Part 3

_Ar._ O doleful change, I came In pious purpose, nay, I heard within 891 The hymn to glorious Zeus: I rose and said, The mighty god now bends, he thrusts aside His heavenly supplicants to hear the prayer Of Inachus his servant; let him hear. O let him turn away now lest he hear. Nay, frown not on me; though a woman’s voice That counsels is but heard impatiently, Yet by thy love, and by the sons I bare thee, By this our daughter, our last ripening fruit, 900 By our long happiness and hope of more, Hear me and let me speak.

_In._ Well, wife, speak on.

_Ar._ Thy voice forbids more than thy words invite: Yet say whence comes this stranger. Know’st thou not? Yet whencesoe’er, if he but wish us well, He will not bound his kindness in a day. Do nought in haste. Send now to Sicyon And fetch thy son Phorôneus, for his stake In this is more than thine, and he is wise. ’Twere well Phorôneus and Ægialeus 910 Were both here: maybe they would both refuse The strange conditions which this stranger brings. Were we not happy too before he came? Doth he not offer us unhappiness? Bid him depart, and at some other time, When you have well considered, then return.

_In._ ’Tis his conditions that we now shall hear.

_Ar._ O hide them yet! Are there not tales enough Of what the wrathful gods have wrought on men? Nay, ’twas this very fire thou now would’st take, Which vain Salmoneus, son of Æolus, 921 Made boast to have, and from his rattling car Threw up at heaven to mock the lightning. Him The thunderer stayed not to deride, but sent One blinding fork, that in the vacant sky Shook like a serpent’s tongue, which is but seen In memory, and he was not, or for burial Rode with the ashes of his royal city Upon the whirlwind of the riven air. And after him his brother Athamas, King of Orchomenos, in frenzy fell For Hera’s wrath, and raving killed his son; And would have killed fair Ino, but that she fled Into the sea, preferring there to woo 934 The choking waters, rather than that the arm Which had so oft embraced should do her wrong. For which old crimes the gods yet unappeased Demand a sacrifice, and the king’s son Dreads the priest’s knife, and all the city mourns. Or shall I say what shameful fury it was With which Poseidon smote Pasiphaë, But for neglect of a recorded vow: Or how Actæon fared of Artemis When he surprised her, most himself surprised: And even while he looked his boasted bow Fell from his hands, and through his veins there ran A strange oblivious trouble, darkening sense Till he knew nothing but a hideous fear Which bade him fly, and faster, as behind He heard his hounds give tongue, that through the wood 950 Were following, closing, caught him and tore him down. And many more thus perished in their prime; Lycaon and his fifty sons, whom Zeus In their own house spied on, and unawares Watching at hand, from his disguise arose, And overset the table where they sat Around their impious feast and slew them all: Alcyonè and Ceyx, queen and king, Who for their arrogance were changed to birds: And Cadmus now a serpent, once a king: 960 And saddest Niobe, whom not the love Of Leto aught availed, when once her boast Went out, though all her crime was too much pride Of heaven’s most precious gift, her children fair. Six daughters had she, and six stalwart sons; But Leto bade her two destroy the twelve. And somewhere now, among lone mountain rocks On Sipylus, where couch the nymphs at night Who dance all day by Achelous’ stream, The once proud mother lies, herself a rock, 970 And in cold breast broods o’er the goddess’ wrong.

_In._ Now hush thy fear. See how thou tremblest still. Or if thou fear, fear passion; for the freshes Of tenderness and motherly love will drown The eye of judgment: yet, since even excess Of the soft quality fits woman well, I praise thee; nor would ask thee less to aid With counsel, than in love to share my choice. Tho’ weak thy hands to poise, thine eye may mark This balance, how the good of all outweighs 980 The good of one or two, though these be us. Let not reluctance shame the sacrifice Which in another thou wert first to praise.

_Ar._ Alas for me, for thee and for our children, Who, being our being, having all our having, If they fare ill, our pride lies in the dust.

