Prometheus Unbound

Percy Bysshe Shelley

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Prometheus Unbound
A Lyrical Drama in Four Acts

Dramatis Personae
PROMETHEUS.   		ASIA     \
DEMOGORGON.   		PANTHEA    }--  Oceanides.
JUPITER.      		IONE  	 /       	
THE EARTH.    
THE PHANTASM OF JUPITER.
OCEAN.        		THE SPIRIT OF THE EARTH.
APOLLO.       		THE SPIRIT OF THE MOON.
MERCURY.      		SPIRITS OF THE HOURS.
HERCULES.    	 	SPIRITS. ECHOES. FAUNS.
	      		FURIES.

Act I



SCENE, a Ravine of Icy Rocks in the Indian Caucasus. PROMETHEUS is discovered bound to the Precipice. PANTHEA and IONE are seated at his feet. Time, Night. During the Scene morning slowly breaks.

PROMETHEUS
       MONARCH of Gods and Daemons, and all Spirits
       But One, who throng those bright and rolling worlds
       Which Thou and I alone of living things
       Behold with sleepless eyes! regard this Earth
       Made multitudinous with thy slaves, whom thou
       Requitest for knee-worship, prayer, and praise,
       And toil, and hecatombs of broken hearts,
       With fear and self-contempt and barren hope;
       Whilst me, who am thy foe, eyeless in hate,
       Hast thou made reign and triumph, to thy scorn,
       O'er mine own misery and thy vain revenge.
       Three thousand years of sleep-unsheltered hours,
       And moments aye divided by keen pangs
       Till they seemed years, torture and solitude,
       Scorn and despair--these are mine empire:
       More glorious far than that which thou surveyest
       From thine unenvied throne, O Mighty God!
       Almighty, had I deigned to share the shame
       Of thine ill tyranny, and hung not here
       Nailed to this wall of eagle-baffling mountain,
       Black, wintry, dead, unmeasured; without herb,
       Insect, or beast, or shape or sound of life.
       Ah me! alas, pain, pain ever, forever!

       No change, no pause, no hope! Yet I endure.
       I ask the Earth, have not the mountains felt?
       I ask yon Heaven, the all-beholding Sun,
       Has it not seen? The Sea, in storm or calm,
       Heaven's ever-changing shadow, spread below,
       Have its deaf waves not heard my agony?
       Ah me! alas, pain, pain ever, forever!

       The crawling glaciers pierce me with the spears
       Of their moon-freezing crystals; the bright chains
       Eat with their burning cold into my bones.
       Heaven's winged hound, polluting from thy lips
       His beak in poison not his own, tears up
       My heart; and shapeless sights come wandering by,
       The ghastly people of the realm of dream,
       Mocking me; and the Earthquake-fiends are charged
       To wrench the rivets from my quivering wounds
       When the rocks split and close again behind;
       While from their loud abysses howling throng
       The genii of the storm, urging the rage
       Of whirlwind, and afflict me with keen hail.
       And yet to me welcome is day and night,
       Whether one breaks the hoar-frost of the morn,
       Or starry, dim, and slow, the other climbs
       The leaden-colored east; for then they lead
       The wingless, crawling hours, one among whom--
       As some dark Priest hales the reluctant victim--
       Shall drag thee, cruel King, to kiss the blood
       From these pale feet, which then might trample thee
       If they disdained not such a prostrate slave.
       Disdain! Ah, no! I pity thee. What ruin
       Will hunt thee undefended through the wide Heaven!
       How will thy soul, cloven to its depth with terror,
       Gape like a hell within! I speak in grief,
       Not exultation, for I hate no more,
       As then ere misery made me wise. The curse
       Once breathed on thee I would recall. Ye Mountains,
       Whose many-voiced Echoes, through the mist
       Of cataracts, flung the thunder of that spell!
       Ye icy Springs, stagnant with wrinkling frost,
       Which vibrated to hear me, and then crept
       Shuddering through India! Thou serenest Air
       Through which the Sun walks burning without beams!
       And ye swift Whirlwinds, who on pois'd wings
       Hung mute and moveless o'er yon hushed abyss,
       As thunder, louder than your own, made rock
       The orb'd world! If then my words had power,
       Though I am changed so that aught evil wish
       Is dead within; although no memory be
       Of what is hate, let them not lose it now!
       What was that curse? for ye all heard me speak.

FIRST VOICE: from the Mountains
       Thrice three hundred thousand years
         O'er the earthquake's couch we stood;
       Oft, as men convulsed with fears,
         We trembled in our multitude.

SECOND VOICE: from the Springs
       Thunderbolts had parched our water,
         We had been stained with bitter blood,
       And had run mute, 'mid shrieks of slaughter
         Through a city and a solitude.

THIRD VOICE: from the Air
       I had clothed, since Earth uprose,
         Its wastes in colors not their own,
       And oft had my serene repose
         Been cloven by many a rending groan.

FOURTH VOICE: from the Whirlwinds
       We had soared beneath these mountains
         Unresting ages; nor had thunder,
       Nor yon volcano's flaming fountains,
         Nor any power above or under
         Ever made us mute with wonder.

FIRST VOICE
       But never bowed our snowy crest
       As at the voice of thine unrest.

SECOND VOICE
       Never such a sound before
       To the Indian waves we bore.
       A pilot asleep on the howling sea
       Leaped up from the deck in agony,
       And heard, and cried, 'Ah, woe is me!'
       And died as mad as the wild waves be.

THIRD VOICE
       By such dread words from Earth to Heaven
       My still realm was never riven;
       When its wound was closed, there stood
       Darkness o'er the day like blood.

FOURTH VOICE
       And we shrank back: for dreams of ruin
       To frozen caves our flight pursuing
       Made us keep silence--thus--and thus--
       Though silence is a hell to us.

THE EARTH
       The tongueless caverns of the craggy hills
       Cried, 'Misery!' then; the hollow Heaven replied,
       'Misery!' And the Ocean's purple waves,
       Climbing the land, howled to the lashing winds,
       And the pale nations heard it, 'Misery!'

PROMETHEUS
       I hear a sound of voices; not the voice
       Which I gave forth. Mother, thy sons and thou
       Scorn him, without whose all-enduring will
       Beneath the fierce omnipotence of Jove,
       Both they and thou had vanished, like thin mist
       Unrolled on the morning wind. Know ye not me,
       The Titan? He who made his agony
       The barrier to your else all-conquering foe?
       O rock-embosomed lawns and snow-fed streams,
       Now seen athwart frore vapors, deep below,
       Through whose o'ershadowing woods I wandered once
       With Asia, drinking life from her loved eyes;
       Why scorns the spirit, which informs ye, now
       To commune with me? me alone who checked,
       As one who checks a fiend-drawn charioteer,
       The falsehood and the force of him who reigns
       Supreme, and with the groans of pining slaves
       Fills your dim glens and liquid wildernesses:
       Why answer ye not, still? Brethren!

THE EARTH
                                   They dare not.

PROMETHEUS
       Who dares? for I would hear that curse again.
       Ha, what an awful whisper rises up!
       'Tis scarce like sound; it tingles through the frame
       As lightning tingles, hovering ere it strike.
       Speak, Spirit! from thine inorganic voice
       I only know that thou art moving near
       And love. How cursed I him?

THE EARTH
                             How canst thou hear
       Who knowest not the language of the dead?

PROMETHEUS
       Thou art a living spirit; speak as they.

THE EARTH
       I dare not speak like life, lest Heaven's fell King
       Should hear, and link me to some wheel of pain
       More torturing than the one whereon I roll.
       Subtle thou art and good; and though the Gods
       Hear not this voice, yet thou art more than God,
       Being wise and kind: earnestly hearken now.

PROMETHEUS
       Obscurely through my brain, like shadows dim,
       Sweep awful thoughts, rapid and thick. I feel
       Faint, like one mingled in entwining love;
       Yet 't is not pleasure.

THE EARTH
                           No, thou canst not hear;
       Thou art immortal, and this tongue is known
       Only to those who die.

PROMETHEUS
                          And what art thou,
       O melancholy Voice?

THE EARTH
                       I am the Earth,
       Thy mother; she within whose stony veins,
       To the last fibre of the loftiest tree
       Whose thin leaves trembled in the frozen air,
       Joy ran, as blood within a living frame,
       When thou didst from her bosom, like a cloud
       Of glory, arise, a spirit of keen joy!
       And at thy voice her pining sons uplifted
       Their prostrate brows from the polluting dust,
       And our almighty Tyrant with fierce dread
       Grew pale, until his thunder chained thee here.
       Then--see those million worlds which burn and roll
       Around us--their inhabitants beheld
       My spher'd light wane in wide Heaven; the sea
       Was lifted by strange tempest, and new fire
       From earthquake-rifted mountains of bright snow
       Shook its portentous hair beneath Heaven's frown;
       Lightning and Inundation vexed the plains;
       Blue thistles bloomed in cities; foodless toads
       Within voluptuous chambers panting crawled.
       When Plague had fallen on man and beast and worm,
       And Famine; and black blight on herb and tree;
       And in the corn, and vines, and meadow-grass,
       Teemed ineradicable poisonous weeds
       Draining their growth, for my wan breast was dry
       With grief, and the thin air, my breath, was stained
       With the contagion of a mother's hate
       Breathed on her child's destroyer; ay, I heard
       Thy curse, the which, if thou rememberest not,
       Yet my innumerable seas and streams,
       Mountains, and caves, and winds, and yon wide air,
       And the inarticulate people of the dead,
       Preserve, a treasured spell. We meditate
       In secret joy and hope those dreadful words,
       But dare not speak them.

PROMETHEUS
                           Venerable mother!
       All else who live and suffer take from thee
       Some comfort; flowers, and fruits, and happy sounds,
       And love, though fleeting; these may not be mine.
       But mine own words, I pray, deny me not.

