STRENGTH
_and_ FORCE.
Elizabeth Browning
_Ador. _ Sweet voices, swooning o'er
The music which ye make!
Albeit to love there were not ever given
A mournful sound when uttered out of heaven,
That angel-sadness ye would fitly take.
Of love be silent now! we gaze adown
Upon the incarnate Love who wears no crown.
_Zerah. _ No crown! the woe instead
Is heavy on his head,
Pressing inward on his brain
With a hot and clinging pain
Till all tears are prest away,
And clear and calm his vision may
Peruse the black abyss.
No rod, no sceptre is
Holden in his fingers pale;
They close instead upon the nail,
Concealing the sharp dole,
Never stirring to put by
The fair hair peaked with blood,
Drooping forward from the rood
Helplessly, heavily
On the cheek that waxeth colder,
Whiter ever, and the shoulder
Where the government was laid.
His glory made the heavens afraid;
Will he not unearth this cross from its hole?
His pity makes his piteous state;
Will he be uncompassionate
Alone to his proper soul?
Yea, will he not lift up
His lips from the bitter cup,
His brows from the dreary weight,
His hand from the clenching cross,
Crying, "My Father, give to me
Again the joy I had with thee
Or ere this earth was made for loss?
No stir no sound.
The love and woe being interwound
He cleaveth to the woe;
And putteth forth heaven's strength below,
To bear.
_Ador. _ And that creates his anguish now,
Which made his glory there.
_Zerah. _ Shall it need be so?
Awake, thou Earth! behold.
Thou, uttered forth of old
In all thy life-emotion,
In all thy vernal noises,
In the rollings of thine ocean,
Leaping founts, and rivers running,--
In thy woods' prophetic heaving
Ere the rains a stroke have given,
In thy winds' exultant voices
When they feel the hills anear,--
In the firmamental sunning,
And the tempest which rejoices
Thy full heart with an awful cheer.
Thou, uttered forth of old
And with all thy music rolled
In a breath abroad
By the breathing God,--
Awake! He is here! behold!
Even _thou_--
beseems it good
To thy vacant vision dim,
That the deadly ruin should,
For thy sake, encompass him?
That the Master-word should lie
A mere silence, while his own
Processive harmony,
The faintest echo of his lightest tone,
Is sweeping in a choral triumph by?
Awake! emit a cry!
And say, albeit used
From Adam's ancient years
To falls of acrid tears,
To frequent sighs unloosed,
Caught back to press again
On bosoms zoned with pain--
To corses still and sullen
The shine and music dulling
With closed eyes and ears
That nothing sweet can enter,
Commoving thee no less
With that forced quietness
Than the earthquake in thy centre--
Thou hast not learnt to bear
This new divine despair!
These tears that sink into thee,
These dying eyes that view thee,
This dropping blood from lifted rood,
They darken and undo thee.
Thou canst not presently sustain this corse--
Cry, cry, thou hast not force!
Cry, thou wouldst fainer keep
Thy hopeless charnels deep,
Thyself a general tomb
Where the first and the second Death
Sit gazing face to face
And mar each other's breath,
While silent bones through all the place
'Neath sun and moon do faintly glisten
And seem to lie and listen
For the tramp of the coming Doom.
Is it not meet
That they who erst the Eden fruit did eat,
Should champ the ashes?
That they who wrap them in the thunder-cloud
Should wear it as a shroud,
Perishing by its flashes?
That they who vexed the lion should be rent?
Cry, cry "I will sustain my punishment,
The sin being mine; but take away from me
This visioned Dread--this man--this Deity! "
_The Earth. _ I have groaned; I have travailed: I am weary.
I am blind with my own grief, and cannot see,
As clear-eyed angels can, his agony,
And what I see I also can sustain,
Because his power protects me from his pain.
I have groaned; I have travailed: I am dreary,
Hearkening the thick sobs of my children's heart:
How can I say "Depart"
To that Atoner making calm and free?
Am I a God as he,
To lay down peace and power as willingly?
_Ador. _ He looked for some to pity. There is none.
All pity is within him and not for him.
His earth is iron under him, and o'er him
His skies are brass.
His seraphs cry "Alas! "
With hallelujah voice that cannot weep.
And man, for whom the dreadful work is done . . .
_Scornful Voices from the Earth_. If verily this _be_ the Eternal's son--
_Ador. _ Thou hearest. Man is grateful.
_Zerah. _ Can I hear
Nor darken into man and cease for ever
My seraph-smile to wear?