_In._ O deem not a man’s children are but those Out of his loins engendered--our spirit’s love Hath such prolific consequence, that Virtue Cometh of ancestry more pure than blood, 990 And counts her seed as sand upon the shore. Happy is he whose body’s sons proclaim Their father’s honour, but more blest to whom The world is dutiful, whose children spring Out of all nations, and whose pride the proud Rise to regenerate when they call him sire.

_Ar._ Thus, husband, ever have I bought and buy Nobleness cheaply being linked with thee. Forgive my weakness; see, I now am bold; Tell me the worst, I’ll hear and wish ’twere more.

_In._ Retire--thy tears perchance may stir again.

_Ar._ Nay, I am full of wonder and would hear.

_Pr._ Bid me not tell if ye have fear to hear; But have no fear. Knowledge of future things 1004 Can nothing change man’s spirit: and though he seem To aim his passion darkly, like a shaft Shot toward some fearful sound in thickest night, He hath an owl’s eye, and must blink at day. The springs of memory, that feed alike His thought and action, draw from furthest time Their constant source, and hardly brook constraint Of actual circumstance, far less attend On glassed futurity; nay, death itself, His fate unquestioned, his foretasted pain, The certainty foreknown of things unknown, Cannot discourage his habitual being 1016 In its appointed motions, to make waver His eager hand, nor loosen the desire Of the most feeble melancholy heart Even from the unhopefullest of all her dreams.

_In._ Since then I long to know, now something say Of what will come to mine when I am gone.

_Pr._ And let the maid too hear, for ’tis of her I speak, to tell her whither she should turn The day ye drive her forth from hearth and home.

_In._ What sayst thou? drive her out? and we? from home? 1026 Banish the comfort of our eyes? Nay rather Believe that these obedient hands will tear The heart out of my breast, ere it do this.

Pr. When her wild cries arouse the house at night, And, running to her bed, ye see her set 1031 Upright in trancèd sleep, her starting hair With deathly sweat bedewed, in horror shaking, Her eyeballs fixed upon the unbodied dark, Through which a draping mist of luminous gloom Drifts from her couch away,--when, if asleep, She walks as if awake, and if awake Dreams, and as one who nothing hears or sees, Lives in a sick and frantic mood, whose cause She understands not or is loth to tell--

_Ar._ Ah, ah, my child, my child!--Dost thou feel aught? 1041 Speak to me--nay, ’tis nothing--hearken not.

_Pr._ Ye then distraught with sorrow, neither knowing Whether to save were best or lose, will seek Apollo’s oracle.

_In._ And what the answer? Will it discover nought to avert this sorrow?

_Pr._ Or else thy whole race perish root and branch.

_In._ Alas! alas!

_Pr._ Yet shall she live though lost; from human form Changed, that thou wilt not know thy daughter more.

_In._ Woe, woe! my thought was praying for her death. 1051

_Pr._ In Hera’s temple shall her prison be At high Mycenæ, till from heaven be sent Hermes, with song to soothe and sword to slay The beast whose hundred eyes devour the door.

_In._ Enough, enough is told, unless indeed, The beast once slain, thou canst restore our child.

_Pr._ Nay, with her freedom will her wanderings Begin. Come hither, child--nay, let her come: What words remain to speak will not offend her, And shall in memory quicken, when she looks To learn where she should go;--for go she must, Stung by the venomous fly, whose angry flight She still will hear about her, till she come 1064 To lay her sevenfold-carried burden down Upon the Æthiop shore where he shall reign.

_In._ But say--say first, what form--

_Pr._ In snow-white hide Of those that feel the goad and wear the yoke.

_In._ Round-hoofed, or such as tread with cloven foot?

_Pr._ Wide-horned, large-eyed, broad-fronted, and the feet 1070 Cloven which carry her to her far goal.

_In._ Will that of all these evils be the term?

