Prometheus: Worse?

FURY:In each human heart terror survivesThe ravin it has gorged: the loftiest fearAll that they would disdain to think were true:Hypocrisy and custom make their mindsThe 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-menAs if none felt: they know not what they do.

PROMETHEUS:Thy words are like a cloud of winged snakes;And yet I pity those they torture not.

FURY:Thou pitiest them? I speak no more!

PROMETHEUS:Ah woe!Ah woe! Alas! pain, pain ever, for ever!I close my tearless eyes, but see more clearThy works within my woe-illumed 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 soulWith new endurance, till the hour arrivesWhen they shall be no types of things which are.

PANTHEA:Alas! what sawest thou more?

PROMETHEUS:There are two woes:To speak, and to behold; thou spare me one.Names are there, Nature's sacred watchwords, theyWere 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 heavenAmong 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 joyAs pain and virtue give. To cheer thy stateI 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 aether: they beholdBeyond 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-vapours 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:'Tis something sadder, sweeter far than all.

From unremembered ages weGentle guides and guardians beOf 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 betweenCloudless 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 mindFloat through all above the grave;We make there our liquid lair,Voyaging cloudlike and unpentThrough the boundless element:Thence we bear the prophecyWhich begins and ends in thee!

IONE:More yet come, one by one: the air around themLooks radiant as the air around a star.

On a battle-trumpet's blastI 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; 'twas the soul of Love;'Twas the hope, the prophecy,Which begins and ends in thee.

A rainbow's arch stood on the sea,Which rocked beneath, immovably;And the triumphant storm did flee,Like a conqueror, swift and proud,Between, with many a captive cloud,A shapeless, dark and rapid crowd,Each by lightning riven in half:I heard the thunder hoarsely laugh:Mighty fleets were strewn like chaffAnd spread beneath a hell of deathO'er the white waters. I alitOn a great ship lightning-split,And speeded hither on the sighOf one who gave an enemyHis plank, then plunged aside to die.

I sate beside a sage's bed,And the lamp was burning redNear the book where he had fed,When a Dream with plumes of flame,To his pillow hovering came,And I knew it was the sameWhich had kindled long agoPity, eloquence, and woe;And the world awhile belowWore the shade, its lustre made.It has borne me here as fleetAs Desire's lightning feet:I must ride it back ere morrow,Or the sage will wake in sorrow.

On a poet's lips I sleptDreaming like a love-adeptIn the sound his breathing kept;Nor seeks nor finds he mortal blisses,But feeds on the aereal kissesOf shapes that haunt thought's wildernesses.He will watch from dawn to gloomThe lake-reflected sun illumeThe yellow bees in the ivy-bloom,Nor heed nor see, what things they be;But from these create he canForms more real than living man,Nurslings of immortality!One of these awakened me,And I sped to succour thee.

IONE:Behold'st thou not two shapes from the east and westCome, as two doves to one beloved nest,Twin nurslings of the all-sustaining airOn swift still wings glide down the atmosphere?And, hark! their sweet sad voices! 'tis despairMingled 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 floatOn their sustaining wings of skiey grain,Orange and azure deepening into gold:Their soft smiles light the air like a star's fire.

Hast thou beheld the form of Love?

As over wide dominionsI 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 'twas 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.

Ah, sister! Desolation is a delicate thing:It walks not on the earth, it floats not on the air,But treads with lulling footstep, and fans with silent wingThe tender hopes which in their hearts the best and gentlest bear;Who, soothed to false repose by the fanning plumes aboveAnd the music-stirring motion of its soft and busy feet,Dream visions of aereal 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 winged 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 knowThat the white-thorn soon will blow:Wisdom, Justice, Love, and Peace,When they struggle to increase,Are to us as soft winds beTo shepherd boys, the prophecyWhich begins and ends in thee.

IONE:Where are the Spirits fled?

PANTHEA:Only a senseRemains of them, like the omnipotenceOf music, when the inspired voice and luteLanguish, 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 airborn shapes! and yet I feelMost vain all hope but love; and thou art far,Asia! who, when my being overflowed,Wert like a golden chalice to bright wineWhich else had sunk into the thirsty dust.All things are still: alas! how heavilyThis quiet morning weighs upon my heart;Though I should dream I could even sleep with griefIf slumber were denied not. I would fainBe 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 theeThe cold dark night, and never sleeps but whenThe 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 onceAnd desolate and frozen, like this ravine;But now invested with fair flowers and herbs,And haunted by sweet airs and sounds, which flowAmong the woods and waters, from the aetherOf her transforming presence, which would fadeIf it were mingled not with thine. Farewell!