Was it for such,
It pleased him to overleap
His glory with his love and sever
From the God-light and the throne
And all angels bowing down,
For whom his every look did touch
New notes of joy on the unworn string
Of an eternal worshipping?
For such, he left his heaven?
There, though never bought by blood
And tears, we gave him gratitude:
We loved him there, though unforgiven.
_Ador. _ The light is riven
Above, around,
And down in lurid fragments flung,
That catch the mountain-peak and stream
With momentary gleam,
Then perish in the water and the ground.
River and waterfall,
Forest and wilderness,
Mountain and city, are together wrung
Into one shape, and that is shapelessness;
The darkness stands for all.
_Zerah. _ The pathos hath the day undone:
The death-look of His eyes
Hath overcome the sun
And made it sicken in its narrow skies.
_Ador. _ Is it to death? He dieth.
_Zerah. _ Through the dark
He still, he only, is discernible--
The naked hands and feet transfixed stark,
The countenance of patient anguish white,
Do make themselves a light
More dreadful than the glooms which round them dwell,
And therein do they shine.
_Ador. _ God! Father-God!
Perpetual Radiance on the radiant throne!
Uplift the lids of inward deity,
Flashing abroad
Thy burning Infinite!
Light up this dark where there is nought to see
Except the unimagined agony
Upon the sinless forehead of the Son!
_Zerah. _ God, tarry not! Behold, enow
Hath he wandered as a stranger,
Sorrowed as a victim. Thou
Appear for him, O Father!
Appear for him, Avenger!
Appear for him, just One and holy One,
For he is holy and just!
At once the darkness and dishonour rather
To the ragged jaws of hungry chaos rake,
And hurl aback to ancient dust
These mortals that make blasphemies
With their made breath, this earth and skies
That only grow a little dim,
Seeing their curse on him.
But him, of all forsaken,
Of creature and of brother,
Never wilt thou forsake!
Thy living and thy loving cannot slacken
Their firm essential hold upon each other,
And well thou dost remember how his part
Was still to lie upon thy breast and be
Partaker of the light that dwelt in thee
Ere sun or seraph shone;
And how while silence trembled round the throne
Thou countedst by the beatings of his heart
The moments of thine own eternity.
Awaken,
O right hand with the lightnings! Again gather
His glory to thy glory! What estranger,
What ill supreme in evil, can be thrust
Between the faithful Father and the Son?
Appear for him, O Father!
Appear for him, Avenger!
Appear for him, just One and holy One,
For he is holy and just!
_Ador. _ Thy face upturned toward the throne is dark;
Thou hast no answer, Zerah.
_Zerah. _ No reply,
O unforsaking Father?
_Ador. _ Hark!
Instead of downward voice, a cry
Is uttered from beneath.
_Zerah. _ And by a sharper sound than death,
Mine immortality is riven.
The heavy darkness which doth tent the sky
Floats backward as by a sudden wind:
But I see no light behind,
But I feel the farthest stars are all
Stricken and shaken,
And I know a shadow sad and broad
Doth fall--doth fall
On our vacant thrones in heaven.
_Voice from the Cross. _ MY GOD, MY GOD,
WHY HAST THOU ME FORSAKEN?
_The Earth. _ Ah me, ah me, ah me! the dreadful Why!
My sin is on thee, sinless one! Thou art
God-orphaned, for my burden on thy head.
Dark sin, white innocence, endurance dread!
Be still, within your shrouds, my buried dead;
Nor work with this quick horror round mine heart.
_Zerah. _ _He_ hath forsaken _him_. I perish.
_Ador. _ Hold
Upon his name! we perish not. Of old
His will--
_Zerah. _ I seek his will. Seek, seraphim!
My God, my God! where is it? Doth that curse
Reverberate spare us, seraph or universe?
_He_ hath forsaken _him_.
_Ador. _ He cannot fail.
_Angel Voices. _ We faint, we droop,
Our love doth tremble like fear.
_Voices of Fallen Angels from the Earth. _ Do we prevail?
Or are we lost? Hath not the ill we did
Been heretofore our good?
Is it not ill that one, all sinless, should
Hang heavy with all curses on a cross?
Nathless, that cry! With huddled faces hid
Within the empty graves which men did scoop
To hold more damned dead, we shudder through
What shall exalt us or undo,
Our triumph, or our loss.
_Voice from the Cross. _ IT IS FINISHED.
_Zerah. _ Hark, again!
Like a victor, speaks the slain.
_Angel Voices. _ Finished be the trembling vain!
