1. SCENE: A RAVINE OF ICY ROCKS IN THE INDIAN CAUCASUS. PROMETHEUS IS DISCOVERED BOUND TO THE PRECIPICE. PANTEA AND IONE ARE SEATED AT HIS FEET. TIME, NIGHT. DURING, THE SCENE MORNING SLOWLY BREAKS.
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Monarch of Gods and DAEmons, and all Spirits
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But One, who throng those bright and rolling worlds
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Which Thou and I alone of living things
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Behold with sleepless eyes! regard this Earth
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Made multitudinous with thy slaves, whom thou
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Requitest for knee-worship, prayer, and praise,
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And toil, and hecatombs of broken hearts,
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With fear and self-contempt and barren hope.
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Whilst me, who am thy foe, eyeless in hate,
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Hast thou made reign and triumph, to thy scorn,
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O'er mine own misery and thy vain revenge.
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Three thousand years of sleep-unsheltered hours,
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And moments aye divided by keen pangs
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Till they seemed years, torture and solitude,
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Scorn and despair,—these are mine empire:—
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More glorious far than that which thou surveyest
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From thine unenvied throne, O Mighty God!
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Almighty, had I deigned to share the shame
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Of thine ill tyranny, and hung not here
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Nailed to this wall of eagle-baffling mountain,
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Black, wintry, dead, unmeasured; without herb,
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Insect, or beast, or shape or sound of life.
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Ah me! alas, pain, pain ever, for ever!
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No change, no pause, no hope! Yet I endure.
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I ask the Earth, have not the mountains felt?
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I ask yon Heaven, the all-beholding Sun,
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Has it not seen? The Sea, in storm or calm,
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Heaven's ever-changing Shadow, spread below,
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Have its deaf waves not heard my agony?
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Ah me! alas, pain, pain ever, for ever!
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The crawling glaciers pierce me with the spears
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Of their moon-freezing crystals; the bright chains
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Eat with their burning cold into my bones.
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Heaven's winged hound, polluting from thy lips
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His beak in poison not his own, tears up
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My heart; and shapeless sights come wandering by,
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The ghastly people of the realm of dream,
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Mocking me: and the Earthquake-fiends are charged
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To wrench the rivets from my quivering wounds
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When the rocks split and close again behind:
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While from their loud abysses howling throng
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The genii of the storm, urging the rage
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Of whirlwind, and afflict me with keen hail.
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And yet to me welcome is day and night,
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Whether one breaks the hoar-frost of the morn,
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Or starry, dim, and slow, the other climbs
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The leaden-coloured east; for then they lead
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The wingless, crawling hours, one among whom
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—As some dark Priest hales the reluctant victim—
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Shall drag thee, cruel King, to kiss the blood
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From these pale feet, which then might trample thee
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If they disdained not such a prostrate slave.
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Disdain! Ah, no! I pity thee. What ruin
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Will hunt thee undefended through wide Heaven!
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How will thy soul, cloven to its depth with terror,
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Gape like a hell within! I speak in grief,
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Not exultation, for I hate no more,
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As then ere misery made me wise. The curse
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Once breathed on thee I would recall. Ye Mountains,
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Whose many-voiced Echoes, through the mist
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Of cataracts, flung the thunder of that spell!
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Ye icy Springs, stagnant with wrinkling frost,
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Which vibrated to hear me, and then crept
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Shuddering through India! Thou serenest Air,
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Through which the Sun walks burning without beams!
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And ye swift Whirlwinds, who on poised wings
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Hung mute and moveless o'er yon hushed abyss,
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As thunder, louder than your own, made rock
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The orbed world! If then my words had power,
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Though I am changed so that aught evil wish
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Is dead within; although no memory be
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Of what is hate, let them not lose it now!
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What was that curse? for ye all heard me speak.
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FIRST VOICE (FROM THE MOUNTAINS):
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Thrice three hundred thousand years
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O'er the Earthquake's couch we stood:
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Oft, as men convulsed with fears,
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We trembled in our multitude.
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SECOND VOICE (FROM THE SPRINGS):
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Thunderbolts had parched our water,
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We had been stained with bitter blood,
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And had run mute, 'mid shrieks of slaughter,
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Thro' a city and a solitude.
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THIRD VOICE (FROM THE AIR):
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I had clothed, since Earth uprose,
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Its wastes in colours not their own,
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And oft had my serene repose
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Been cloven by many a rending groan.
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FOURTH VOICE (FROM THE WHIRLWINDS):
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We had soared beneath these mountains
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Unresting ages; nor had thunder,
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Nor yon volcano's flaming fountains,
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Nor any power above or under
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Ever made us mute with wonder.