THE EARTH
       They shall be told. Ere Babylon was dust,
       The Magus Zoroaster, my dead child,
       Met his own image walking in the garden.
       That apparition, sole of men, he saw.
       For know there are two worlds of life and death:
       One that which thou beholdest; but the other
       Is underneath the grave, where do inhabit
       The shadows of all forms that think and live,
       Till death unite them and they part no more;
       Dreams and the light imaginings of men,
       And all that faith creates or love desires,
       Terrible, strange, sublime and beauteous shapes.
       There thou art, and dost hang, a writhing shade,
       'Mid whirlwind-peopled mountains; all the gods
       Are there, and all the powers of nameless worlds,
       Vast, sceptred phantoms; heroes, men, and beasts;
       And Demogorgon, a tremendous gloom;
       And he, the supreme Tyrant, on his throne
       Of burning gold. Son, one of these shall utter
       The curse which all remember. Call at will
       Thine own ghost, or the ghost of Jupiter,
       Hades or Typhon, or what mightier Gods
       From all-prolific Evil, since thy ruin,
       Have sprung, and trampled on my prostrate sons.
       Ask, and they must reply: so the revenge
       Of the Supreme may sweep through vacant shades,
       As rainy wind through the abandoned gate
       Of a fallen palace.

PROMETHEUS
                       Mother, let not aught
       Of that which may be evil pass again
       My lips, or those of aught resembling me.
       Phantasm of Jupiter, arise, appear!

IONE
         My wings are folded o'er mine ears;
           My wings are crossed o'er mine eyes;
         Yet through their silver shade appears,
           And through their lulling plumes arise,
         A Shape, a throng of sounds.
           May it be no ill to thee
         O thou of many wounds!
       Near whom, for our sweet sister's sake,
       Ever thus we watch and wake.

PANTHEA
         The sound is of whirlwind underground,
           Earthquake, and fire, and mountains cloven;
         The shape is awful, like the sound,
           Clothed in dark purple, star-inwoven.
         A sceptre of pale gold,
           To stay steps proud, o'er the slow cloud,
         His vein'd hand doth hold.
       Cruel he looks, but calm and strong,
       Like one who does, not suffers wrong.

PHANTASM OF JUPITER
       Why have the secret powers of this strange world
       Driven me, a frail and empty phantom, hither
       On direst storms? What unaccustomed sounds
       Are hovering on my lips, unlike the voice
       With which our pallid race hold ghastly talk
       In darkness? And, proud sufferer, who art thou?

PROMETHEUS
       Tremendous Image! as thou art must be
       He whom thou shadowest forth. I am his foe,
       The Titan. Speak the words which I would hear,
       Although no thought inform thine empty voice.

THE EARTH
       Listen! And though your echoes must be mute,
       Gray mountains, and old woods, and haunted springs,
       Prophetic caves, and isle-surrounding streams,
       Rejoice to hear what yet ye cannot speak.

PHANTASM
       A spirit seizes me and speaks within;
       It tears me as fire tears a thunder-cloud.

PANTHEA
       See how he lifts his mighty looks! the Heaven
       Darkens above.

IONE
                  He speaks! Oh, shelter me!

PROMETHEUS
       I see the curse on gestures proud and cold,
       And looks of firm defiance, and calm hate,
       And such despair as mocks itself with smiles,
       Written as on a scroll: yet speak! Oh, speak!

PHANTASM
         Fiend, I defy thee! with a calm, fixed mind,
           All that thou canst inflict I bid thee do;
         Foul tyrant both of Gods and humankind,
           One only being shalt thou not subdue.
             Rain then thy plagues upon me here,
             Ghastly disease, and frenzying fear;
             And let alternate frost and fire
             Eat into me, and be thine ire
         Lightning, and cutting hail, and legioned forms
       Of furies, driving by upon the wounding storms.

         Ay, do thy worst! Thou art omnipotent.
           O'er all things but thyself I gave thee power,
         And my own will. Be thy swift mischiefs sent
           To blast mankind, from yon ethereal tower.
             Let thy malignant spirit move
             In darkness over those I love;
             On me and mine I imprecate
             The utmost torture of thy hate;
         And thus devote to sleepless agony,
       This undeclining head while thou must reign on high.

         But thou, who art the God and Lord: O thou
           Who fillest with thy soul this world of woe,
         To whom all things of Earth and Heaven do bow
           In fear and worship--all-prevailing foe!
             I curse thee! let a sufferer's curse
             Clasp thee, his torturer, like remorse;
             Till thine Infinity shall be
             A robe of envenomed agony;
         And thine Omnipotence a crown of pain,
       To cling like burning gold round thy dissolving brain!

         Heap on thy soul, by virtue of this Curse,
           Ill deeds; then be thou damned, beholding good;
         Both infinite as is the universe,
           And thou, and thy self-torturing solitude.
             An awful image of calm power
             Though now thou sittest, let the hour
             Come, when thou must appear to be
             That which thou art internally;
         And after many a false and fruitless crime,
       Scorn track thy lagging fall through boundless space and time!

PROMETHEUS
       Were these my words, O Parent?

THE EARTH
                                They were thine.

PROMETHEUS
       It doth repent me; words are quick and vain;
       Grief for awhile is blind, and so was mine.
       I wish no living thing to suffer pain.

THE EARTH
         Misery, oh, misery to me,
         That Jove at length should vanquish thee!
         Wail, howl aloud, Land and Sea,
         The Earth's rent heart shall answer ye!
         Howl, Spirits of the living and the dead,
       Your refuge, your defence, lies fallen and vanquishèd!

FIRST ECHO
       Lies fallen and vanquishèd!

SECOND ECHO
                             Fallen and vanquisèd!

IONE
       Fear not: 't is but some passing spasm,
         The Titan is unvanquished still.
       But see, where through the azure chasm
         Of yon forked and snowy hill,
       Trampling the slant winds on high
         With golden-sandalled feet, that glow
             Under plumes of purple dye,
             Like rose-ensanguined ivory,
              A Shape comes now,
       Stretching on high from his right hand
              A serpent-cinctured wand.

PANTHEA
       'T is Jove's world-wandering herald, Mercury.

IONE
       And who are those with hydra tresses
           And iron wings, that climb the wind,
       Whom the frowning God represses,--
           Like vapors steaming up behind,
       Clanging loud, an endless crowd?

PANTHEA
           These are Jove's tempest-walking hounds,
         Whom he gluts with groans and blood,
         When charioted on sulphurous cloud
           He bursts Heaven's bounds.

IONE
         Are they now led from the thin dead
           On new pangs to be fed?

PANTHEA
       The Titan looks as ever, firm, not proud.

FIRST FURY
       Ha! I scent life!

SECOND FURY
                     Let me but look into his eyes!

THIRD FURY
       The hope of torturing him smells like a heap
       Of corpses to a death-bird after battle.

FIRST FURY
       Darest thou delay, O Herald! take cheer, Hounds
       Of Hell: what if the Son of Maia soon
       Should make us food and sport--who can please long
       The Omnipotent?

MERCURY
                   Back to your towers of iron,
       And gnash, beside the streams of fire and wail,
       Your foodless teeth. Geryon, arise! and Gorgon,
       Chimaera, and thou Sphinx, subtlest of fiends,
       Who ministered to Thebes Heaven's poisoned wine,
       Unnatural love, and more unnatural hate:
       These shall perform your task.

FIRST FURY
                               Oh, mercy! mercy!
       We die with our desire! drive us not back!

MERCURY
       Crouch then in silence.
                           Awful Sufferer!
       To thee unwilling, most unwillingly
       I come, by the great Father's will driven down,
       To execute a doom of new revenge.
       Alas! I pity thee, and hate myself
       That I can do no more; aye from thy sight
       Returning, for a season, Heaven seems Hell,
       So thy worn form pursues me night and day,
       Smiling reproach. Wise art thou, firm and good,
       But vainly wouldst stand forth alone in strife
       Against the Omnipotent; as yon clear lamps,
       That measure and divide the weary years
       From which there is no refuge, long have taught
       And long must teach. Even now thy Torturer arms
       With the strange might of unimagined pains
       The powers who scheme slow agonies in Hell,
       And my commission is to lead them here,
       Or what more subtle, foul, or savage fiends
       People the abyss, and leave them to their task.
       Be it not so! there is a secret known
       To thee, and to none else of living things,
       Which may transfer the sceptre of wide Heaven,
       The fear of which perplexes the Supreme.
       Clothe it in words, and bid it clasp his throne
       In intercession; bend thy soul in prayer,
       And like a suppliant in some gorgeous fane,
       Let the will kneel within thy haughty heart,
       For benefits and meek submission tame
       The fiercest and the mightiest.

PROMETHEUS
                                 Evil minds
       Change good to their own nature. I gave all
       He has; and in return he chains me here
       Years, ages, night and day; whether the Sun
       Split my parched skin, or in the moony night
       The crystal-wingèd snow cling round my hair;
       Whilst my belovèd race is trampled down
       By his thought-executing ministers.
       Such is the tyrant's recompense. 'T is just.
       He who is evil can receive no good;
       And for a world bestowed, or a friend lost,
       He can feel hate, fear, shame; not gratitude.
       He but requites me for his own misdeed.
       Kindness to such is keen reproach, which breaks
       With bitter stings the light sleep of Revenge.
       Submission thou dost know I cannot try.
       For what submission but that fatal word,
       The death-seal of mankind's captivity,
       Like the Sicilian's hair-suspended sword,
       Which trembles o'er his crown, would he accept,
       Or could I yield? Which yet I will not yield.
       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,
       Too much avenged by those who err. I wait,
       Enduring thus, the retributive hour
       Which since we spake is even nearer now.
       But hark, the hell-hounds clamor: fear delay:
       Behold! Heaven lowers under thy Father's frown.