_Pr._ Ay, but the journey first which she must learn. Hear now, my child; the day when thou art free, Leaving the lion-gate, descend and strike The Trêtan road to Nemea, skirting wide The unhunted forest o’er the watered plain To walled Cleônæ, whence the traversed stream To Corinth guides: there enter not, but pass To narrow Isthmus, where Poseidon won 1080 A country from Apollo, and through the town Of Crommyon, till along the robber’s road Pacing, thy left eye meet the westering sun O’er Geraneia, and thou reach the hill Of Megara, where Car thy brother’s babe In time shall rule; next past Eleusis climb Stony Panactum and the pine-clad slopes Of Phyle; shun the left-hand way, and keep The rocks; the second day thy feet shall tread The plains of Græa, whence the roadway serves Aulis and Mycalessus to the point 1091 Of vext Euripus: fear not then the stream, Nor scenting think to taste, but plunging in Breast its salt current to the further shore. For on this island mayst thou lose awhile Thy maddening pest, and rest and pasture find, And from the heafs of bold Macistus see The country left and sought: but when thou feel Thy torment urge, move down, recross the flood, And west by Harma’s fencèd gap arrive At seven-gated Thebes: thy friendly goddess Ongan Athenè has her seat without. 1102

_Chor._ Now if she may not stay thy toilsome destined steps, I pray that she may slay for thee the maddening fly.

_Pr._ Keep not her sanctuary long, but seek Bœotian Ascra, where the Muses’ fount, Famed Aganippè, wells: Ocalea Pass, and Tilphusa’s northern steeps descend By Alalcomenæ, the goddess’ town. Guard now the lake’s low shore, till thou have crossed Hyrcana and Cephissus, the last streams 1111 Which feed its reedy pools, when thou shalt come Between two mountains that enclose the way By peakèd Abæ to Hyampolis. The right-hand path that thither parts the vale Opes to Cyrtonè and the Locrian lands; Toward Elateia thou, where o’er the marsh A path with stones is laid; and thence beyond To Thronium, Tarphè, and Thermopylæ, Where rocky Lamia views the Maliac gulf.

_Chor._ If further she should go, will she not see That other Argos, the Dodonian land? 1122

_Pr._ Crossing the Phthian hills thou next shalt reach Pharsalus, and Olympus’ peakèd snows Shall guide thee o’er the green Pelasgic plains For many a day, but to Argissa come Let old Peneius thy slow pilot be Through Tempè, till they turn upon his left Crowning the wooded slopes with splendours bare. Thence issuing forth on the Pierian shore Northward of Ossa thou shalt touch the lands Of Macedon.

_Chor._ Alas, we wish thee speed, 1132 But bid thee here farewell; for out of Greece Thou goest ’mongst the folk whose chattering speech Is like the voice of birds, nor home again Wilt thou return.

_Pr._ Thy way along the coast Lies till it southward turn, when thou shalt seek Where wide on Strymon’s plain the hindered flood Spreads like a lake; thy course to his oppose And face him to the mountain whence he comes: Which doubled, Thrace receives thee: barbarous names 1141 Of mountain, town and river, and a people Strange to thine eyes and ears, the Agathyrsi, Of pictured skins, who owe no marriage law, And o’er whose gay-spun garments sprent with gold Their hanging hair is blue. Their torrent swim That measures Europe in two parts, and go Eastward along the sea, to mount the lands Beyond man’s dwelling, and the rising steeps That face the sun untrodden and unnamed.--1150 Know to earth’s verge remote thou then art come, The Scythian tract and wilderness forlorn, Through whose rude rocks and frosty silences No path shall guide thee then, nor my words now. There as thou toilest o’er the treacherous snows, A sound then thou shalt hear to stop thy breath, And prick thy trembling ears; a far-off cry, Whose throat seems the white mountain and its passion The woe of earth. Flee not, nor turn not back: Let thine ears drink and guide thine eyes to see That sight whose terrors shall assuage thy terror, Whose pain shall kill thy pain. Stretched on the rock, Naked to scorching sun, to pinching frost, 1163 To wind and storm and beaks of wingèd fiends From year to year he lies. Refrain to ask His name and crime--nay, haply when thou see him Thou wilt remember--’tis thy tyrant’s foe, Man’s friend, who pays his chosen penalty. Draw near, my child, for he will know thy need, And point from land to land thy further path.