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But never bowed our snowy crest
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As at the voice of thine unrest.
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Never such a sound before
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To the Indian waves we bore.
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A pilot asleep on the howling sea
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Leaped up from the deck in agony,
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And heard, and cried, 'Ah, woe is me!'
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And died as mad as the wild waves be.
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By such dread words from Earth to Heaven
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My still realm was never riven:
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When its wound was closed, there stood
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Darkness o'er the day like blood.
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And we shrank back: for dreams of ruin
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To frozen caves our flight pursuing
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Made us keep silence—thus—and thus—
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Though silence is a hell to us.
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The tongueless caverns of the craggy hills
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Cried, 'Misery!' then; the hollow Heaven replied,
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'Misery!' And the Ocean's purple waves,
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Climbing the land, howled to the lashing winds,
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And the pale nations heard it, 'Misery!'
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I hear a sound of voices: not the voice
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Which I gave forth. Mother, thy sons and thou
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Scorn him, without whose all-enduring will
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Beneath the fierce omnipotence of Jove,
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Both they and thou had vanished, like thin mist
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Unrolled on the morning wind. Know ye not me,
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The Titan? He who made his agony
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The barrier to your else all-conquering foe?
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Oh, rock-embosomed lawns, and snow-fed streams,
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Now seen athwart frore vapours, deep below,
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Through whose o'ershadowing woods I wandered once
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With Asia, drinking life from her loved eyes;
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Why scorns the spirit which informs ye, now
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To commune with me? me alone, who checked,
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As one who checks a fiend-drawn charioteer,
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The falsehood and the force of him who reigns
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Supreme, and with the groans of pining slaves
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Fills your dim glens and liquid wildernesses:
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Why answer ye not, still? Brethren!
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Who dares? for I would hear that curse again.
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Ha, what an awful whisper rises up!
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'Tis scarce like sound: it tingles through the frame
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As lightning tingles, hovering ere it strike.
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Speak, Spirit! from thine inorganic voice
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I only know that thou art moving near
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And love. How cursed I him?
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Who knowest not the language of the dead?
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Thou art a living spirit; speak as they.
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I dare not speak like life, lest Heaven's fell King
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Should hear, and link me to some wheel of pain
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More torturing than the one whereon I roll.
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Subtle thou art and good; and though the Gods
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Hear not this voice, yet thou art more than God,
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Being wise and kind: earnestly hearken now.
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Obscurely through my brain, like shadows dim,
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Sweep awful thoughts, rapid and thick. I feel
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Faint, like one mingled in entwining love;
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Yet 'tis not pleasure.
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No, thou canst not hear:
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Thou art immortal, and this tongue is known
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Only to those who die.
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Thy mother; she within whose stony veins,
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To the last fibre of the loftiest tree
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Whose thin leaves trembled in the frozen air,
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Joy ran, as blood within a living frame,
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When thou didst from her bosom, like a cloud
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Of glory, arise, a spirit of keen joy!
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And at thy voice her pining sons uplifted
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Their prostrate brows from the polluting dust,
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And our almighty Tyrant with fierce dread
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Grew pale, until his thunder chained thee here.
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Then, see those million worlds which burn and roll
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Around us: their inhabitants beheld
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My sphered light wane in wide Heaven; the sea
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Was lifted by strange tempest, and new fire
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From earthquake-rifted mountains of bright snow
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Shook its portentous hair beneath Heaven's frown;
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Lightning and Inundation vexed the plains;
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Blue thistles bloomed in cities; foodless toads
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Within voluptuous chambers panting crawled:
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When Plague had fallen on man, and beast, and worm,
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And Famine; and black blight on herb and tree;
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And in the corn, and vines, and meadow-grass,
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Teemed ineradicable poisonous weeds
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Draining their growth, for my wan breast was dry
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With grief; and the thin air, my breath, was stained
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With the contagion of a mother's hate
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Breathed on her child's destroyer; ay, I heard
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Thy curse, the which, if thou rememberest not,
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Yet my innumerable seas and streams,
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Mountains, and caves, and winds, and yon wide air,
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And the inarticulate people of the dead,
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Preserve, a treasured spell. We meditate
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In secret joy and hope those dreadful words,
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But dare not speak them.
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All else who live and suffer take from thee
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Some comfort; flowers, and fruits, and happy sounds,
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And love, though fleeting; these may not be mine.
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But mine own words, I pray, deny me not.
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They shall be told. Ere Babylon was dust,
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The Magus Zoroaster, my dead child,
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Met his own image walking in the garden.
