Apollo: Farewell

SCENE 3.3:

HERCULES:Most glorious among Spirits, thus doth strengthTo wisdom, courage, and long-suffering love,And thee, who art the form they animate,Minister like a slave.

PROMETHEUS:Thy gentle wordsAre sweeter even than freedom long desiredAnd long delayed.Asia, thou light of life,Shadow of beauty unbeheld: and ye,Fair sister nymphs, who made long years of painSweet to remember, through your love and care:Henceforth we will not part. There is a cave,All overgrown with trailing odorous plants,Which curtain out the day with leaves and flowers,And paved with veined emerald, and a fountainLeaps in the midst with an awakening sound.From its curved roof the mountain's frozen tearsLike 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 awayThe tears she brought, which yet were sweet to shed.We will entangle buds and flowers and beamsWhich twinkle on the fountain's brim, and makeStrange 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 lutesTouched by the skill of the enamoured wind,Weave harmonies divine, yet ever new,From difference sweet where discord cannot be;And hither come, sped on the charmed winds,Which meet from all the points of heaven, as beesFrom every flower aereal Enna feeds,At their known island-homes in Himera,The echoes of the human world, which tellOf the low voice of love, almost unheard,And dove-eyed pity's murmured pain, and music,Itself the echo of the heart, and allThat tempers or improves man's life, now free;And lovely apparitions,--dim at first,Then radiant, as the mind, arising brightFrom the embrace of beauty (whence the formsOf which these are the phantoms) casts on themThe gathered rays which are reality--Shall visit us, the progeny immortalOf Painting, Sculpture, and rapt Poesy,And arts, though unimagined, yet to be.The wandering voices and the shadows theseOf all that man becomes, the mediatorsOf that best worship love, by him and usGiven and returned; swift shapes and sounds, which growMore 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.For thee, fair Spirit, one toil remains. Ione,Give her that curved shell, which Proteus oldMade Asia's nuptial boon, breathing within itA voice to be accomplished, and which thouDidst hide in grass under the hollow rock.

IONE:Thou most desired Hour, more loved and lovelyThan all thy sisters, this is the mystic shell;See the pale azure fading into silverLining 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 mankindOn whirlwind-footed coursers: once againOutspeed 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 beAs thunder mingled with clear echoes: thenReturn; 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 downEven to the adamantine central gloomAlong these marble nerves; 'tis life, 'tis joy,And, through my withered, old, and icy frameThe warmth of an immortal youth shoots downCircling. Henceforth the many children fairFolded 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 takeAnd interchange sweet nutriment; to meShall they become like sister-antelopesBy one fair dam, snow-white and swift as wind,Nursed among lilies near a brimming stream.The dew-mists of my sunless sleep shall floatUnder the stars like balm: night-folded flowersShall suck unwithering hues in their repose:And men and beasts in happy dreams shall gatherStrength for the coming day, and all its joy:And death shall be the last embrace of herWho 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 knownBut to the uncommunicating dead.Death is the veil which those who live call life:They sleep, and it is lifted: and meanwhileIn mild variety the seasons mildWith rainbow-skirted showers, and odorous winds,And long blue meteors cleansing the dull night,And the life-kindling shafts of the keen sun'sAll-piercing bow, and the dew-mingled rainOf the calm moonbeams, a soft influence mild,Shall clothe the forests and the fields, ay, evenThe crag-built deserts of the barren deep,With ever-living leaves, and fruits, and flowers.And thou! There is a cavern where my spiritWas panted forth in anguish whilst thy painMade my heart mad, and those who did inhale itBecame mad too, and built a temple there,And spoke, and were oracular, and luredThe erring nations round to mutual war,And faithless faith, such as Jove kept with thee;Which breath now rises, as amongst tall weedsA violet's exhalation, and it fillsWith a serener light and crimson airIntense, yet soft, the rocks and woods around;It feeds the quick growth of the serpent vine,And the dark linked ivy tangling wild,And budding, blown, or odour-faded bloomsWhich star the winds with points of coloured light,As they rain through them, and bright golden globesOf fruit, suspended in their own green heaven,And through their veined leaves and amber stemsThe flowers whose purple and translucid bowlsStand ever mantling with aereal 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!This is my torch-bearer;Who let his lamp out in old time with gazingOn eyes from which he kindled it anewWith love, which is as fire, sweet daughter mine,For such is that within thine own. Run, wayward,And guide this company beyond the peakOf Bacchic Nysa, Maenad-haunted mountain,And beyond Indus and its tribute rivers,Trampling the torrent streams and glassy lakesWith feet unwet, unwearied, undelaying,And up the green ravine, across the vale,Beside the windless and crystalline pool,Where ever lies, on unerasing waves,The image of a temple, built above,Distinct with column, arch, and architrave,And palm-like capital, and over-wrought,And populous with most living imagery,Praxitelean shapes, whose marble smilesFill the hushed air with everlasting love.It is deserted now, but once it boreThy name, Prometheus; there the emulous youthsBore to thy honour through the divine gloomThe lamp which was thine emblem; even as thoseWho bear the untransmitted torch of hopeInto the grave, across the night of life,As thou hast borne it most triumphantlyTo this far goal of Time. Depart, farewell.Beside that temple is the destined cave.