_Ador. _ Upward, like a well-loved son,
Looketh he, the orphaned one.
_Angel Voices. _ Finished is the mystic pain.
_Voices of Fallen Angels. _ His deathly forehead at the word,
Gleameth like a seraph sword.
_Angel Voices. _ Finished is the demon reign.
_Ador. _ His breath, as living God, createth,
His breath, as dying man, completeth.
_Angel Voices. _ Finished work his hands sustain.
_The Earth. _ In mine ancient sepulchres
Where my kings and prophets freeze,
Adam dead four thousand years,
Unwakened by the universe's
Everlasting moan,
Aye his ghastly silence mocking--
Unwakened by his children's knocking
At his old sepulchral stone,
"Adam, Adam, all this curse is
Thine and on us yet! "--
Unwakened by the ceaseless tears
Wherewith they made his cerement wet,
"Adam, must thy curse remain? "--
Starts with sudden life and hears
Through the slow dripping of the caverned caves,--
_Angel Voices. _ Finished is his bane.
_Voice from the Cross. _ FATHER! MY SPIRIT TO THINE HANDS IS GIVEN.
_Ador. _ Hear the wailing winds that be
By wings of unclean spirits made!
They, in that last look, surveyed
The love they lost in losing heaven,
And passionately flee
With a desolate cry that cleaves
The natural storms--though _they_ are lifting
God's strong cedar-roots like leaves,
And the earthquake and the thunder,
Neither keeping either under,
Roar and hurtle through the glooms--
And a few pale stars are drifting
Past the dark, to disappear,
What time, from the splitting tombs
Gleamingly the dead arise,
Viewing with their death-calmed eyes
The elemental strategies,
To witness, victory is the Lord's.
Hear the wail o' the spirits! hear!
_Zerah. _ I hear alone the memory of his words.
EPILOGUE.
I.
My song is done.
My voice that long hath faltered shall be still.
The mystic darkness drops from Calvary's hill
Into the common light of this day's sun.
II.
I see no more thy cross, O holy Slain!
I hear no more the horror and the coil
Of the great world's turmoil
Feeling thy countenance _too still_,--nor yell
Of demons sweeping past it to their prison.
The skies that turned to darkness with thy pain
Make now a summer's day;
And on my changed ear that sabbath bell
Records how CHRIST IS RISEN.
III.
And I--ah! what am I
To counterfeit, with faculty earth-darkened,
Seraphic brows of light
And seraph language never used nor hearkened?
Ah me! what word that seraphs say, could come
From mouth so used to sighs, so soon to lie
Sighless, because then breathless, in the tomb?
IV.
Bright ministers of God and grace--of grace
Because of God! whether ye bow adown
In your own heaven, before the living face
Of him who died and deathless wears the crown,
Or whether at this hour ye haply are
Anear, around me, hiding in the night
Of this permitted ignorance your light,
This feebleness to spare,--
Forgive me, that mine earthly heart should dare
Shape images of unincarnate spirits
And lay upon their burning lips a thought
Cold with the weeping which mine earth inherits.
And though ye find in such hoarse music, wrought
To copy yours, a cadence all the while
Of sin and sorrow--only pitying smile!
Ye know to pity, well.
V.
_I_ too may haply smile another day
At the far recollection of this lay,
When God may call me in your midst to dwell,
To hear your most sweet music's miracle
And see your wondrous faces. May it be!
For his remembered sake, the Slain on rood,
Who rolled his earthly garment red in blood
(Treading the wine-press) that the weak, like me,
Before his heavenly throne should walk in white.
FOOTNOTE:
[D] "His angels he charged with folly. "--_Job_ iv. 18.
PROMETHEUS BOUND
FROM THE GREEK OF AESCHYLUS
_PERSONS. _
PROMETHEUS.
OCEANUS.
HERMES.
HEPHAESTUS.
IO, _daughter of_ Inachus.
STRENGTH _and_ FORCE.
_Chorus of Sea Nymphs. _
PROMETHEUS BOUND
SCENE. --_STRENGTH and FORCE, HEPHAESTUS and PROMETHEUS, at the
Rocks. _
_Strength. _ We reach the utmost limit of the earth,
The Scythian track, the desert without man.
And now, Hephaestus, thou must needs fulfil
The mandate of our Father, and with links
Indissoluble of adamantine chains
Fasten against this beetling precipice
This guilty god. Because he filched away
Thine own bright flower, the glory of plastic fire,
And gifted mortals with it,--such a sin
It doth behove he expiate to the gods,
Learning to accept the empery of Zeus
And leave off his old trick of loving man.