MERCURY
       Oh, that we might be spared; I to inflict,
       And thou to suffer! Once more answer me.
       Thou knowest not the period of Jove's power?

PROMETHEUS
       I know but this, that it must come.

MERCURY
                                   Alas!
       Thou canst not count thy years to come of pain!

PROMETHEUS
       They last while Jove must reign; nor more, nor less
       Do I desire or fear.

MERCURY
                        Yet pause, and plunge
       Into Eternity, where recorded time,
       Even all that we imagine, age on age,
       Seems but a point, and the reluctant mind
       Flags wearily in its unending flight,
       Till it sink, dizzy, blind, lot, shelterless;
       Perchance it has not numbered the slow years
       Which thou must spend in torture, unreprieved?

PROMETHEUS
       Perchance no thought can count them, yet they pass.

MERCURY
       If thou mightst dwell among the Gods the while,
       Lapped in voluptuous joy?

PROMETHEUS
                           I would not quit
       This bleak ravine, these unrepentant pains.

MERCURY
       Alas! I wonder at, yet pity thee.

PROMETHEUS
       Pity the self-despising slaves of Heaven,
       Not me, within whose mind sits peace serene,
       As light in the sun, throned. How vain is talk!
       Call up the fiends.

IONE
                       Oh, sister, look! White fire
       Has cloven to the roots yon huge snow-loaded cedar;
       How fearfully God's thunder howls behind!

MERCURY
       I must obey his words and thine. Alas!
       Most heavily remorse hangs at my heart!

PANTHEA
       See where the child of Heaven, with wingèd feet,
       Runs down the slanted sunlight of the dawn.

IONE
       Dear sister, close thy plumes over thine eyes
       Lest thou behold and die; they come--they come--
       Blackening the birth of day with countless wings,
       And hollow underneath, like death.

FIRST FURY
                                   Prometheus!

SECOND FURY
       Immortal Titan!

THIRD FURY
                   Champion of Heaven's slaves!

PROMETHEUS
       He whom some dreadful voice invokes is here,
       Prometheus, the chained Titan. Horrible forms,
       What and who are ye? Never yet there came
       Phantasms so foul through monster-teeming Hell
       From the all-miscreative brain of Jove.
       Whilst I behold such execrable shapes,
       Methinks I grow like what I contemplate,
       And laugh and stare in loathsome sympathy.

FIRST FURY
       We are the ministers of pain, and fear,
       And disappointment, and mistrust, and hate,
       And clinging crime; and as lean dogs pursue
       Through wood and lake some struck and sobbing fawn,
       We track all things that weep, and bleed, and live,
       When the great King betrays them to our will.

PROMETHEUS
       O many fearful natures in one name,
       I know ye; and these lakes and echoes know
       The darkness and the clangor of your wings!
       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
       The beauty of delight makes lovers glad,
       Gazing on one another: so are we.
       As from the rose which the pale priestess kneels
       To gather for her festal crown of flowers
       The aerial crimson falls, flushing her cheek,
       So 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
       Thou thinkest we will rend thee bone from bone
       And nerve from nerve, working like fire within?

PROMETHEUS
       Pain is my element, as hate is thine;
       Ye rend me now; I care not.

SECOND FURY
                             Dost imagine
       We will but laugh into thy lidless eyes?

PROMETHEUS
       I weigh not what ye do, but what ye suffer,
       Being evil. Cruel was the power which called
       You, or aught else so wretched, into light.

THIRD FURY
       Thou think'st we will live through thee, one by one,
       Like animal life, and though we can obscure not
       The soul which burns within, that we will dwell
       Beside it, like a vain loud multitude,
       Vexing the self-content of wisest men;
       That we will be dread thought beneath thy brain,
       And foul desire round thine astonished heart,
       And blood within thy labyrinthine veins
       Crawling like agony?

PROMETHEUS
                        Why, ye are thus now;
       Yet am I king over myself, and rule
       The torturing and conflicting throngs within,
       As Jove rules you when Hell grows mutinous.

CHORUS OF FURIES
       From the ends of the earth, from the ends of the earth,
       Where the night has its grave and the morning its birth,
              Come, come, come!
       O ye who shake hills with the scream of your mirth
       When cities sink howling in ruin; and ye
       Who with wingless footsteps trample the sea,
       And close upon Shipwreck and Famine's track
       Sit chattering with joy on the foodless wreck;
              Come, come, come!
         Leave the bed, low, cold, and red,
         Strewed beneath a nation dead;
         Leave the hatred, as in ashes
           Fire is left for future burning;
         It will burst in bloodier flashes
           When ye stir it, soon returning;
         Leave the self-contempt implanted
         In young spirits, sense-enchanted,
           Misery's yet unkindled fuel;
         Leave Hell's secrets half unchanted
           To the maniac dreamer; cruel
         More than ye can be with hate
             Is he with fear.
              Come, come, come!
       We are steaming up from Hell's wide gate
         And we burden the blasts of the atmosphere,
         But vainly we toil till ye come here.

IONE.
       Sister, I hear the thunder of new wings.

PANTHEA
       These solid mountains quiver with the sound
       Even as the tremulous air; their shadows make
       The space within my plumes more black than night.

FIRST FURY
         Your call was as a wing'd car,
         Driven on whirlwinds fast and far;
         It rapt us from red gulfs of war.

SECOND FURY
         From wide cities, famine-wasted;

THIRD FURY
         Groans half heard, and blood untasted;

FOURTH FURY
         Kingly conclaves stern and cold,
         Where blood with gold is bought and sold;

FIFTH FURY
         From the furnace, white and hot,
         In which--

A FURY
       Speak not; whisper not;
       I know all that ye would tell,
         But to speak might break the spell
         Which must bend the Invincible,
           The stern of thought;
       He yet defies the deepest power of Hell.

FURY
       Tear the veil!

ANOTHER FURY
                  It is torn.

CHORUS
                              The pale stars of the morn
       Shine on a misery, dire to be borne.
       Dost thou faint, mighty Titan? We laugh thee to scorn.
       Dost thou boast the clear knowledge thou waken'dst for man?
       Then was kindled within him a thirst which outran
       Those perishing waters; a thirst of fierce fever,
       Hope, love, doubt, desire, which consume him forever.
         One came forth of gentle worth,
         Smiling on the sanguine earth;
         His words outlived him, like swift poison
           Withering up truth, peace, and pity.
         Look! where round the wide horizon
           Many a million-peopled city
         Vomits smoke in the bright air!
         Mark that outcry of despair!
         'T is his mild and gentle ghost
           Wailing for the faith he kindled.
         Look again! the flames almost
           To a glow-worm's lamp have dwindled;
         The survivors round the embers
             Gather in dread.
              Joy, joy, joy!
       Past ages crowd on thee, but each one remembers,
       And the future is dark, and the present is spread
       Like a pillow of thorns for thy slumberless head.

SEMICHORUS I
         Drops of bloody agony flow
         From his white and quivering brow.
         Grant a little respite now.
         See! a disenchanted nation
         Spring like day from desolation;
         To Truth its state is dedicate,
         And Freedom leads it forth, her mate;
         A legioned band of link'd brothers,
         Whom Love calls children--

SEMICHORUS II
                              'T is another's.
         See how kindred murder kin!
         'T is the vintage-time for Death and Sin;
         Blood, like new wine, bubbles within;
              Till Despair smothers
       The struggling world, which slaves and tyrants win.
                            [All the FURIES vanish, except one.

IONE
       Hark, sister! what a low yet dreadful groan
       Quite unsuppressed is tearing up the heart
       Of the good Titan, as storms tear the deep,
       And beasts hear the sea moan in inland caves.
       Darest thou observe how the fiends torture him?

PANTHEA
       Alas! I looked forth twice, but will no more.

IONE
       What didst thou see?

PANTHEA
       A woful sight: a youth
       With patient looks nailed to a crucifix.

IONE
       What next?

PANTHEA
               The heaven around, the earth below,
       Was peopled with thick shapes of human death,
       All horrible, and wrought by human hands;
       And some appeared the work of human hearts,
       For men were slowly killed by frowns and smiles;
       And other sights too foul to speak and live
       Were wandering by. Let us not tempt worse fear
       By looking forth; those groans are grief enough.

FURY
       Behold an emblem: those who do endure
       Deep wrongs for man, and scorn, and chains, but heap
       Thousand-fold torment on themselves and him.

PROMETHEUS
       Remit the anguish of that lighted stare;
       Close those wan lips; let that thorn-wounded brow
       Stream not with blood; it mingles with thy tears!
       Fix, fix those tortured orbs in peace and death,
       So thy sick throes shake not that crucifix,
       So those pale fingers play not with thy gore.
       Oh, horrible! Thy name I will not speak--
       It hath become a curse. I see, I see
       The wise, the mild, the lofty, and the just,
       Whom thy slaves hate for being like to thee,
       Some hunted by foul lies from their heart's home,
       An early-chosen, late-lamented home,
       As hooded ounces cling to the driven hind;
       Some linked to corpses in unwholesome cells;
       Some--hear I not the multitude laugh loud?--
       Impaled in lingering fire; and mighty realms
       Float by my feet, like sea-uprooted isles,
       Whose sons are kneaded down in common blood
       By the red light of their own burning homes.

FURY
       Blood thou canst see, and fire; and canst hear groans:
       Worse things unheard, unseen, remain behind.

PROMETHEUS
       Worse?

FURY
              In each human heart terror survives
       The ruin it has gorged: the loftiest fear
       All that they would disdain to think were true.
       Hypocrisy and custom make their minds
       The fanes of many a worship, now outworn.
       They dare not devise good for man's estate,
       And yet they know not that they do not dare.
       The good want power, but to weep barren tears.
       The powerful goodness want; worse need for them.
       The wise want love; and those who love want wisdom;
       And all best things are thus confused to ill.
       Many are strong and rich, and would be just,
       But live among their suffering fellow-men
       As if none felt; they know not what they do.