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That apparition, sole of men, he saw.
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For know there are two worlds of life and death:
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One that which thou beholdest; but the other
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Is underneath the grave, where do inhabit
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The shadows of all forms that think and live
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Till death unite them and they part no more;
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Dreams and the light imaginings of men,
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And all that faith creates or love desires,
230
Terrible, strange, sublime and beauteous shapes.
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There thou art, and dost hang, a writhing shade,
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'Mid whirlwind-peopled mountains; all the gods
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Are there, and all the powers of nameless worlds,
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Vast, sceptred phantoms; heroes, men, and beasts;
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And Demogorgon, a tremendous gloom;
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And he, the supreme Tyrant, on his throne
237
Of burning gold. Son, one of these shall utter
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The curse which all remember. Call at will
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Thine own ghost, or the ghost of Jupiter,
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Hades or Typhon, or what mightier Gods
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From all-prolific Evil, since thy ruin,
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Have sprung, and trampled on my prostrate sons.
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Ask, and they must reply: so the revenge
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Of the Supreme may sweep through vacant shades,
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As rainy wind through the abandoned gate
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Mother, let not aught
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Of that which may be evil, pass again
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My lips, or those of aught resembling me.
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Phantasm of Jupiter, arise, appear!
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My wings are folded o'er mine ears:
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My wings are crossed o'er mine eyes:
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Yet through their silver shade appears,
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And through their lulling plumes arise,
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A Shape, a throng of sounds;
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May it be no ill to thee
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O thou of many wounds!
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Near whom, for our sweet sister's sake,
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Ever thus we watch and wake.
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The sound is of whirlwind underground,
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Earthquake, and fire, and mountains cloven;
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The shape is awful like the sound,
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Clothed in dark purple, star-inwoven.
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A sceptre of pale gold
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To stay steps proud, o'er the slow cloud
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His veined hand doth hold.
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Cruel he looks, but calm and strong,
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Like one who does, not suffers wrong.
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Why have the secret powers of this strange world
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Driven me, a frail and empty phantom, hither
275
On direst storms? What unaccustomed sounds
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Are hovering on my lips, unlike the voice
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With which our pallid race hold ghastly talk
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In darkness? And, proud sufferer, who art thou?
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Tremendous Image, as thou art must be
281
He whom thou shadowest forth. I am his foe,
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The Titan. Speak the words which I would hear,
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Although no thought inform thine empty voice.
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Listen! And though your echoes must be mute,
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Grey mountains, and old woods, and haunted springs,
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Prophetic caves, and isle-surrounding streams,
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Rejoice to hear what yet ye cannot speak.
290
A spirit seizes me and speaks within:
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It tears me as fire tears a thunder-cloud.
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See, how he lifts his mighty looks, the Heaven
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He speaks! O shelter me!
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I see the curse on gestures proud and cold,
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And looks of firm defiance, and calm hate,
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And such despair as mocks itself with smiles,
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Written as on a scroll: yet speak! Oh, speak!
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Fiend, I defy thee! with a calm, fixed mind,
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All that thou canst inflict I bid thee do;
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Foul Tyrant both of Gods and Humankind,
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One only being shalt thou not subdue.
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Rain then thy plagues upon me here,
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Ghastly disease, and frenzying fear;
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And let alternate frost and fire
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Eat into me, and be thine ire
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Lightning, and cutting hail, and legioned forms
312
Of furies, driving by upon the wounding storms.
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Ay, do thy worst. Thou art omnipotent.
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O'er all things but thyself I gave thee power,
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And my own will. Be thy swift mischiefs sent
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To blast mankind, from yon ethereal tower.
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Let thy malignant spirit move
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In darkness over those I love:
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On me and mine I imprecate
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The utmost torture of thy hate;
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And thus devote to sleepless agony,
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This undeclining head while thou must reign on high.
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But thou, who art the God and Lord: O, thou,
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Who fillest with thy soul this world of woe,
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To whom all things of Earth and Heaven do bow
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In fear and worship: all-prevailing foe!
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I curse thee! let a sufferer's curse
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Clasp thee, his torturer, like remorse;
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Till thine Infinity shall be
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A robe of envenomed agony;
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And thine Omnipotence a crown of pain,
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To cling like burning gold round thy dissolving brain.
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Heap on thy soul, by virtue of this Curse,
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Ill deeds, then be thou damned, beholding good;
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Both infinite as is the universe,
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And thou, and thy self-torturing solitude.
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An awful image of calm power
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Though now thou sittest, let the hour
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Come, when thou must appear to be
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That which thou art internally;
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And after many a false and fruitless crime
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Scorn track thy lagging fall through boundless space and time.
