
Like the spark nursed in embers,
85 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!
90 We have bound thee, we guide thee
Down, down!
With the bright form beside thee;
Resist not the weakness—
Such strength is in meekness
95 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,
5Ungazed 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
10That 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,
15Fills 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,
20Which 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;
25And 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
30Asks 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
35Of 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 semi-vital worms; but he refused
The birthrights of their being, knowledge, power,
40The 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. Then Prometheus
Gave wisdom, which is strength, to Jupiter,
45And 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
50First famine, and then toil, and then disease,
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;
55And 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
60Which sleep within folded Elysian flowers,
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
65Which 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,
70And gems and poisons, and all subtlest forms
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,
75Which 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;
80And human hands first mimicked and then mocked,
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.
85He told the hidden power of herbs and springs,
And Disease drank and slept.
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