ASIA:From all the blasts of heaven thou hast descended:Yes, like a spirit, like a thought, which makesUnwonted tears throng to the horny eyes,And beatings haunt the desolated heart,Which should have learnt repose: thou hast descendedCradled in tempests; thou dost wake, O Spring!O child of many winds! As suddenlyThou comest as the memory of a dream,Which now is sad because it hath been sweet;Like genius, or like joy which riseth upAs from the earth, clothing with golden cloudsThe 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 stillDeep in the orange light of widening mornBeyond the purple mountains: through a chasmOf wind-divided mist the darker lakeReflects it: now it wanes: it gleams againAs the waves fade, and as the burning threadsOf woven cloud unravel in pale air:'Tis lost! and through yon peaks of cloud-like snowThe roseate sunlight quivers: hear I notThe Aeolian music of her sea-green plumesWinnowing the crimson dawn?

I feel, I seeThose eyes which burn through smiles that fade in tears,Like stars half quenched in mists of silver dew.Beloved and most beautiful, who wearestThe shadow of that soul by which I live,How late thou art! the sphered sun had climbedThe sea; my heart was sick with hope, beforeThe printless air felt thy belated plumes.

PANTHEA:Pardon, great Sister! but my wings were faintWith the delight of a remembered dream,As are the noontide plumes of summer windsSatiate with sweet flowers. I was wont to sleepPeacefully, and awake refreshed and calmBefore the sacred Titan's fall, and thyUnhappy love, had made, through use and pity,Both love and woe familiar to my heartAs they had grown to thine: erewhile I sleptUnder the glaucous caverns of old OceanWithin dim bowers of green and purple moss,Our young Ione's soft and milky armsLocked then, as now, behind my dark, moist hair,While my shut eyes and cheek were pressed withinThe folded depth of her life-breathing bosom:But not as now, since I am made the windWhich fails beneath the music that I bearOf thy most wordless converse; since dissolvedInto the sense with which love talks, my restWas troubled and yet sweet; my waking hoursToo full of care and pain.

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

PANTHEA:As I have saidWith our sea-sister at his feet I slept.The mountain mists, condensing at our voiceUnder the moon, had spread their snowy flakes,From the keen ice shielding our linked sleep.Then two dreams came. One, I remember not.But in the other his pale wound-worn limbsFell from Prometheus, and the azure nightGrew radiant with the glory of that formWhich lives unchanged within, and his voice fellLike music which makes giddy the dim brain,Faint with intoxication of keen joy:'Sister of her whose footsteps pave the worldWith loveliness--more fair than aught but her,Whose shadow thou art--lift thine eyes on me.'I lifted them: the overpowering lightOf that immortal shape was shadowed o'erBy love; which, from his soft and flowing limbs,And passion-parted lips, and keen, faint eyes,Steamed forth like vaporous fire; an atmosphereWhich wrapped me in its all-dissolving power,As the warm ether of the morning sunWraps ere it drinks some cloud of wandering dew.I saw not, heard not, moved not, only feltHis presence flow and mingle through my bloodTill it became his life, and his grew mine,And I was thus absorbed, until it passed,And like the vapours when the sun sinks down,Gathering again in drops upon the pines,And tremulous as they, in the deep nightMy being was condensed; and as the raysOf thought were slowly gathered, I could hearHis voice, whose accents lingered ere they diedLike footsteps of weak melody: thy nameAmong the many sounds alone I heardOf what might be articulate; though stillI listened through the night when sound was none.Ione wakened then, and said to me:'Canst thou divine what troubles me to-night?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 sweetEven to desire; it is thy sport, false sister;Thou hast discovered some enchantment old,Whose spells have stolen my spirit as I sleptAnd mingled it with thine: for when just nowWe kissed, I felt within thy parted lipsThe sweet air that sustained me, and the warmthOf 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 wordsAre as the air: I feel them not: Oh, liftThine eyes, that I may read his written soul!

PANTHEA:I lift them though they droop beneath the loadOf that they would express: what canst thou seeBut thine own fairest shadow imaged there?

ASIA:Thine eyes are like the deep, blue, boundless heavenContracted to two circles underneathTheir 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 depthI see a shade, a shape: 'tis He, arrayedIn the soft light of his own smiles, which spreadLike radiance from the cloud-surrounded moon.Prometheus, it is thine! depart not yet!Say not those smiles that we shall meet againWithin that bright pavilion which their beamsShall build o'er the waste world? The dream is told.What shape is that between us? Its rude hairRoughens the wind that lifts it, its regardIs wild and quick, yet 'tis a thing of air,For through its gray robe gleams the golden dewWhose stars the noon has quenched not.