PROMETHEUS
       Thy words are like a cloud of wing'd snakes;
       And yet I pity those they torture not.

FURY
       Thou pitiest them? I speak no more!
                                          [Vanishes.

PROMETHEUS
                                   Ah woe!
       Ah woe! Alas! pain, pain ever, forever!
       I close my tearless eyes, but see more clear
       Thy works within my woe-illum'd mind,
       Thou subtle tyrant! Peace is in the grave.
       The grave hides all things beautiful and good.
       I am a God and cannot find it there,
       Nor would I seek it; for, though dread revenge,
       This is defeat, fierce king, not victory.
       The sights with which thou torturest gird my soul
       With new endurance, till the hour arrives
       When they shall be no types of things which are.

PANTHEA
       Alas! what sawest thou?

PROMETHEUS
                           There are two woes--
       To speak and to behold; thou spare me one.
       Names are there, Nature's sacred watchwords, they
       Were borne aloft in bright emblazonry;
       The nations thronged around, and cried aloud,
       As with one voice, Truth, Liberty, and Love!
       Suddenly fierce confusion fell from heaven
       Among them; there was strife, deceit, and fear;
       Tyrants rushed in, and did divide the spoil.
       This was the shadow of the truth I saw.

THE EARTH
       I felt thy torture, son, with such mixed joy
       As pain and virtue give. To cheer thy state
       I bid ascend those subtle and fair spirits,
       Whose homes are the dim caves of human thought,
       And who inhabit, as birds wing the wind,
       Its world-surrounding ether; they behold
       Beyond that twilight realm, as in a glass,
       The future; may they speak comfort to thee!

PANTHEA
       Look, sister, where a troop of spirits gather,
       Like flocks of clouds in spring's delightful weather,
       Thronging in the blue air!

IONE
                            And see! more come,
       Like fountain-vapors when the winds are dumb,
       That climb up the ravine in scattered lines.
       And hark! is it the music of the pines?
       Is it the lake? Is it the waterfall?

PANTHEA
       'T is something sadder, sweeter far than all.

CHORUS OF SPIRITS
           From unremembered ages we
           Gentle guides and guardians be
           Of heaven-oppressed mortality;
           And we breathe, and sicken not,
           The atmosphere of human thought:
           Be it dim, and dank, and gray,
           Like a storm-extinguished day,
           Travelled o'er by dying gleams;
             Be it bright as all between
           Cloudless skies and windless streams,
             Silent, liquid, and serene;
           As the birds within the wind,
             As the fish within the wave,
           As the thoughts of man's own mind
             Float through all above the grave;
           We make there our liquid lair,
           Voyaging cloudlike and unpent
           Through the boundless element:
           Thence we bear the prophecy
           Which begins and ends in thee!

IONE
       More yet come, one by one; the air around them
       Looks radiant as the air around a star.

FIRST SPIRIT
         On a battle-trumpet's blast
         I fled hither, fast, fast, fast,
         'Mid the darkness upward cast.
         From the dust of creeds outworn,
         From the tyrant's banner torn,
         Gathering round me, onward borne,
         There was mingled many a cry--
         Freedom! Hope! Death! Victory!
         Till they faded through the sky;
         And one sound above, around,
         One sound beneath, around, above,
         Was moving; 't was the soul of love;
         'T was the hope, the prophecy,
         Which begins and ends in thee.

SECOND SPIRIT
         A rainbow's arch stood on the sea,
         Which rocked beneath, immovably;
         And the triumphant storm did flee,
         Like a conqueror, swift and proud,
         Begirt with many a captive cloud,
         A shapeless, dark and rapid crowd,
         Each by lightning riven in half.
         I heard the thunder hoarsely laugh.
         Mighty fleets were strewn like chaff
         And spread beneath a hell of death
         O'er the white waters. I alit
         On a great ship lightning-split,
         And speeded hither on the sigh
         Of one who gave an enemy
         His plank, then plunged aside to die.

THIRD SPIRIT
       I sat beside a sage's bed,
       And the lamp was burning red
       Near the book where he had fed,
       When a Dream with plumes of flame
       To his pillow hovering came,
       And I knew it was the same
       Which had kindled long ago
       Pity, eloquence, and woe;
       And the world awhile below
       Wore the shade its lustre made.
       It has borne me here as fleet
       As Desire's lightning feet;
       I must ride it back ere morrow,
       Or the sage will wake in sorrow.

FOURTH SPIRIT
       On a poet's lips I slept
       Dreaming like a love-adept
       In the sound his breathing kept;
       Nor seeks nor finds he mortal blisses,
       But feeds on the aerial kisses
       Of shapes that haunt thought's wildernesses.
       He will watch from dawn to gloom
       The lake-reflected sun illume
       The yellow bees in the ivy-bloom,
       Nor heed nor see what things they be;
       But from these create he can
       Forms more real than living man,
       Nurslings of immortality!
       One of these awakened me,
       And I sped to succor thee.

IONE
       Behold'st thou not two shapes from the east and west
       Come, as two doves to one belov'd nest,
       Twin nurslings of the all-sustaining air,
       On swift still wings glide down the atmosphere?
       And, hark! their sweet sad voices! 't is despair
       Mingled with love and then dissolved in sound.

PANTHEA
       Canst thou speak, sister? all my words are drowned.

IONE
       Their beauty gives me voice. See how they float
       On their sustaining wings of skyey grain,
       Orange and azure deepening into gold!
       Their soft smiles light the air like a star's fire.

CHORUS OF SPIRITS
       Hast thou beheld the form of Love?

FIFTH SPIRIT
                                   As over wide dominions
       I sped, like some swift cloud that wings the wide air's
             wildernesses,
       That planet-crested Shape swept by on lightning-braided pinions,
       Scattering the liquid joy of life from his ambrosial tresses.
       His footsteps paved the world with light; but as I passed 't was
             fading,
       And hollow Ruin yawned behind; great sages bound in madness,
       And headless patriots, and pale youths who perished, unupbraiding,
       Gleamed in the night. I wandered o'er, till thou, O King of
             sadness,
       Turned by thy smile the worst I saw to recollected gladness.

SIXTH SPIRIT
       Ah, sister! Desolation is a delicate thing:
       It walks not on the earth, it floats not on the air,
       But treads with killing footstep, and fans with silent wing
       The tender hopes which in their hearts the best and gentlest bear;
       Who, soothed to false repose by the fanning plumes above
       And the music-stirring motion of its soft and busy feet,
       Dream visions of aerial joy, and call the monster, Love,
       And wake, and find the shadow Pain, as he whom now we greet.

CHORUS
         Though Ruin now Love's shadow be,
         Following him, destroyingly,
           On Death's white and wing'd steed,
         Which the fleetest cannot flee,
           Trampling down both flower and weed,
         Man and beast, and foul and fair,
         Like a tempest through the air;
         Thou shalt quell this horseman grim,
         Woundless though in heart or limb.

PROMETHEUS
         Spirits! how know ye this shall be?

CHORUS
           In the atmosphere we breathe,
         As buds grow red, when the snow-storms flee,
           From spring gathering up beneath,
         Whose mild winds shake the elder-brake,
         And the wandering herdsmen know
         That the white-thorn soon will blow:
         Wisdom, Justice, Love, and Peace,
         When they struggle to increase,
         Are to us as soft winds be
         To shepherd boys, the prophecy
         Which begins and ends in thee.

IONE
       Where are the Spirits fled?

PANTHEA
                             Only a sense
       Remains of them, like the omnipotence
       Of music, when the inspired voice and lute
       Languish, ere yet the responses are mute,
       Which through the deep and labyrinthine soul,
       Like echoes through long caverns, wind and roll.

PROMETHEUS
       How fair these air-born shapes! and yet I feel
       Most vain all hope but love; and thou art far,
       Asia! who, when my being overflowed,
       Wert like a golden chalice to bright wine
       Which else had sunk into the thirsty dust.
       All things are still. Alas! how heavily
       This quiet morning weighs upon my heart;
       Though I should dream I could even sleep with grief,
       If slumber were denied not. I would fain
       Be what it is my destiny to be,
       The saviour and the strength of suffering man,
       Or sink into the original gulf of things.
       There is no agony, and no solace left;
       Earth can console, Heaven can torment no more.

PANTHEA
       Hast thou forgotten one who watches thee
       The cold dark night, and never sleeps but when
       The shadow of thy spirit falls on her?

PROMETHEUS
       I said all hope was vain but love; thou lovest.

PANTHEA
       Deeply in truth; but the eastern star looks white,
       And Asia waits in that far Indian vale,
       The scene of her sad exile; rugged once
       And desolate and frozen, like this ravine;
       But now invested with fair flowers and herbs,
       And haunted by sweet airs and sounds, which flow
       Among the woods and waters, from the ether
       Of her transforming presence, which would fade
       If it were mingled not with thine. Farewell!

         

Act II

SCENE I.-- Morning. A lovely Vale in the Indian Caucasus. ASIA, alone.

ASIA
       FROM all the blasts of heaven thou hast descended;
       Yes, like a spirit, like a thought, which makes
       Unwonted tears throng to the horny eyes,
       And beatings haunt the desolated heart,
       Which should have learned repose; thou hast descended
       Cradled in tempests; thou dost wake, O Spring!
       O child of many winds! As suddenly
       Thou comest as the memory of a dream,
       Which now is sad because it hath been sweet;
       Like genius, or like joy which riseth up
       As from the earth, clothing with golden clouds
       The desert of our life.
       This is the season, this the day, the hour;
       At sunrise thou shouldst come, sweet sister mine,
       Too long desired, too long delaying, come!
       How like death-worms the wingless moments crawl!
       The point of one white star is quivering still
       Deep in the orange light of widening morn
       Beyond the purple mountains; through a chasm
       Of wind-divided mist the darker lake
       Reflects it; now it wanes; it gleams again
       As the waves fade, and as the burning threads
       Of woven cloud unravel in pale air;
       'T is lost! and through yon peaks of cloudlike snow
       The roseate sunlight quivers; hear I not
       The Æolian music of her sea-green plumes
       Winnowing the crimson dawn?