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Were these my words, O Parent?
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It doth repent me: words are quick and vain;
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Grief for awhile is blind, and so was mine.
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I wish no living thing to suffer pain.
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Misery, Oh misery to me,
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That Jove at length should vanquish thee.
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Wail, howl aloud, Land and Sea,
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The Earth's rent heart shall answer ye.
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Howl, Spirits of the living and the dead,
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Your refuge, your defence, lies fallen and vanquished.
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Lies fallen and vanquished!
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Fallen and vanquished!
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Fear not: 'tis but some passing spasm,
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The Titan is unvanquished still.
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But see, where through the azure chasm
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Of yon forked and snowy hill
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Trampling the slant winds on high
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With golden-sandalled feet, that glow
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Under plumes of purple dye,
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Like rose-ensanguined ivory,
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Stretching on high from his right hand
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A serpent-cinctured wand.
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'Tis Jove's world-wandering herald, Mercury.
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And who are those with hydra tresses
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And iron wings that climb the wind,
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Whom the frowning God represses
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Like vapours steaming up behind,
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Clanging loud, an endless crowd—
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These are Jove's tempest-walking hounds,
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Whom he gluts with groans and blood,
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When charioted on sulphurous cloud
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He bursts Heaven's bounds.
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Are they now led, from the thin dead
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On new pangs to be fed?
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The Titan looks as ever, firm, not proud.
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Let me but look into his eyes!
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The hope of torturing him smells like a heap
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Of corpses, to a death-bird after battle.
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Darest thou delay, O Herald! take cheer, Hounds
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Of Hell: what if the Son of Maia soon
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Should make us food and sport—who can please long
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Back to your towers of iron,
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And gnash, beside the streams of fire and wail,
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Your foodless teeth. Geryon, arise! and Gorgon,
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Chimaera, and thou Sphinx, subtlest of fiends
409
Who ministered to Thebes Heaven's poisoned wine,
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Unnatural love, and more unnatural hate:
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These shall perform your task.
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We die with our desire: drive us not back!
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Crouch then in silence.
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To thee unwilling, most unwillingly
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I come, by the great Father's will driven down,
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To execute a doom of new revenge.
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Alas! I pity thee, and hate myself
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That I can do no more: aye from thy sight
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Returning, for a season, Heaven seems Hell,
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So thy worn form pursues me night and day,
425
Smiling reproach. Wise art thou, firm and good,
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But vainly wouldst stand forth alone in strife
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Against the Omnipotent; as yon clear lamps
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That measure and divide the weary years
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From which there is no refuge, long have taught
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And long must teach. Even now thy Torturer arms
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With the strange might of unimagined pains
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The powers who scheme slow agonies in Hell,
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And my commission is to lead them here,
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Or what more subtle, foul, or savage fiends
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People the abyss, and leave them to their task.
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Be it not so! there is a secret known
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To thee, and to none else of living things,
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Which may transfer the sceptre of wide Heaven,
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The fear of which perplexes the Supreme:
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Clothe it in words, and bid it clasp his throne
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In intercession; bend thy soul in prayer,
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And like a suppliant in some gorgeous fane,
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Let the will kneel within thy haughty heart:
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For benefits and meek submission tame
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The fiercest and the mightiest.
448
Change good to their own nature. I gave all
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He has; and in return he chains me here
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Years, ages, night and day: whether the Sun
451
Split my parched skin, or in the moony night
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The crystal-winged snow cling round my hair:
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Whilst my beloved race is trampled down
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By his thought-executing ministers.
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Such is the tyrant's recompense: 'tis just:
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He who is evil can receive no good;
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And for a world bestowed, or a friend lost,
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He can feel hate, fear, shame; not gratitude:
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He but requites me for his own misdeed.
460
Kindness to such is keen reproach, which breaks
461
With bitter stings the light sleep of Revenge.
462
Submission, thou dost know I cannot try:
463
For what submission but that fatal word,
464
The death-seal of mankind's captivity,
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Like the Sicilian's hair-suspended sword,
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Which trembles o'er his crown, would he accept,
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Or could I yield? Which yet I will not yield.
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Let others flatter Crime, where it sits throned
469
In brief Omnipotence: secure are they:
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For Justice, when triumphant, will weep down
471
Pity, not punishment, on her own wrongs,
472
Too much avenged by those who err. I wait,
473
Enduring thus, the retributive hour
474
Which since we spake is even nearer now.
475
But hark, the hell-hounds clamour: fear delay:
476
Behold! Heaven lowers under thy Father's frown.