SCENE 3.4:

IONE:Sister, it is not earthly: how it glidesUnder the leaves! how on its head there burnsA light, like a green star, whose emerald beamsAre twined with its fair hair! how, as it moves,The splendour drops in flakes upon the grass!Knowest thou it?

PANTHEA:It is the delicate spiritThat guides the earth through heaven. From afarThe populous constellations call that lightThe loveliest of the planets; and sometimesIt 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 reignedIt loved our sister Asia, and it cameEach leisure hour to drink the liquid lightOut of her eyes, for which it said it thirstedAs one bit by a dipsas, and with herIt made its childish confidence, and told herAll 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.

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 henceforthCan cherish thee unenvied: speak, I pray:Thy simple talk once solaced, now delights.

Mother, I am grown wiser, though a childCannot 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 boughsThat bore ill berries in the woods, were everAn 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 thoughtsHide 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 heartTo pass them, though they slept, and I unseen.Well, my path lately lay through a great cityInto the woody hills surrounding it:A sentinel was sleeping at the gate:When there was heard a sound, so loud, it shookThe towers amid the moonlight, yet more sweetThan any voice but thine, sweetest of all;A long, long sound, as it would never end:And all the inhabitants leaped suddenlyOut of their rest, and gathered in the streets,Looking in wonder up to Heaven, while yetThe music pealed along. I hid myselfWithin a fountain in the public square,Where I lay like the reflex of the moonSeen in a wave under green leaves; and soonThose ugly human shapes and visagesOf which I spoke as having wrought me pain,Passed floating through the air, and fading stillInto the winds that scattered them; and thoseFrom whom they passed seemed mild and lovely formsAfter some foul disguise had fallen, and allWere somewhat changed, and after brief surpriseAnd greetings of delighted wonder, allWent to their sleep again: and when the dawnCame, 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 downwardAnd thinning one bright bunch of amber berries,With quick long beaks, and in the deep there layThose 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 sisterWho guides the frozen and inconstant moonWill look on thy more warm and equal lightTill her heart thaw like flakes of April snowAnd love thee.

What! as Asia loves Prometheus?

ASIA:Peace, wanton, thou art yet not old enough.Think ye by gazing on each other's eyesTo multiply your lovely selves, and fillWith sphered fires the interlunar air?

Nay, mother, while my sister trims her lamp'Tis hard I should go darkling.

ASIA:Listen; look!

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

Soon as the sound had ceased whose thunder filledThe abysses of the sky and the wide earth,There was a change: the impalpable thin airAnd the all-circling sunlight were transformed,As if the sense of love dissolved in themHad folded itself round the sphered world.My vision then grew clear, and I could seeInto 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 withinA temple, gazed upon by Phidian formsOf 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 snakeThe likeness of those winged steeds will mockThe flight from which they find repose. Alas,Whither has wandered now my partial tongueWhen 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 blissTo move, to breathe, to be. I wandering wentAmong the haunts and dwellings of mankind,And first was disappointed not to seeSuch mighty change as I had felt withinExpressed in outward things; but soon I looked,And behold, thrones were kingless, and men walkedOne with the other even as spirits do,None fawned, none trampled; hate, disdain, or fear,Self-love or self-contempt, on human browsNo more inscribed, as o'er the gate of hell,'All hope abandon ye who enter here;'None frowned, none trembled, none with eager fearGazed on another's eye of cold command,Until the subject of a tyrant's willBecame, worse fate, the abject of his own,Which spurred him, like an outspent horse, to death.None wrought his lips in truth-entangling linesWhich smiled the lie his tongue disdained to speak;None, with firm sneer, trod out in his own heartThe sparks of love and hope till there remainedThose 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 talkWhich makes the heart deny the "yes" it breathes,Yet question that unmeant hypocrisyWith such a self-mistrust as has no name.And women, too, frank, beautiful, and kindAs the free heaven which rains fresh light and dewOn the wide earth, past; gentle radiant forms,From custom's evil taint exempt and pure;Speaking the wisdom once they could not think,Looking emotions once they feared to feel,And changed to all which once they dared not be,Yet being now, made earth like heaven; nor pride,Nor jealousy, nor envy, nor ill shame,The bitterest of those drops of treasured gall,Spoiled the sweet taste of the nepenthe, love.

Thrones, altars, judgement-seats, and prisons; wherein,And beside which, by wretched men were borneSceptres, tiaras, swords, and chains, and tomesOf 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 forthIn triumph o'er the palaces and tombsOf those who were their conquerors: mouldering round,These imaged to the pride of kings and priestsA dark yet mighty faith, a power as wideAs is the world it wasted, and are nowBut an astonishment; even so the toolsAnd 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 formStrange, savage, ghastly, dark and execrable,Were Jupiter, the tyrant of the world;And which the nations, panic-stricken, servedWith blood, and hearts broken by long hope, and loveDragged 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 colours idly spread,All men believed and hoped, is torn aside;The loathsome mask has fallen, the man remainsSceptreless, free, uncircumscribed, but manEqual, unclassed, tribeless, and nationless,Exempt from awe, worship, degree, the kingOver himself; just, gentle, wise; but manPassionless?--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 oversoarThe loftiest star of unascended heaven,Pinnacled dim in the intense inane.