_Chorus_

O miserable man, hear now the worst. O weak and tearful race, Born to unhappiness, see now thy cause 1173 Doomed and accurst!

It surely were enough, the bad and good Together mingled, against chance and ill To strive, and prospering by turns, Now these, now those, now folly and now skill, Alike by means well understood Or ’gainst all likelihood; Loveliness slaving to the unlovely will That overrides the right and laughs at law.

But always all in awe 1183 And imminent dread: Because there is no mischief thought or said, Imaginable or unguessed, But it may come to be; nor home of rest, Nor hour secure: but anywhere, At any moment; in the air, Or on the earth or sea, Or in the fair And tender body itself it lurks, creeps in, Or seizes suddenly, 1193 Torturing, burning, withering, devouring, Shaking, destroying; till tormented life Sides with the slayer, not to be, And from the cruel strife Falls to fate overpowering.

Or if some patient heart, In toilsome steps of duty tread apart, 1200 Thinking to win her peace within herself, And thus awhile succeed: She must see others bleed, At others’ misery moan, And learn the common suffering is her own, From which it is no freedom to be freed: Nay, Nature, her best nurse, Is tender but to breed a finer sense, Which she may easier wound, with smart the worse And torture more intense. 1210

And no strength for thee but the thought of duty, Nor any solace but the love of beauty. O Right’s toil unrewarded! O Love’s prize unaccorded!

I say this might suffice, O tearful and unstable And miserable man, Were’t but from day to day Thy miserable lot, This might suffice, I say, 1220 To term thee miserable. But thou of all thine ills too must take thought, Must grow familiar till no curse astound thee, With tears recall the past, With tears the times forecast; With tears, with tears thou hast The scapeless net spread in thy sight around thee.

How then support thy fate, O miserable man, if this befall, That he who loves thee and would aid thee, daring To raise an arm for thy deliverance, 1231 Must for his courage suffer worse than all?

_In._ Bravest deliverer, for thy prophecy Has torn the veil which hid thee from my eyes, If thyself art that spirit, of whom some things Were darkly spoken,--nor can I doubt thou art, Being that the heaven its fire withholds not from thee Nor time his secrets,--tell me now thy name, That I may praise thee rightly; and my late Unwitting words pardon thou, and these who still In blinded wonder kneel not to thy love. 1241

_Pr._ Speak not of love. See, I am moved with hate, And fiercest anger, which will sometimes spur The heart to extremity, till it forget That there is any joy save furious war. Nay, were there now another deed to do, Which more could hurt our enemy than this, Which here I stand to venture, here would I leave thee Conspiring at his altar, and fly off To plunge the branding terror in his soul. But now the rising passion of my will 1251 Already jars his reaching sense, already From heaven he bids his minion Hermes forth To bring his only rebel to his feet. Therefore no more delay, the time is short.

_In._ I take, I take. ’Tis but for thee to give.

_Pr._ O heavenly fire, life’s life, the eye of day, Whose nimble waves upon the starry night Of boundless ether love to play, Carrying commands to every gliding sprite To feed all things with colour, from the ray Of thy bright-glancing, white 1162 And silver-spinning light: Unweaving its thin tissue for the bow Of Iris, separating countless hues Of various splendour for the grateful flowers To crown the hasting hours, Changing their special garlands as they choose.

O spirit of rage and might, Who canst unchain the links of winter stark, And bid earth’s stubborn metals flow like oil, Her porphyrous heart-veins boil; 1272 Whose arrows pierce the cloudy shields of dark; Let now this flame, which did to life awaken Beyond the cold dew-gathering veils of morn, And thence by me was taken, And in this reed was borne, A smothered theft and gift to man below, Here with my breath revive, Restore thy lapsèd realm, and be the sire Of many an earthly fire. 1281

O flame, flame bright and live, Appear upon the altar as I blow.