478
Oh, that we might be spared; I to inflict
479
And thou to suffer! Once more answer me:
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Thou knowest not the period of Jove's power?
482
I know but this, that it must come.
485
Thou canst not count thy years to come of pain?
487
They last while Jove must reign: nor more, nor less
490
Yet pause, and plunge
491
Into Eternity, where recorded time,
492
Even all that we imagine, age on age,
493
Seems but a point, and the reluctant mind
494
Flags wearily in its unending flight,
495
Till it sink, dizzy, blind, lost, shelterless;
496
Perchance it has not numbered the slow years
497
Which thou must spend in torture, unreprieved?
499
Perchance no thought can count them, yet they pass.
501
If thou might'st dwell among the Gods the while
502
Lapped in voluptuous joy?
505
This bleak ravine, these unrepentant pains.
507
Alas! I wonder at, yet pity thee.
509
Pity the self-despising slaves of Heaven,
510
Not me, within whose mind sits peace serene.
511
As light in the sun, throned: how vain is talk!
514
O, sister, look! White fire
515
Has cloven to the roots yon huge snow-loaded cedar;
516
How fearfully God's thunder howls behind!
518
I must obey his words and thine: alas!
519
Most heavily remorse hangs at my heart!
521
See where the child of Heaven, with winged feet,
522
Runs down the slanted sunlight of the dawn.
524
Dear sister, close thy plumes over thine eyes
525
Lest thou behold and die: they come: they come
526
Blackening the birth of day with countless wings,
527
And hollow underneath, like death.
533
Champion of Heaven's slaves!
535
He whom some dreadful voice invokes is here,
536
Prometheus, the chained Titan. Horrible forms,
537
What and who are ye? Never yet there came
538
Phantasms so foul through monster-teeming Hell
539
From the all-miscreative brain of Jove;
540
Whilst I behold such execrable shapes,
541
Methinks I grow like what I contemplate,
542
And laugh and stare in loathsome sympathy.
544
We are the ministers of pain, and fear,
545
And disappointment, and mistrust, and hate,
546
And clinging crime; and as lean dogs pursue
547
Through wood and lake some struck and sobbing fawn,
548
We track all things that weep, and bleed, and live,
549
When the great King betrays them to our will.
551
Oh! many fearful natures in one name,
552
I know ye; and these lakes and echoes know
553
The darkness and the clangour of your wings.
554
But why more hideous than your loathed selves
555
Gather ye up in legions from the deep?
557
We knew not that: Sisters, rejoice, rejoice!
559
Can aught exult in its deformity?
561
The beauty of delight makes lovers glad,
562
Gazing on one another: so are we.
563
As from the rose which the pale priestess kneels
564
To gather for her festal crown of flowers
565
The aereal crimson falls, flushing her cheek,
566
So from our victim's destined agony
567
The shade which is our form invests us round,
568
Else we are shapeless as our mother Night.
570
I laugh your power, and his who sent you here,
571
To lowest scorn. Pour forth the cup of pain.
573
Thou thinkest we will rend thee bone from bone,
574
And nerve from nerve, working like fire within?
576
Pain is my element, as hate is thine;
577
Ye rend me now; I care not.
580
We will but laugh into thy lidless eyes?
582
I weigh not what ye do, but what ye suffer,
583
Being evil. Cruel was the power which called
584
You, or aught else so wretched, into light.
586
Thou think'st we will live through thee, one by one,
587
Like animal life, and though we can obscure not
588
The soul which burns within, that we will dwell
589
Beside it, like a vain loud multitude
590
Vexing the self-content of wisest men:
591
That we will be dread thought beneath thy brain,
592
And foul desire round thine astonished heart,
593
And blood within thy labyrinthine veins
596
Why, ye are thus now;
597
Yet am I king over myself, and rule
598
The torturing and conflicting throngs within,
599
As Jove rules you when Hell grows mutinous.
601
From the ends of the earth, from the ends of the earth,
602
Where the night has its grave and the morning its birth,
604
Oh, ye who shake hills with the scream of your mirth,
605
When cities sink howling in ruin; and ye
606
Who with wingless footsteps trample the sea,
607
And close upon Shipwreck and Famine's track,
608
Sit chattering with joy on the foodless wreck;
610
Leave the bed, low, cold, and red,
611
Strewed beneath a nation dead;
612
Leave the hatred, as in ashes
613
Fire is left for future burning:
614
It will burst in bloodier flashes
615
When ye stir it, soon returning:
616
Leave the self-contempt implanted
617
In young spirits, sense-enchanted,
618
Misery's yet unkindled fuel:
619
Leave Hell's secrets half unchanted
620
To the maniac dreamer; cruel
621
More than ye can be with hate
624
We are steaming up from Hell's wide gate
625
And we burthen the blast of the atmosphere,
626
But vainly we toil till ye come here.