PANTHEA enters
                             I feel, I see
       Those eyes which burn through smiles that fade in tears,
       Like stars half-quenched in mists of silver dew.
       Beloved and most beautiful, who wearest
       The shadow of that soul by which I live,
       How late thou art! the spher'd sun had climbed
       The sea; my heart was sick with hope, before
       The printless air felt thy belated plumes.

PANTHEA
       Pardon, great Sister! but my wings were faint
       With the delight of a remembered dream,
       As are the noontide plumes of summer winds
       Satiate with sweet flowers. I was wont to sleep
       Peacefully, and awake refreshed and calm,
       Before the sacred Titan's fall and thy
       Unhappy love had made, through use and pity,
       Both love and woe familiar to my heart
       As they had grown to thine: erewhile I slept
       Under the glaucous caverns of old Ocean
       Within dim bowers of green and purple moss,
       Our young Ione's soft and milky arms
       Locked then, as now, behind my dark, moist hair,
       While my shut eyes and cheek were pressed within
       The folded depth of her life-breathing bosom:
       But not as now, since I am made the wind
       Which fails beneath the music that I bear
       Of thy most wordless converse; since dissolved
       Into the sense with which love talks, my rest
       Was troubled and yet sweet; my waking hours
       Too full of care and pain.

ASIA
                            Lift up thine eyes,
       And let me read thy dream.

PANTHEA
                            As I have said,
       With our sea-sister at his feet I slept.
       The mountain mists, condensing at our voice
       Under the moon, had spread their snowy flakes,
       From the keen ice shielding our link'd sleep.
       Then two dreams came. One I remember not.
       But in the other his pale wound-worn limbs
       Fell from Prometheus, and the azure night
       Grew radiant with the glory of that form
       Which lives unchanged within, and his voice fell
       Like music which makes giddy the dim brain,
       Faint with intoxication of keen joy:
       'Sister of her whose footsteps pave the world
       With loveliness--more fair than aught but her,
       Whose shadow thou art--lift thine eyes on me.'
       I lifted them; the overpowering light
       Of that immortal shape was shadowed o'er
       By love; which, from his soft and flowing limbs,
       And passion-parted lips, and keen, faint eyes,
       Steamed forth like vaporous fire; an atmosphere
       Which wrapped me in its all-dissolving power,
       As the warm ether of the morning sun
       Wraps ere it drinks some cloud of wandering dew.
       I saw not, heard not, moved not, only felt
       His presence flow and mingle through my blood
       Till it became his life, and his grew mine,
       And I was thus absorbed, until it passed,
       And like the vapors when the sun sinks down,
       Gathering again in drops upon the pines,
       And tremulous as they, in the deep night
       My being was condensed; and as the rays
       Of thought were slowly gathered, I could hear
       His voice, whose accents lingered ere they died
       Like footsteps of weak melody; thy name
       Among the many sounds alone I heard
       Of what might be articulate; though still
       I listened through the night when sound was none.
       Ione wakened then, and said to me:
       'Canst thou divine what troubles me tonight?
       I always knew what I desired before,
       Nor ever found delight to wish in vain.
       But now I cannot tell thee what I seek;
       I know not; something sweet, since it is sweet
       Even to desire; it is thy sport, false sister;
       Thou hast discovered some enchantment old,
       Whose spells have stolen my spirit as I slept
       And mingled it with thine; for when just now
       We kissed, I felt within thy parted lips
       The sweet air that sustained me; and the warmth
       Of the life-blood, for loss of which I faint,
       Quivered between our intertwining arms.'
       I answered not, for the Eastern star grew pale,
       But fled to thee.

ASIA
                     Thou speakest, but thy words
       Are as the air; I feel them not. Oh, lift
       Thine eyes, that I may read his written soul!

PANTHEA
       I lift them, though they droop beneath the load
       Of that they would express; what canst thou see
       But thine own fairest shadow imaged there?

ASIA
       Thine eyes are like the deep, blue, boundless heaven
       Contracted to two circles underneath
       Their long, fine lashes; dark, far, measureless,
       Orb within orb, and line through line inwoven.

PANTHEA
       Why lookest thou as if a spirit passed?

ASIA
       There is a change; beyond their inmost depth
       I see a shade, a shape: 't is He, arrayed
       In the soft light of his own smiles, which spread
       Like radiance from the cloud-surrounded moon.
       Prometheus, it is thine! depart not yet!
       Say not those smiles that we shall meet again
       Within that bright pavilion which their beams
       Shall build on the waste world? The dream is told.
       What shape is that between us? Its rude hair
       Roughens the wind that lifts it, its regard
       Is wild and quick, yet 't is a thing of air,
       For through its gray robe gleams the golden dew
       Whose stars the noon has quenched not.

DREAM
                                     Follow! Follow!

PANTHEA
       It is mine other dream.

ASIA
                           It disappears.

PANTHEA
       It passes now into my mind. Methought
       As we sate here, the flower-infolding buds
       Burst on yon lightning-blasted almond tree;
       When swift from the white Scythian wilderness
       A wind swept forth wrinkling the Earth with frost;
       I looked, and all the blossoms were blown down;
       But on each leaf was stamped, as the blue bells
       Of Hyacinth tell Apollo's written grief,
       OH, FOLLOW, FOLLOW!

ASIA
                       As you speak, your words
       Fill, pause by pause, my own forgotten sleep
       With shapes. Methought among the lawns together
       We wandered, underneath the young gray dawn,
       And multitudes of dense white fleecy clouds
       Were wandering in thick flocks along the mountains,
       Shepherded by the slow, unwilling wind;
       And the white dew on the new-bladed grass,
       Just piercing the dark earth, hung silently;
       And there was more which I remember not;
       But on the shadows of the morning clouds,
       Athwart the purple mountain slope, was written
       FOLLOW, OH, FOLLOW! as they vanished by;
       And on each herb, from which Heaven's dew had fallen,
       The like was stamped, as with a withering fire;
       A wind arose among the pines; it shook
       The clinging music from their boughs, and then
       Low, sweet, faint sounds, like the farewell of ghosts,
       Were heard: OH, FOLLOW, FOLLOW, FOLLOW ME!
       And then I said, 'Panthea, look on me.'
       But in the depth of those belov'd eyes
       Still I saw, FOLLOW, FOLLOW!

ECHO
                              Follow, follow!

PANTHEA
       The crags, this clear spring morning, mock our voices,
       As they were spirit-tongued.

ASIA
                              It is some being
       Around the crags. What fine clear sounds!
             Oh, list!

ECHOES, unseen
              Echoes we: listen!
               We cannot stay:
              As dew-stars glisten
               Then fade away--
                Child of Ocean!

ASIA
       Hark! Spirits speak. The liquid responses
       Of their aerial tongues yet sound.

PANTHEA
                                    I hear.

ECHOES
             Oh, follow, follow,
              As our voice recedeth
             Through the caverns hollow,
              Where the forest spreadeth;
               [More distant]
             Oh, follow, follow!
             Through the caverns hollow,
           As the song floats thou pursue,
           Where the wild bee never flew,
           Through the noontide darkness deep,
           By the odor-breathing sleep
           Of faint night-flowers, and the waves
           At the fountain-lighted caves,
           While our music, wild and sweet,
           Mocks thy gently falling feet,
              Child of Ocean!

ASIA
       Shall we pursue the sound? It grows more faint
       And distant.

PANTHEA
                List! the strain floats nearer now.

ECHOES
             In the world unknown
              Sleeps a voice unspoken;
             By thy step alone
              Can its rest be broken;
              Child of Ocean!

ASIA
       How the notes sink upon the ebbing wind!

ECHOES
             Oh, follow, follow!
             Through the caverns hollow,
           As the song floats thou pursue,
           By the woodland noontide dew;
           By the forests, lakes, and fountains,
           Through the many-folded mountains;
           To the rents, and gulfs, and chasms,
           Where the Earth reposed from spasms,
           On the day when He and thou
           Parted, to commingle now;
              Child of Ocean!

ASIA
       Come, sweet Panthea, link thy hand in mine,
       And follow, ere the voices fade away.

SCENE II.-- A Forest intermingled with Rocks and Caverns. ASIA and PANTHEA pass into it. Two young Fauns are sitting on a Rock, listening.

SEMICHORUS I OF SPIRITS
       The path through which that lovely twain
         Have passed, by cedar, pine, and yew,
         And each dark tree that ever grew,
         Is curtained out from Heaven's wide blue;
       Nor sun, nor moon, nor wind, nor rain,
           Can pierce its interwoven bowers,
       Nor aught, save where some cloud of dew,
       Drifted along the earth-creeping breeze
       Between the trunks of the hoar trees,
           Hangs each a pearl in the pale flowers
         Of the green laurel blown anew,
       And bends, and then fades silently,
       One frail and fair anemone;
       Or when some star of many a one
       That climbs and wanders through steep night,
       Has found the cleft through which alone
       Beams fall from high those depths upon,--
       Ere it is borne away, away,
       By the swift Heavens that cannot stay,
       It scatters drops of golden light,
       Like lines of rain that ne'er unite;
       And the gloom divine is all around;
       And underneath is the mossy ground.

SEMICHORUS II
       There the voluptuous nightingales,
         Are awake through all the broad noon day:
       When one with bliss or sadness fails,
           And through the windless ivy-boughs,
         Sick with sweet love, droops dying away
       On its mate's music-panting bosom;
       Another from the swinging blossom,
           Watching to catch the languid close
         Of the last strain, then lifts on high
         The wings of the weak melody,
       Till some new strain of feeling bear
         The song, and all the woods are mute;
       When there is heard through the dim air
       The rush of wings, and rising there,
         Like many a lake-surrounded flute,
       Sounds overflow the listener's brain
       So sweet, that joy is almost pain.