_Chor._ ’Twas in the marish reed. See to his mouth he sets its hollow flute And breathes therein with heed, As one who from a pipe with breathings mute Will music’s voice evoke.— See, the curl of a cloud.

_In._ The smoke, the smoke! 1290

_Semichorus._ Thin clouds mounting higher.

_In._ ’Tis smoke, the smoke of fire.

_Semichorus._ Thick they come and thicker, Quick arise and quicker, Higher still and higher. Their wreaths the wood enfold. --I see a spot of gold. They spring from a spot of gold, Red gold, deep among The leaves: a golden tongue. 1300 O behold, behold, Dancing tongues of gold, That leaping aloft flicker, Higher still and higher.

_In._ ’Tis fire, the flame of fire!

_Semichorus._ The blue smoke overhead Is turned to angry red. The fire, the fire, it stirs. Hark, a crackling sound, As when all around 1310 Ripened pods of furze Split in the parching sun Their dry caps one by one, And shed their seeds on the ground. --Ah! what clouds arise. Away! O come away. The wind-wafted smoke, Blowing all astray,

[_Prometheus, after writing his name on the altar, goes out unobserved._]

Blinds and pricks my eyes. Ah! I choke, I choke. --All the midst is rent: See the twigs are all By the flaming spent White and gold, and fall. How they writhe, resist, Blacken, flake, and twist, Snap in gold and fall. --See the stars that mount, Momentary bright Flitting specks of light 1330 More than eye can count. Insects of the air, As in summer night Show a fire in flying Flickering here and there, Waving past and dying. --Look, a common cone Of the mountain pine Solid gold is grown; Till its scales outshine, 1340 Standing each alone In the spiral rows Of their fair design, All the brightest shows Of the sun’s decline. --Hark, there came a hiss, Like a startled snake Sliding through the brake. Oh, and what is this? Smaller flames that flee 1350 Sidelong from the tree, Hark, they hiss, they hiss. --How the gay flames flicker, Spurting, dancing, leaping Quicker yet and quicker, Higher yet and higher, --Flaming, flaring, fuming, Cracking, crackling, creeping, Hissing and consuming: Mighty is the fire. 1360

_In._ Stay, stay, cease your rejoicings. Where is he, The prophet,--nay, what say I,--the god, the giver?

_Chor._ He is not here--he is gone.

_In._ Search, search around. Search all, search well.

_Chor._ He is gone,--he is not here.

_In._ The palace gate lies open: go, Argeia, Maybe he went within: go seek him there.

[_Exit Ar._

Look down the sea road, down the country road: Follow him if ye see him.

_Chor._ He is not there.

_In._ Strain, strain your eyes: look well: search everywhere. Look townwards--is he there?

_Part of Chorus returning._ He is not there.—

_Other part returning._ He is not there.

_Ar. re-entering._ He is not there. 1371

_Chor._ O see!

_Chor._ See where?

_Chor._ See on the altar--see!

_Chor._ What see ye on the altar?

_Chor._ Here in front Words newly writ.

_Chor._ What words?

_Chor._ A name--

_In._ Ay true-- There is the name. How like a child was I, That I must wait till these dumb letters gave The shape and soul to knowledge: when the god Stood here so self-revealed to ears and eyes That, ’tis a god I said, yet wavering still, Doubting what god,--and now, who else but he? I knew him, yet not well; I knew him not: Prometheus--ay, Prometheus. Know ye, my children, 1382 This name we see was writ by him we seek. ’Tis his own name, his own heart-stirring name, Feared and revered among the immortal gods; Divine Prometheus: see how here the large Cadmeian characters run, scoring out The hated title of his ancient foe,— To Zeus ’twas made,--and now ’tis to Prometheus-- Writ with the charrèd reed--theft upon theft. He hath stolen from Zeus his altar, and with his fire Hath lit our sacrifice unto himself. 1392 Ió Prometheus, friend and firegiver, For good or ill thy thefts and gifts are ours. We worshipped thee unknowing.

_Chor._ But now where is he?