628
Sister, I hear the thunder of new wings.
630
These solid mountains quiver with the sound
631
Even as the tremulous air: their shadows make
632
The space within my plumes more black than night.
634
Your call was as a winged car,
635
Driven on whirlwinds fast and far;
636
It rapped us from red gulfs of war.
638
From wide cities, famine-wasted;
640
Groans half heard, and blood untasted;
642
Kingly conclaves stern and cold,
643
Where blood with gold is bought and sold;
645
From the furnace, white and hot,
648
Speak not: whisper not:
649
I know all that ye would tell,
650
But to speak might break the spell
651
Which must bend the Invincible,
652
The stern of thought;
653
He yet defies the deepest power of Hell.
659
The pale stars of the morn
660
Shine on a misery, dire to be borne.
661
Dost thou faint, mighty Titan? We laugh thee to scorn.
662
Dost thou boast the clear knowledge thou waken'dst for man?
663
Then was kindled within him a thirst which outran
664
Those perishing waters; a thirst of fierce fever,
665
Hope, love, doubt, desire, which consume him for ever.
666
One came forth of gentle worth
667
Smiling on the sanguine earth;
668
His words outlived him, like swift poison
669
Withering up truth, peace, and pity.
670
Look! where round the wide horizon
671
Many a million-peopled city
672
Vomits smoke in the bright air.
673
Mark that outcry of despair!
674
'Tis his mild and gentle ghost
675
Wailing for the faith he kindled:
676
Look again, the flames almost
677
To a glow-worm's lamp have dwindled:
678
The survivors round the embers
681
Past ages crowd on thee, but each one remembers,
682
And the future is dark, and the present is spread
683
Like a pillow of thorns for thy slumberless head.
685
Drops of bloody agony flow
686
From his white and quivering brow.
687
Grant a little respite now:
688
See a disenchanted nation
689
Springs like day from desolation;
690
To Truth its state is dedicate,
691
And Freedom leads it forth, her mate;
692
A legioned band of linked brothers
693
Whom Love calls children—
696
See how kindred murder kin:
697
'Tis the vintage-time for death and sin:
698
Blood, like new wine, bubbles within:
699
Till Despair smothers
700
The struggling world, which slaves and tyrants win.
701
[ALL THE FURIES VANISH, EXCEPT ONE.]
703
Hark, sister! what a low yet dreadful groan
704
Quite unsuppressed is tearing up the heart
705
Of the good Titan, as storms tear the deep,
706
And beasts hear the sea moan in inland caves.
707
Darest thou observe how the fiends torture him?
709
Alas! I looked forth twice, but will no more.
713
A woful sight: a youth
714
With patient looks nailed to a crucifix.
718
The heaven around, the earth below
719
Was peopled with thick shapes of human death,
720
All horrible, and wrought by human hands,
721
And some appeared the work of human hearts,
722
For men were slowly killed by frowns and smiles:
723
And other sights too foul to speak and live
724
Were wandering by. Let us not tempt worse fear
725
By looking forth: those groans are grief enough.
727
Behold an emblem: those who do endure
728
Deep wrongs for man, and scorn, and chains, but heap
729
Thousand-fold torment on themselves and him.
731
Remit the anguish of that lighted stare;
732
Close those wan lips; let that thorn-wounded brow
733
Stream not with blood; it mingles with thy tears!
734
Fix, fix those tortured orbs in peace and death,
735
So thy sick throes shake not that crucifix,
736
So those pale fingers play not with thy gore.
737
O, horrible! Thy name I will not speak,
738
It hath become a curse. I see, I see
739
The wise, the mild, the lofty, and the just,
740
Whom thy slaves hate for being like to thee,
741
Some hunted by foul lies from their heart's home,
742
An early-chosen, late-lamented home;
743
As hooded ounces cling to the driven hind;
744
Some linked to corpses in unwholesome cells:
745
Some—Hear I not the multitude laugh loud?—
746
Impaled in lingering fire: and mighty realms
747
Float by my feet, like sea-uprooted isles,
748
Whose sons are kneaded down in common blood
749
By the red light of their own burning homes.
751
Blood thou canst see, and fire; and canst hear groans;
752
Worse things unheard, unseen, remain behind.
756
In each human heart terror survives
757
The ravin it has gorged: the loftiest fear
758
All that they would disdain to think were true:
759
Hypocrisy and custom make their minds
760
The fanes of many a worship, now outworn.