SEMICHORUS I
       There those enchanted eddies play
         Of echoes, music-tongued, which draw,
         By Demogorgon's mighty law,
         With melting rapture, or sweet awe,
       All spirits on that secret way,
           As inland boats are driven to Ocean
       Down streams made strong with mountain-thaw;
       And first there comes a gentle sound
       To those in talk or slumber bound,
           And wakes the destined; soft emotion
       Attracts, impels them; those who saw
       Say from the breathing earth behind
       There steams a plume-uplifting wind
       Which drives them on their path, while they
         Believe their own swift wings and feet
       The sweet desires within obey;
       And so they float upon their way,
         Until, still sweet, but loud and strong,
         The storm of sound is driven along,
         Sucked up and hurrying; as they fleet
         Behind, its gathering billows meet
       And to the fatal mountain bear
       Like clouds amid the yielding air.

FIRST FAUN
       Canst thou imagine where those spirits live
       Which make such delicate music in the woods?
       We haunt within the least frequented caves
       And closest coverts, and we know these wilds,
       Yet never meet them, though we hear them oft:
       Where may they hide themselves?

SECOND FAUN
                                 'T is hard to tell;
       I have heard those more skilled in spirits say,
       The bubbles, which the enchantment of the sun
       Sucks from the pale faint water-flowers that pave
       The oozy bottom of clear lakes and pools,
       Are the pavilions where such dwell and float
       Under the green and golden atmosphere
       Which noontide kindles through the woven leaves;
       And when these burst, and the thin fiery air,
       The which they breathed within those lucent domes,
       Ascends to flow like meteors through the night,
       They ride on them, and rein their headlong speed,
       And bow their burning crests, and glide in fire
       Under the waters of the earth again.

FIRST FAUN
       If such live thus, have others other lives,
       Under pink blossoms or within the bells
       Of meadow flowers or folded violets deep,
       Or on their dying odors, when they die,
       Or in the sunlight of the spher'd dew?

SECOND FAUN
       Ay, many more which we may well divine.
       But should we stay to speak, noontide would come,
       And thwart Silenus find his goats undrawn,
       And grudge to sing those wise and lovely songs
       Of Fate, and Chance, and God, and Chaos old,
       And Love and the chained Titan's woful doom,
       And how he shall be loosed, and make the earth
       One brotherhood; delightful strains which cheer
       Our solitary twilights, and which charm
       To silence the unenvying nightingales.

SCENE III.-- A Pinnacle of Rock among Mountains. ASIA and PANTHEA.

PANTHEA
       Hither the sound has borne us--to the realm
       Of Demogorgon, and the mighty portal,
       Like a volcano's meteor-breathing chasm,
       Whence the oracular vapor is hurled up
       Which lonely men drink wandering in their youth,
       And call truth, virtue, love, genius, or joy,
       That maddening wine of life, whose dregs they drain
       To deep intoxication; and uplift,
       Like Maenads who cry loud, Evoe! Evoe!
       The voice which is contagion to the world.

ASIA
       Fit throne for such a Power! Magnificent!
       How glorious art thou, Earth! and if thou be
       The shadow of some spirit lovelier still,
       Though evil stain its work, and it should be
       Like its creation, weak yet beautiful,
       I could fall down and worship that and thee.
       Even now my heart adoreth. Wonderful!
       Look, sister, ere the vapor dim thy brain:
       Beneath is a wide plain of billowy mist,
       As a lake, paving in the morning sky,
       With azure waves which burst in silver light,
       Some Indian vale. Behold it, rolling on
       Under the curdling winds, and islanding
       The peak whereon we stand, midway, around,
       Encinctured by the dark and blooming forests,
       Dim twilight-lawns, and stream-illumined caves,
       And wind-enchanted shapes of wandering mist;
       And far on high the keen sky-cleaving mountains
       From icy spires of sunlike radiance fling
       The dawn, as lifted Ocean's dazzling spray,
       From some Atlantic islet scattered up,
       Spangles the wind with lamp-like waterdrops.
       The vale is girdled with their walls, a howl
       Of cataracts from their thaw-cloven ravines
       Satiates the listening wind, continuous, vast,
       Awful as silence. Hark! the rushing snow!
       The sun-awakened avalanche! whose mass,
       Thrice sifted by the storm, had gathered there
       Flake after flake, in heaven-defying minds
       As thought by thought is piled, till some great truth
       Is loosened, and the nations echo round,
       Shaken to their roots, as do the mountains now.

PANTHEA
       Look how the gusty sea of mist is breaking
       In crimson foam, even at our feet! it rises
       As Ocean at the enchantment of the moon
       Round foodless men wrecked on some oozy isle.

ASIA
       The fragments of the cloud are scattered up;
       The wind that lifts them disentwines my hair;
       Its billows now sweep o'er mine eyes; my brain
       Grows dizzy; I see shapes within the mist.

PANTHEA
       A countenance with beckoning smiles; there burns
       An azure fire within its golden locks!
       Another and another: hark! they speak!

SONG OF SPIRITS
         To the deep, to the deep,
              Down down!
         Through the shade of sleep,
         Through the cloudy strife
         Of Death and of Life;
         Through the veil and the bar
         Of things which seem and are,
         Even to the steps of the remotest throne,
              Down, down!

         While the sound whirls around,
              Down, down!
         As the fawn draws the hound,
         As the lightning the vapor,
         As a weak moth the taper;
         Death, despair; love, sorrow;
         Time, both; to-day, to-morrow;
         As steel obeys the spirit of the stone,
              Down, down!

         Through the gray, void abysm,
              Down, down!
         Where the air is no prism,
         And the moon and stars are not,
         And the cavern-crags wear not
         The radiance of Heaven,
         Nor the gloom to Earth given,
         Where there is one pervading, one alone,
              Down, down!

         In the depth of the deep
              Down, down!
         Like veiled lightning asleep,
         Like the spark nursed in embers,
         The last look Love remembers,
         Like a diamond, which shines
         On the dark wealth of mines,
         A spell is treasured but for thee alone.
              Down, down!

         We have bound thee, we guide thee;
              Down, down!
         With the bright form beside thee;
             Resist not the weakness,
         Such strength is in meekness
         That the Eternal, the Immortal,
         Must unloose through life's portal
         The snake-like Doom coiled underneath his throne
              By that alone.

SCENE IV.-- The Cave of DEMOGORGON. ASIA and PANTHEA.

PANTHEA
       What veiled form sits on that ebon throne?

ASIA
       The veil has fallen.

PANTHEA
                        I see a mighty darkness
       Filling the seat of power, and rays of gloom
       Dart round, as light from the meridian sun,
       Ungazed upon and shapeless; neither limb,
       Nor form, nor outline; yet we feel it is
       A living Spirit.

DEMOGORGON
                    Ask what thou wouldst know.

ASIA
       What canst thou tell?

DEMOGORGON
                         All things thou dar'st demand.

ASIA
       Who made the living world?

DEMOGORGON
                            God.

ASIA
                                   Who made all
       That it contains? thought, passion, reason, will,
       Imagination?

DEMOGORGON
                God: Almighty God.

ASIA
       Who made that sense which, when the winds of spring
       In rarest visitation, or the voice
       Of one belov'd heard in youth alone,
       Fills the faint eyes with falling tears which dim
       The radiant looks of unbewailing flowers,
       And leaves this peopled earth a solitude
       When it returns no more?

DEMOGORGON
                           Merciful God.

ASIA
       And who made terror, madness, crime, remorse,
       Which from the links of the great chain of things
       To every thought within the mind of man
       Sway and drag heavily, and each one reels
       Under the load towards the pit of death;
       Abandoned hope, and love that turns to hate;
       And self-contempt, bitterer to drink than blood;
       Pain, whose unheeded and familiar speech
       Is howling, and keen shrieks, day after day;
       And Hell, or the sharp fear of Hell?

DEMOGORGON
                                   He reigns.

ASIA
       Utter his name; a world pining in pain
       Asks but his name; curses shall drag him down.

DEMOGORGON
       He reigns.

ASIA
               I feel, I know it: who?

DEMOGORGON
                                   He reigns.