_Hephaestus. _ O Strength and Force, for you, our Zeus's will
Presents a deed for doing, no more! --but _I_,
I lack your daring, up this storm-rent chasm
To fix with violent hands a kindred god,
Howbeit necessity compels me so
That I must dare it, and our Zeus commands
With a most inevitable word. Ho, thou!
High-thoughted son of Themis who is sage!
Thee loth, I loth must rivet fast in chains
Against this rocky height unclomb by man,
Where never human voice nor face shall find
Out thee who lov'st them, and thy beauty's flower,
Scorched in the sun's clear heat, shall fade away.
Night shall come up with garniture of stars
To comfort thee with shadow, and the sun
Disperse with retrickt beams the morning-frosts,
But through all changes sense of present woe
Shall vex thee sore, because with none of them
There comes a hand to free. Such fruit is plucked
From love of man! and in that thou, a god,
Didst brave the wrath of gods and give away
Undue respect to mortals, for that crime
Thou art adjudged to guard this joyless rock,
Erect, unslumbering, bending not the knee,
And many a cry and unavailing moan
To utter on the air. For Zeus is stern
And new-made kings are cruel.
_Strength. _ Be it so.
Why loiter in vain pity? Why not hate
A god the gods hate? one too who betrayed
Thy glory unto men?
_Hephaestus. _ An awful thing
Is kinship joined to friendship.
_Strength. _ Grant it be;
Is disobedience to the Father's word
A possible thing? Dost quail not more for that?
_Hephaestus. _ Thou, at least, art a stern one: ever bold.
_Strength. _ Why, if I wept, it were no remedy;
And do not _thou_ spend labour on the air
To bootless uses.
_Hephaestus. _ Cursed handicraft!
I curse and hate thee, O my craft!
_Strength. _ Why hate
Thy craft most plainly innocent of all
These pending ills?
_Hephaestus. _ I would some other hand
Were here to work it!
_Strength. _ All work hath its pain,
Except to rule the gods. There is none free
Except King Zeus.
_Hephaestus. _ I know it very well:
I argue not against it.
_Strength. _ Why not, then,
Make haste and lock the fetters over HIM
Lest Zeus behold thee lagging?
_Hephaestus. _ Here be chains.
Zeus may behold these.
_Strength. _ Seize him: strike amain:
Strike with the hammer on each side his hands--
Rivet him to the rock.
_Hephaestus. _ The work is done,
And thoroughly done.
_Strength. _ Still faster grapple him;
Wedge him in deeper: leave no inch to stir.
He's terrible for finding a way out
From the irremediable.
_Hephaestus. _ Here's an arm, at least,
Grappled past freeing.
_Strength. _ Now then, buckle me
The other securely. Let this wise one learn
He's duller than our Zeus.
_Hephaestus. _ Oh, none but he
Accuse me justly.
_Strength. _ Now, straight through the chest,
Take him and bite him with the clenching tooth
Of the adamantine wedge, and rivet him.
_Hephaestus. _ Alas, Prometheus, what thou sufferest here
I sorrow over.
_Strength. _ Dost thou flinch again
And breathe groans for the enemies of Zeus?
Beware lest thine own pity find thee out.
_Hephaestus. _ Thou dost behold a spectacle that turns
The sight o' the eyes to pity.
_Strength. _ I behold
A sinner suffer his sin's penalty.
But lash the thongs about his sides.
_Hephaestus. _ So much,
I must do. Urge no farther than I must.
_Strength. _ Ay, but I _will_ urge! --and, with shout on shout,
Will hound thee at this quarry. Get thee down
And ring amain the iron round his legs.
_Hephaestus. _ That work was not long doing.
_Strength. _ Heavily now
Let fall the strokes upon the perforant gyves:
For He who rates the work has a heavy hand.
_Hephaestus. _ Thy speech is savage as thy shape.
_Strength. _ Be thou
Gentle and tender! but revile not me
For the firm will and the untruckling hate.
_Hephaestus. _ Let us go. He is netted round with chains.
_Strength. _ Here, now, taunt on! and having spoiled the gods
Of honours, crown withal thy mortal men
Who live a whole day out. Why how could _they_
Draw off from thee one single of thy griefs?
Methinks the Daemons gave thee a wrong name,
"Prometheus," which means Providence,--because
Thou dost thyself need providence to see
Thy roll and ruin from the top of doom.