761
They dare not devise good for man's estate,
762
And yet they know not that they do not dare.
763
The good want power, but to weep barren tears.
764
The powerful goodness want: worse need for them.
765
The wise want love; and those who love want wisdom;
766
And all best things are thus confused to ill.
767
Many are strong and rich, and would be just,
768
But live among their suffering fellow-men
769
As if none felt: they know not what they do.
771
Thy words are like a cloud of winged snakes;
772
And yet I pity those they torture not.
774
Thou pitiest them? I speak no more!
778
Ah woe! Alas! pain, pain ever, for ever!
779
I close my tearless eyes, but see more clear
780
Thy works within my woe-illumed mind,
781
Thou subtle tyrant! Peace is in the grave.
782
The grave hides all things beautiful and good:
783
I am a God and cannot find it there,
784
Nor would I seek it: for, though dread revenge,
785
This is defeat, fierce king, not victory.
786
The sights with which thou torturest gird my soul
787
With new endurance, till the hour arrives
788
When they shall be no types of things which are.
790
Alas! what sawest thou more?
793
To speak, and to behold; thou spare me one.
794
Names are there, Nature's sacred watchwords, they
795
Were borne aloft in bright emblazonry;
796
The nations thronged around, and cried aloud,
797
As with one voice, Truth, liberty, and love!
798
Suddenly fierce confusion fell from heaven
799
Among them: there was strife, deceit, and fear:
800
Tyrants rushed in, and did divide the spoil.
801
This was the shadow of the truth I saw.
803
I felt thy torture, son; with such mixed joy
804
As pain and virtue give. To cheer thy state
805
I bid ascend those subtle and fair spirits,
806
Whose homes are the dim caves of human thought,
807
And who inhabit, as birds wing the wind,
808
Its world-surrounding aether: they behold
809
Beyond that twilight realm, as in a glass,
810
The future: may they speak comfort to thee!
812
Look, sister, where a troop of spirits gather,
813
Like flocks of clouds in spring's delightful weather,
814
Thronging in the blue air!
817
Like fountain-vapours when the winds are dumb,
818
That climb up the ravine in scattered lines.
819
And, hark! is it the music of the pines?
820
Is it the lake? Is it the waterfall?
822
'Tis something sadder, sweeter far than all.
824
From unremembered ages we
825
Gentle guides and guardians be
826
Of heaven-oppressed mortality;
827
And we breathe, and sicken not,
828
The atmosphere of human thought:
829
Be it dim, and dank, and gray,
830
Like a storm-extinguished day,
831
Travelled o'er by dying gleams;
832
Be it bright as all between
833
Cloudless skies and windless streams,
834
Silent, liquid, and serene;
835
As the birds within the wind,
836
As the fish within the wave,
837
As the thoughts of man's own mind
838
Float through all above the grave;
839
We make there our liquid lair,
840
Voyaging cloudlike and unpent
841
Through the boundless element:
842
Thence we bear the prophecy
843
Which begins and ends in thee!
845
More yet come, one by one: the air around them
846
Looks radiant as the air around a star.
848
On a battle-trumpet's blast
849
I fled hither, fast, fast, fast,
850
'Mid the darkness upward cast.
851
From the dust of creeds outworn,
852
From the tyrant's banner torn,
853
Gathering 'round me, onward borne,
854
There was mingled many a cry—
855
Freedom! Hope! Death! Victory!
856
Till they faded through the sky;
857
And one sound, above, around,
858
One sound beneath, around, above,
859
Was moving; 'twas the soul of Love;
860
'Twas the hope, the prophecy,
861
Which begins and ends in thee.
863
A rainbow's arch stood on the sea,
864
Which rocked beneath, immovably;
865
And the triumphant storm did flee,
866
Like a conqueror, swift and proud,
867
Between, with many a captive cloud,
868
A shapeless, dark and rapid crowd,
869
Each by lightning riven in half:
870
I heard the thunder hoarsely laugh:
871
Mighty fleets were strewn like chaff
872
And spread beneath a hell of death
873
O'er the white waters. I alit
874
On a great ship lightning-split,
875
And speeded hither on the sigh
876
Of one who gave an enemy
877
His plank, then plunged aside to die.
879
I sate beside a sage's bed,
880
And the lamp was burning red
881
Near the book where he had fed,
882
When a Dream with plumes of flame,
883
To his pillow hovering came,
884
And I knew it was the same
885
Which had kindled long ago
886
Pity, eloquence, and woe;
887
And the world awhile below
888
Wore the shade, its lustre made.