ASIA
       Who reigns? There was the Heaven and Earth at first,
       And Light and Love; then Saturn, from whose throne
       Time fell, an envious shadow; such the state
       Of the earth's primal spirits beneath his sway,
       As the calm joy of flowers and living leaves
       Before the wind or sun has withered them
       And semivital worms; but he refused
       The birthright of their being, knowledge, power,
       The skill which wields the elements, the thought
       Which pierces this dim universe like light,
       Self-empire, and the majesty of love;
       For thirst of which they fainted. Then Prometheus
       Gave wisdom, which is strength, to Jupiter,
       And with this law alone, 'Let man be free,'
       Clothed him with the dominion of wide Heaven.
       To know nor faith, nor love, nor law, to be
       Omnipotent but friendless, is to reign;
       And Jove now reigned; for on the race of man
       First famine, and then toil, and then disease,
       Strife, wounds, and ghastly death unseen before,
       Fell; and the unseasonable seasons drove,
       With alternating shafts of frost and fire,
       Their shelterless, pale tribes to mountain caves;
       And in their desert hearts fierce wants he sent,
       And mad disquietudes, and shadows idle
       Of unreal good, which levied mutual war,
       So ruining the lair wherein they raged.
       Prometheus saw, and waked the legioned hopes
       Which sleep within folded Elysian flowers,
       Nepenthe, Moly, Amaranth, fadeless blooms,
       That they might hide with thin and rainbow wings
       The shape of Death; and Love he sent to bind
       The disunited tendrils of that vine
       Which bears the wine of life, the human heart;
       And he tamed fire which, like some beast of prey,
       Most terrible, but lovely, played beneath
       The frown of man; and tortured to his will
       Iron and gold, the slaves and signs of power,
       And gems and poisons, and all subtlest forms
       Hidden beneath the mountains and the waves.
       He gave man speech, and speech created thought,
       Which is the measure of the universe;
       And Science struck the thrones of earth and heaven,
       Which shook, but fell not; and the harmonious mind
       Poured itself forth in all-prophetic song;
       And music lifted up the listening spirit
       Until it walked, exempt from mortal care,
       Godlike, o'er the clear billows of sweet sound;
       And human hands first mimicked and then mocked,
       With moulded limbs more lovely than its own,
       The human form, till marble grew divine;
       And mothers, gazing, drank the love men see
       Reflected in their race, behold, and perish.
       He told the hidden power of herbs and springs,
       And Disease drank and slept. Death grew like sleep.
       He taught the implicated orbits woven
       Of the wide-wandering stars; and how the sun
       Changes his lair, and by what secret spell
       The pale moon is transformed, when her broad eye
       Gazes not on the interlunar sea.
       He taught to rule, as life directs the limbs,
       The tempest-winged chariots of the Ocean,
       And the Celt knew the Indian. Cities then
       Were built, and through their snow-like columns flowed
       The warm winds, and the azure ether shone,
       And the blue sea and shadowy hills were seen.
       Such, the alleviations of his state,
       Prometheus gave to man, for which he hangs
       Withering in destined pain; but who rains down
       Evil, the immedicable plague, which, while
       Man looks on his creation like a god
       And sees that it is glorious, drives him on,
       The wreck of his own will, the scorn of earth,
       The outcast, the abandoned, the alone?
       Not Jove: while yet his frown shook heaven, aye when
       His adversary from adamantine chains
       Cursed him, he trembled like a slave. Declare
       Who is his master? Is he too a slave?

DEMOGORGON
       All spirits are enslaved which serve things evil:
       Thou knowest if Jupiter be such or no.

ASIA
       Whom called'st thou God?

DEMOGORGON
                           I spoke but as ye speak,
       For Jove is the supreme of living things.

ASIA
       Who is the master of the slave?

DEMOGORGON
                                 If the abysm
       Could vomit forth its secrets--but a voice
       Is wanting, the deep truth is imageless;
       For what would it avail to bid thee gaze
       On the revolving world? What to bid speak
       Fate, Time, Occasion, Chance and Change? To these
       All things are subject but eternal Love.

ASIA
       So much I asked before, and my heart gave
       The response thou hast given; and of such truths
       Each to itself must be the oracle.
       One more demand; and do thou answer me
       As my own soul would answer, did it know
       That which I ask. Prometheus shall arise
       Henceforth the sun of this rejoicing world:
       When shall the destined hour arrive?

DEMOGORGON
                                   Behold!

ASIA
       The rocks are cloven, and through the purple night
       I see cars drawn by rainbow-winged steeds
       Which trample the dim winds; in each there stands
       A wild-eyed charioteer urging their flight.
       Some look behind, as fiends pursued them there,
       And yet I see no shapes but the keen stars;
       Others, with burning eyes, lean forth, and drink
       With eager lips the wind of their own speed,
       As if the thing they loved fled on before,
       And now, even now, they clasped it. Their bright locks
       Stream like a comet's flashing hair; they all
       Sweep onward.

DEMOGORGON
                 These are the immortal Hours,
       Of whom thou didst demand. One waits for thee.

ASIA
       A Spirit with a dreadful countenance
       Checks its dark chariot by the craggy gulf.
       Unlike thy brethren, ghastly Charioteer,
       Who art thou? Whither wouldst thou bear me? Speak!

SPIRIT
       I am the Shadow of a destiny
       More dread than is my aspect; ere yon planet
       Has set, the darkness which ascends with me
       Shall wrap in lasting night heaven's kingless throne.

ASIA
       What meanest thou?

PANTHEA
                      That terrible Shadow floats
       Up from its throne, as may the lurid smoke
       Of earthquake-ruined cities o'er the sea.
       Lo! it ascends the car; the coursers fly
       Terrified; watch its path among the stars
       Blackening the night!

ASIA
                         Thus I am answered: strange!

PANTHEA
       See, near the verge, another chariot stays;
       An ivory shell inlaid with crimson fire,
       Which comes and goes within its sculptured rim
       Of delicate strange tracery; the young Spirit
       That guides it has the dove-like eyes of hope;
       How it soft smiles attract the soul! as light
       Lures wing'd insects through the lampless air.

SPIRIT
       My coursers are fed with the lightning,
         They drink of the whirlwind's stream,
       And when the red morning is bright'ning
         They bathe in the fresh sunbeam.
         They have strength for their swiftness I deem;
       Then ascend with me, daughter of Ocean.

       I desire--and their speed makes night kindle;
         I fear--they outstrip the typhoon;
       Ere the cloud piled on Atlas can dwindle
         We encircle the earth and the moon.
         We shall rest from long labors at noon;
       Then ascend with me, daughter of Ocean.

SCENE V.-- The Car pauses within a Cloud on the Top of a snowy Mountain. ASIA, PANTHEA, and the SPIRIT OF THE HOUR.

SPIRIT
       On the brink of the night and the morning
         My coursers are wont to respire;
       But the Earth has just whispered a warning
         That their flight must be swifter than fire;
         They shall drink the hot speed of desire!

ASIA
       Thou breathest on their nostrils, but my breath
       Would give them swifter speed.

SPIRIT
                                Alas! it could not

PANTHEA
       O Spirit! pause, and tell whence is the light
       Which fills the cloud? the sun is yet unrisen.

SPIRIT
       The sun will rise not until noon. Apollo
       Is held in heaven by wonder; and the light
       Which fills this vapor, as the aßrial hue
       Of fountain-gazing roses fills the water,
       Flows from thy mighty sister.

PANTHEA
                               Yes, I feel--

ASIA
       What is it with thee, sister? Thou art pale.

PANTHEA
       How thou art changed! I dare not look on thee;
       I feel but see thee not. I scarce endure
       The radiance of thy beauty. Some good change
       Is working in the elements, which suffer
       Thy presence thus unveiled. The Nereids tell
       That on the day when the clear hyaline
       Was cloven at thy uprise, and thou didst stand
       Within a vein'd shell, which floated on
       Over the calm floor of the crystal sea,
       Among the Aegean isles, and by the shores
       Which bear thy name,--love, like the atmosphere
       Of the sun's fire filling the living world,
       Burst from thee, and illumined earth and heaven
       And the deep ocean and the sunless caves
       And all that dwells within them; till grief cast
       Eclipse upon the soul from which it came.
       Such art thou now; nor is it I alone,
       Thy sister, thy companion, thine own chosen one,
       But the whole world which seeks thy sympathy.
       Hearest thou not sounds i' the air which speak the love
       Of all articulate beings? Feelest thou not
       The inanimate winds enamoured of thee? List! [Music.

ASIA
       Thy words are sweeter than aught else but his
       Whose echoes they are; yet all love is sweet,
       Given or returned. Common as light is love,
       And its familiar voice wearies not ever.
       Like the wide heaven, the all-sustaining air,
       It makes the reptile equal to the God;
       They who inspire it most are fortunate,
       As I am now; but those who feel it most
       Are happier still, after long sufferings,
       As I shall soon become.

PANTHEA
                           List! Spirits speak.

VOICE in the air, singing
       Life of Life, thy lips enkindle
         With their love the breath between them;
       And thy smiles before they dwindle
         Make the cold air fire; then screen them
       In those looks, where whoso gazes
       Faints, entangled in their mazes.

       Child of Light! thy limbs are burning
         Through the vest which seems to hide them;
       As the radiant lines of morning
         Through the clouds, ere they divide them;
       And this atmosphere divinest
       Shrouds thee wheresoe'er thou shinest.

       Fair are others; none beholds thee,
         But thy voice sounds low and tender
       Like the fairest, for it folds thee
         From the sight, that liquid splendor,
       And all feel, yet see thee never,
       As I feel now, lost forever!

       Lamp of Earth! where'er thou movest
         Its dim shapes are clad with brightness,
       And the souls of whom thou lovest
         Walk upon the winds with lightness,
       Till they fail, as I am failing,
       Dizzy, lost, yet unbewailing!

ASIA
         My soul is an enchanted boat,
         Which, like a sleeping swan, doth float
       Upon the silver waves of thy sweet singing;
         And thine doth like an angel sit
         Beside a helm conducting it,
       Whilst all the winds with melody are ringing.
         It seems to float ever, forever,
         Upon that many-winding river,
         Between mountains, woods, abysses,
         A paradise of wildernesses!
       Till, like one in slumber bound,
       Borne to the ocean, I float down, around,
       Into a sea profound of ever-spreading sound.

         Meanwhile thy spirit lifts its pinions
         In music's most serene dominions;
       Catching the winds that fan that happy heaven.
         And we sail on, away, afar,
         Without a course, without a star,
         But, by the instinct of sweet music driven;
       Till through Elysian garden islets
         By thee most beautiful of pilots,
         Where never mortal pinnace glided,
         The boat of my desire is guided;
       Realms where the air we breathe is love,
       Which in the winds on the waves doth move,
       Harmonizing this earth with what we feel above.

         We have passed Age's icy caves,
         And Manhood's dark and tossing waves,
       And Youth's smooth ocean, smiling to betray;
         Beyond the glassy gulfs we flee
         Of shadow-peopled Infancy,
       Through Death and Birth, to a diviner day;
         A paradise of vaulted bowers
         Lit by downward-gazing flowers,
         And watery paths that wind between
         Wildernesses calm and green,
       Peopled by shapes too bright to see,
       And rest, having beheld; somewhat like thee;
       Which walk upon the sea, and chant melodiously!