_Prometheus (alone). _ O holy AEther, and swift-winged Winds,
And River-wells, and laughter innumerous
Of yon sea-waves! Earth, mother of us all,
And all-viewing cyclic Sun, I cry on you,--
Behold me, a god, what I endure from gods!
Behold, with throe on throe,
How, wasted by this woe,
I wrestle down the myriad years of time!
Behold, how fast around me,
The new King of the happy ones sublime
Has flung the chain he forged, has shamed and bound me!
Woe, woe! to-day's woe and the coming morrow's
I cover with one groan. And where is found me
A limit to these sorrows?
And yet what word do I say? I have foreknown
Clearly all things that should be; nothing done
Comes sudden to my soul; and I must bear
What is ordained with patience, being aware
Necessity doth front the universe
With an invincible gesture. Yet this curse
Which strikes me now, I find it hard to brave
In silence or in speech. Because I gave
Honour to mortals, I have yoked my soul
To this compelling fate. Because I stole
The secret fount of fire, whose bubbles went
Over the ferule's brim, and manward sent
Art's mighty means and perfect rudiment,
That sin I expiate in this agony,
Hung here in fetters, 'neath the blanching sky.
Ah, ah me! what a sound,
What a fragrance sweeps up from a pinion unseen
Of a god, or a mortal, or nature between,
Sweeping up to this rock where the earth has her bound,
To have sight of my pangs or some guerdon obtain.
Lo, a god in the anguish, a god in the chain!
The god, Zeus hateth sore
And his gods hate again,
As many as tread on his glorified floor,
Because I loved mortals too much evermore.
Alas me! what a murmur and motion I hear,
As of birds flying near!
And the air undersings
The light stroke of their wings--
And all life that approaches I wait for in fear.
_Chorus of Sea Nymphs, 1st Strophe. _
Fear nothing! our troop
Floats lovingly up
With a quick-oaring stroke
Of wings steered to the rock,
Having softened the soul of our father below.
For the gales of swift-bearing have sent me a sound,
And the clank of the iron, the malleted blow,
Smote down the profound
Of my caverns of old,
And struck the red light in a blush from my brow,--
Till I sprang up unsandaled, in haste to behold,
And rushed forth on my chariot of wings manifold.
_Prometheus. _ Alas me! --alas me!
Ye offspring of Tethys who bore at her breast
Many children, and eke of Oceanus, he
Coiling still around earth with perpetual unrest!
Behold me and see
How transfixed with the fang
Of a fetter I hang
On the high-jutting rocks of this fissure and keep
An uncoveted watch o'er the world and the deep.
_Chorus, 1st Antistrophe. _
I behold thee, Prometheus; yet now, yet now,
A terrible cloud whose rain is tears
Sweeps over mine eyes that witness how
Thy body appears
Hung awaste on the rocks by infrangible chains:
For new is the Hand, new the rudder that steers
The ship of Olympus through surge and wind--
And of old things passed, no track is behind.
_Prometheus. _ Under earth, under Hades
Where the home of the shade is,
All into the deep, deep Tartarus,
I would he had hurled me adown.
I would he had plunged me, fastened thus
In the knotted chain with the savage clang,
All into the dark where there should be none,
Neither god nor another, to laugh and see.
But now the winds sing through and shake
The hurtling chains wherein I hang,
And I, in my naked sorrows, make
Much mirth for my enemy.
_Chorus, 2nd Strophe. _
Nay! who of the gods hath a heart so stern
As to use thy woe for a mock and mirth?
Who would not turn more mild to learn
Thy sorrows? who of the heaven and earth
Save Zeus? But he
Right wrathfully
Bears on his sceptral soul unbent
And rules thereby the heavenly seed,
Nor will he pause till he content
His thirsty heart in a finished deed;
Or till Another shall appear,
To win by fraud, to seize by fear
The hard-to-be-captured government.
_Prometheus. _ Yet even of _me_ he shall have need,
That monarch of the blessed seed,
Of me, of me, who now am cursed
By his fetters dire,--
To wring my secret out withal
And learn by whom his sceptre shall
Be filched from him--as was, at first,
His heavenly fire.
But he never shall enchant me
With his honey-lipped persuasion;
Never, never shall he daunt me
With the oath and threat of passion
Into speaking as they want me,
Till he loose this savage chain,
And accept the expiation
Of my sorrow, in his pain.
_Chorus, 2nd Antistrophe. _
Thou art, sooth, a brave god,
And, for all thou hast borne
From the stroke of the rod,
Nought relaxest from scorn.