889
It has borne me here as fleet
890
As Desire's lightning feet:
891
I must ride it back ere morrow,
892
Or the sage will wake in sorrow.
894
On a poet's lips I slept
895
Dreaming like a love-adept
896
In the sound his breathing kept;
897
Nor seeks nor finds he mortal blisses,
898
But feeds on the aereal kisses
899
Of shapes that haunt thought's wildernesses.
900
He will watch from dawn to gloom
901
The lake-reflected sun illume
902
The yellow bees in the ivy-bloom,
903
Nor heed nor see, what things they be;
904
But from these create he can
905
Forms more real than living man,
906
Nurslings of immortality!
907
One of these awakened me,
908
And I sped to succour thee.
910
Behold'st thou not two shapes from the east and west
911
Come, as two doves to one beloved nest,
912
Twin nurslings of the all-sustaining air
913
On swift still wings glide down the atmosphere?
914
And, hark! their sweet sad voices! 'tis despair
915
Mingled with love and then dissolved in sound.
917
Canst thou speak, sister? all my words are drowned.
919
Their beauty gives me voice. See how they float
920
On their sustaining wings of skiey grain,
921
Orange and azure deepening into gold:
922
Their soft smiles light the air like a star's fire.
924
Hast thou beheld the form of Love?
926
As over wide dominions
927
I sped, like some swift cloud that wings the wide air's wildernesses,
928
That planet-crested shape swept by on lightning-braided pinions,
929
Scattering the liquid joy of life from his ambrosial tresses:
930
His footsteps paved the world with light; but as I passed 'twas fading,
931
And hollow Ruin yawned behind: great sages bound in madness,
932
And headless patriots, and pale youths who perished, unupbraiding,
933
Gleamed in the night. I wandered o'er, till thou, O King of sadness,
934
Turned by thy smile the worst I saw to recollected gladness.
936
Ah, sister! Desolation is a delicate thing:
937
It walks not on the earth, it floats not on the air,
938
But treads with lulling footstep, and fans with silent wing
939
The tender hopes which in their hearts the best and gentlest bear;
940
Who, soothed to false repose by the fanning plumes above
941
And the music-stirring motion of its soft and busy feet,
942
Dream visions of aereal joy, and call the monster, Love,
943
And wake, and find the shadow Pain, as he whom now we greet.
945
Though Ruin now Love's shadow be,
946
Following him, destroyingly,
947
On Death's white and winged steed,
948
Which the fleetest cannot flee,
949
Trampling down both flower and weed,
950
Man and beast, and foul and fair,
951
Like a tempest through the air;
952
Thou shalt quell this horseman grim,
953
Woundless though in heart or limb.
955
Spirits! how know ye this shall be?
957
In the atmosphere we breathe,
958
As buds grow red when the snow-storms flee,
959
From Spring gathering up beneath,
960
Whose mild winds shake the elder-brake,
961
And the wandering herdsmen know
962
That the white-thorn soon will blow:
963
Wisdom, Justice, Love, and Peace,
964
When they struggle to increase,
965
Are to us as soft winds be
966
To shepherd boys, the prophecy
967
Which begins and ends in thee.
969
Where are the Spirits fled?
972
Remains of them, like the omnipotence
973
Of music, when the inspired voice and lute
974
Languish, ere yet the responses are mute,
975
Which through the deep and labyrinthine soul,
976
Like echoes through long caverns, wind and roll.
978
How fair these airborn shapes! and yet I feel
979
Most vain all hope but love; and thou art far,
980
Asia! who, when my being overflowed,
981
Wert like a golden chalice to bright wine
982
Which else had sunk into the thirsty dust.
983
All things are still: alas! how heavily
984
This quiet morning weighs upon my heart;
985
Though I should dream I could even sleep with grief
986
If slumber were denied not. I would fain
987
Be what it is my destiny to be,
988
The saviour and the strength of suffering man,
989
Or sink into the original gulf of things:
990
There is no agony, and no solace left;
991
Earth can console, Heaven can torment no more.
993
Hast thou forgotten one who watches thee
994
The cold dark night, and never sleeps but when
995
The shadow of thy spirit falls on her?
997
I said all hope was vain but love: thou lovest.
999
Deeply in truth; but the eastern star looks white,
1000
And Asia waits in that far Indian vale,
1001
The scene of her sad exile; rugged once
1002
And desolate and frozen, like this ravine;
1003
But now invested with fair flowers and herbs,
1004
And haunted by sweet airs and sounds, which flow
1005
Among the woods and waters, from the aether
1006
Of her transforming presence, which would fade
1007
If it were mingled not with thine. Farewell!
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