         

Act III


SCENE I.-- Heaven. JUPITER on his Throne; THETIS and the other Deities assembled.

JUPITER
       YE congregated powers of heaven, who share
       The glory and the strength of him ye serve,
       Rejoice! henceforth I am omnipotent.
       All else had been subdued to me; alone
       The soul of man, like unextinguished fire,
       Yet burns towards heaven with fierce reproach, and doubt,
       And lamentation, and reluctant prayer,
       Hurling up insurrection, which might make
       Our antique empire insecure, though built
       On eldest faith, and hell's coeval, fear;
       And though my curses through the pendulous air,
       Like snow on herbless peaks, fall flake by flake,
       And cling to it; though under my wrath's night
       It climb the crags of life, step after step,
       Which wound it, as ice wounds unsandalled feet,
       It yet remains supreme o'er misery,
       Aspiring, unrepressed, yet soon to fall;
       Even now have I begotten a strange wonder,
       That fatal child, the terror of the earth,
       Who waits but till the destined hour arrive,
       Bearing from Demogorgon's vacant throne
       The dreadful might of ever-living limbs
       Which clothed that awful spirit unbeheld,
       To redescend, and trample out the spark.
       Pour forth heaven's wine, Idaean Ganymede,
       And let it fill the daedal cups like fire,
       And from the flower-inwoven soil divine,
       Ye all-triumphant harmonies, arise,
       As dew from earth under the twilight stars.
       Drink! be the nectar circling through your veins
       The soul of joy, ye ever-living Gods,
       Till exultation burst in one wide voice
       Like music from Elysian winds.
                                And thou
       Ascend beside me, veil'd in the light
       Of the desire which makes thee one with me,
       Thetis, bright image of eternity!
       When thou didst cry, 'Insufferable might!
       God! spare me! I sustain not the quick flames,
       The penetrating presence; all my being,
       Like him whom the Numidian seps did thaw
       Into a dew with poison, is dissolved,
       Sinking through its foundations,'--even then
       Two mighty spirits, mingling, made a third
       Mightier than either, which, unbodied now,
       Between us floats, felt, although unbeheld,
       Waiting the incarnation, which ascends,
       (Hear ye the thunder of the fiery wheels
       Griding the winds?) from Demogorgon's throne.
       Victory! victory! Feel'st thou not, O world,
       The earthquake of his chariot thundering up
       Olympus?


[The Car of the HOUR arrives. DEMOGORGON
descends and moves towards the Throne of JUPITER.

              Awful shape, what art thou? Speak!

DEMOGORGON
       Eternity. Demand no direr name.
       Descend, and follow me down the abyss.
       I am thy child, as thou wert Saturn's child;
       Mightier than thee; and we must dwell together
       Henceforth in darkness. Lift thy lightnings not.
       The tyranny of heaven none may retain,
       Or reassume, or hold, succeeding thee;
       Yet if thou wilt, as 't is the destiny
       Of trodden worms to writhe till they are dead,
       Put forth thy might.

JUPITER
                        Detested prodigy!
       Even thus beneath the deep Titanian prisons
       I trample thee! Thou lingerest?
                                 Mercy! mercy!
       No pity, no release, no respite! Oh,
       That thou wouldst make mine enemy my judge,
       Even where he hangs, seared by my long revenge,
       On Caucasus! he would not doom me thus.
       Gentle, and just, and dreadless, is he not
       The monarch of the world? What then art thou?
       No refuge! no appeal!
                         Sink with me then,
       We two will sink on the wide waves of ruin,
       Even as a vulture and a snake outspent
       Drop, twisted in inextricable fight,
       Into a shoreless sea! Let hell unlock
       Its mounded oceans of tempestuous fire,
       And whelm on them into the bottomless void
       This desolated world, and thee, and me,
       The conqueror and the conquered, and the wreck
       Of that for which they combated!
                                   Ai, Ai!
       The elements obey me not. I sink
       Dizzily down, ever, forever, down.
       And, like a cloud, mine enemy above
       Darkens my fall with victory! Ai, Ai!

SCENE II.-- The Mouth of a great River in the Island Atlantis. 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 aerial 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 odors,
       And music soft, and mild, free, gentle voices,
       That 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 forever full beside my throne.
       Behold the Nereids under the green sea,
       Their wavering limbs borne on the windlike 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 vein'd 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 charm'd winds,
       Which meet from all the points of heaven--as bees
       From every flower aerial 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 thy touch runs down
       Even to the adamantine central gloom
       Along these marble nerves; 't is life, 't is 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 odor-faded blooms
       Which star the winds with points of colored 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 aerial 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, Maenad-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 overwrought,
       And populous most with 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 honor 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 splendor 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 leapt 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 spher'd fires the interlunar air?

SPIRIT OF THE EARTH
       Nay, mother, while my sister trims her lamp
       'T is 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 spher'd 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, passed; 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,
       Spoiled the sweet taste of the nepenthe, love.

       Thrones, altars, judgment-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,
       Those 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 among 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 colors idly spread,
       All men believed and 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.

         


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 't is 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
         Has 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 humankind,
       Which was late so dusk, and obscene, and blind;
             Now 't is 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 skyey 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 his daedal 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 splendor 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 star-beams, 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
       'T is the deep music of the rolling world,
       Kindling within the strings of the waved air
       Aeolian 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 night into her western cave,
       When she upsprings from interlunar dreams;
       O'er which is curved an orb-like canopy
       Of gentle darkness, and the hills and woods,
       Distinctly seen through that dusk airy veil,
       Regard like shapes in an enchanter's glass;
       Its wheels are solid clouds, azure and gold,
       Such as the genii of the thunder-storm
       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, 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 odor 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 aerial 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
       'T is 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 lightnings,
       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 mine 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 vapors 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 scyth'd 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 wing'd 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 odor, 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 thunder-stones
         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
       Bursts 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,
         Wing'd clouds soar here and there
       Dark with the rain new buds are dreaming of:
              'T is 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 't is 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 forever,
       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;
         Labor, 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 color his dreams pass--
       Bright threads whence mothers weave the robes their children wear;
         Language is a perpetual Orphic song,
         Which rules with daedal 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 Maenad round the cup
           Which Agave lifted up
           In the weird Cadmean 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.
       O 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 forever calm;
       O 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.

IONE
                             Ah me! sweet sister,
       The stream of sound has ebbed away from us,
       And you pretend to rise out of its wave,
       Because your words fall like the clear soft dew
       Shaken from a bathing wood-nymph's limbs and hair.

PANTHEA
       Peace, peace! a mighty Power, which is as darkness,
       Is rising out of Earth, and from the sky
       Is showered like night, and from within the air
       Bursts, like eclipse which had been gathered up
       Into the pores of sunlight; the bright visions,
       Wherein the singing Spirits rode and shone,
       Gleam like pale meteors through a watery night.

IONE
       There is a sense of words upon mine ear.

PANTHEA
       An universal sound like words: Oh, list!

DEMOGORGON
       Thou, Earth, calm empire of a happy soul,
         Sphere of divinest shapes and harmonies,
       Beautiful orb! gathering as thou dost roll
         The love which paves thy path along the skies:

THE EARTH
       I hear: I am as a drop of dew that dies.

DEMOGORGON
       Thou, Moon, which gazest on the nightly Earth
         With wonder, as it gazes upon thee;
       Whilst each to men, and beasts, and the swift birth
       Of birds, is beauty, love, calm, harmony:

THE MOON
       I hear: I am a leaf shaken by thee.

DEMOGORGON
       Ye kings of suns and stars, Daemons and Gods,
         Ethereal Dominations, who possess
       Elysian, windless, fortunate abodes
         Beyond Heaven's constellated wilderness:

A VOICE (from above )
       Our great Republic hears: we are blessed, and bless.

DEMOGORGON
       Ye happy dead, whom beams of brightest verse
         Are clouds to hide, not colors to portray,
       Whether your nature is that universe
         Which once ye saw and suffered--

A VOICE FROM BENEATH
                                   Or, as they
       Whom we have left, we change and pass away.

DEMOGORGON
       Ye elemental Genii, who have homes
         From man's high mind even to the central stone
       Of sullen lead; from Heaven's star-fretted domes
         To the dull weed some sea-worm battens on:

A CONFUSED VOICE
       We hear: thy words waken Oblivion.

DEMOGORGON
       Spirits, whose homes are flesh; ye beasts and birds,
         Ye worms and fish; ye living leaves and buds;
       Lightning and wind; and ye untamable herds,
         Meteors and mists, which throng air's solitudes:

A VOICE
       Thy voice to us is wind among still woods.

DEMOGORGON
       Man, who wert once a despot and a slave,
         A dupe and a deceiver! a decay,
       A traveller from the cradle to the grave
         Through the dim night of this immortal day:

ALL
       Speak: thy strong words may never pass away.

DEMOGORGON
       This is the day which down the void abysm
       At the Earth-born's spell yawns for Heaven's despotism,
         And Conquest is dragged captive through the deep;
       Love, from its awful throne of patient power
       In the wise heart, from the last giddy hour
         Of dread endurance, from the slippery, steep,
       And narrow verge of crag-like agony, springs
       And folds over the world its healing wings.

       Gentleness, Virtue, Wisdom, and Endurance--
       These are the seals of that most firm assurance
         Which bars the pit over Destruction's strength;
       And if, with infirm hand, Eternity,
       Mother of many acts and hours, should free
         The serpent that would clasp her with his length,
       These are the spells by which to reassume
       An empire o'er the disentangled doom.

       To suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite;
       To forgive wrongs darker than death or night;
         To defy Power, which seems omnipotent;
       To love, and bear; to hope till Hope creates
       From its own wreck the thing it contemplates;
         Neither to change, nor falter, nor repent;
       This, like thy glory, Titan, is to be
       Good, great and joyous, beautiful and free;
       This is alone Life; Joy, Empire, and Victory!