But thou speakest unto me
Too free and unworn;
And a terror strikes through me
And festers my soul
And I fear, in the roll
Of the storm, for thy fate
In the ship far from shore:
Since the son of Saturnus is hard in his hate
And unmoved in his heart evermore.
_Prometheus. _ I know that Zeus is stern;
I know he metes his justice by his will;
And yet, his soul shall learn
More softness when once broken by this ill:
And curbing his unconquerable vaunt
He shall rush on in fear to meet with me
Who rush to meet with him in agony,
To issues of harmonious covenant.
_Chorus. _ Remove the veil from all things and relate
The story to us,--of what crime accused,
Zeus smites thee with dishonourable pangs.
Speak: if to teach us do not grieve thyself.
_Prometheus. _ The utterance of these things is torture to me,
But so, too, is their silence; each way lies
Woe strong as fate.
When gods began with wrath,
And war rose up between their starry brows,
Some choosing to cast Chronos from his throne
That Zeus might king it there, and some in haste
With opposite oaths that they would have no Zeus
To rule the gods for ever,--I, who brought
The counsel I thought meetest, could not move
The Titans, children of the Heaven and Earth,
What time, disdaining in their rugged souls
My subtle machinations, they assumed
It was an easy thing for force to take
The mastery of fate. My mother, then,
Who is called not only Themis but Earth too,
(Her single beauty joys in many names)
Did teach me with reiterant prophecy
What future should be, and how conquering gods
Should not prevail by strength and violence
But by guile only. When I told them so,
They would not deign to contemplate the truth
On all sides round; whereat I deemed it best
To lead my willing mother upwardly
And set my Themis face to face with Zeus
As willing to receive her. Tartarus,
With its abysmal cloister of the Dark,
Because I gave that counsel, covers up
The antique Chronos and his siding hosts,
And, by that counsel helped, the king of gods
Hath recompensed me with these bitter pangs:
For kingship wears a cancer at the heart,--
Distrust in friendship. Do ye also ask
What crime it is for which he tortures me?
That shall be clear before you. When at first
He filled his father's throne, he instantly
Made various gifts of glory to the gods
And dealt the empire out. Alone of men,
Of miserable men, he took no count,
But yearned to sweep their track off from the world
And plant a newer race there. Not a god
Resisted such desire except myself.
_I_ dared it! _I_ drew mortals back to light,
From meditated ruin deep as hell!
For which wrong, I am bent down in these pangs
Dreadful to suffer, mournful to behold,
And I, who pitied man, am thought myself
Unworthy of pity; while I render out
Deep rhythms of anguish 'neath the harping hand
That strikes me thus--a sight to shame your Zeus!
_Chorus. _ Hard as thy chains and cold as all these rocks
Is he, Prometheus, who withholds his heart
From joining in thy woe. I yearned before
To fly this sight; and, now I gaze on it,
I sicken inwards.
_Prometheus. _ To my friends, indeed,
I must be a sad sight.
_Chorus. _ And didst thou sin
No more than so?
_Prometheus. _ I did restrain besides
My mortals from premeditating death.
_Chorus. _ How didst thou medicine the plague-fear of death?
_Prometheus. _ I set blind Hopes to inhabit in their house.
_Chorus. _ By that gift thou didst help thy mortals well.
_Prometheus. _ I gave them also fire.
_Chorus. _ And have they now,
Those creatures of a day, the red-eyed fire?
_Prometheus. _ They have: and shall learn by it many arts.
_Chorus. _ And truly for such sins Zeus tortures thee
And will remit no anguish? Is there set
No limit before thee to thine agony?
_Prometheus. _ No other: only what seems good to HIM.
_Chorus. _ And how will it seem good? what hope remains?
Seest thou not that thou hast sinned? But that thou hast sinned
It glads me not to speak of, and grieves thee:
Then let it pass from both, and seek thyself
Some outlet from distress.
_Prometheus. _ It is in truth
An easy thing to stand aloof from pain
And lavish exhortation and advice
On one vexed sorely by it. I have known
All in prevision. By my choice, my choice,
I freely sinned--I will confess my sin--
And helping mortals, found my own despair.
I did not think indeed that I should pine
Beneath such pangs against such skyey rocks,
Doomed to this drear hill and no neighbouring
Of any life: but mourn not ye for griefs
I bear to-day: hear rather, dropping down
To the plain, how other woes creep on to me,
And learn the consummation of my doom.
