The earthquake of his chariot thundering up

Olympus?

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

Awful Shape, what art thou? Speak!

Demogorgon. Eternity. Demand no direr name.
Descend, and follow me down the abyss.

I am thy child, as thou wert Saturn's child;
Mightier than thee. And we must dwell together
Henceforth in darkness. Lift thy lightnings not.
The tyranny of Heaven none may retain,

Or reassume, or hold, succeeding thee.
Yet, if thou wilt, as 'tis the destiny

Of trodden worms to writhe till they are dead,
Put forth thy might.

Even thus beneath the deep Titanian prisons

I trample thee!—Thou lingerest? ...

No pity, no release, no respite! Oh!

Mercy! mercy!

That thou wouldst make mine Enemy my judge,
Even where he hangs, seared by my long revenge,
On Caucasus! He would not doom me thus.

Gentle and just and dreadless, is he not

The Monarch of the World?
No refuge! no appeal !—

What then art thou?

Sink with me then!

We two will sink on the wide waves of ruin,
Even as a vulture and a snake outspent

Drop, twisted in inextricable fight,

Into a shoreless sea. Let hell unlock

Its mounded oceans of tempestuous fire,

And whelm on them into the bottomless void

This desolated world, and thee, and me,

The conqueror and the conquered, and the wreck
Of that for which they combated!

Ai! Ai!

The elements obey me not! I sink
Dizzily down, ever, for ever, down!
And, like a cloud, mine Enemy above
Darkens my fall with victory! Ai, Ai!

SCENE II.-The Mouth of a great River in the Island Atlantis. OCEAN is discovered reclining near the Shore; APOLLO stands beside him.

Ocean. He fell, thou say'st, beneath his conqueror's frown?
Apollo. Ay, when the strife was ended which made dim

The orb I rule, and shook the solid stars,

The terrors of his eye illumined heaven

With sanguine light, through the thick ragged skirts
Of the victorious darkness, as he fell :
Like the last glare of day's red agony
Which, from a rent among the fiery clouds,

Burns far along the tempest-wrinkled deep.

Ocean. He sunk to the abyss? to the dark void?
Apollo. An eagle so, caught in some bursting cloud
On Caucasus; his thunder-baffled wings

Entangled in the whirlwind, and his eyes,

Which gazed on the undazzling sun, now blinded
By the white lightning, while the ponderous hail
Beats on his struggling form, which sinks at length
Prone, and the aërial ice clings over it.

Ocean. Henceforth the fields of heaven-reflecting sea
Which are my realm will heave, unstained with blood,
Beneath the uplifting winds, like plains of corn
Swayed by the summer air; my streams will flow
Round many peopled continents, and round
Fortunate isles. And from their glassy thrones
Blue Proteus and his humid Nymphs shall mark
The shadow of fair ships (as mortals see
The floating bark of the light-laden moon,
With that white star, its sightless pilot's crest,
Borne down the rapid sunset's ebbing sea);
Tracking their path no more by blood and groans
And desolation, and the mingled voice
Of slavery and command,-but by the light
Of wave-reflected flowers, and floating odours,

And music soft, and mild, free, gentle voices,

That sweetest music, such as Spirits love.

Apollo. And I shall gaze not on the deeds which make

My mind obscure with sorrow, as eclipse

Darkens the sphere I guide. But list! I hear

The small, clear, silver lute of the young Spirit
That sits i' the Morning Star.

Ocean.

Thou must away.

Thy steeds will pause at even,-till when, farewell.
The loud deep calls me home even now, to feed it
With azure calm out of the emerald urns

Which stand for ever full beside my throne.
Behold the Nereids under the green sea-
Their wavering limbs borne on the wind-like stream,
Their white arms lifted o'er their streaming hair,
With garlands pied and starry sea-flower crowns,—
Hastening to grace their mighty Sister's joy.

[A sound of waves is heard.

It is the unpastured sea hungering for calm.
Peace, monster; I come now. Farewell.
Apollo.

Farewell.

SCENE III.—Caucasus. PROMEtheus, Hercules, IONE, the EARTH, SPIRITS: ASIA and PANTHEA borne in the Car with the SPIRIT OF

THE HOUR.

HERCULES unbinds PROMETHEUS, who descends.

Hercules. Most glorious among Spirits! thus doth Strength To Wisdom, Courage, and long-suffering Love,

And thee, who art the form they animate,

Minister like a slave.

Prometheus.

Thy gentle words

Are sweeter even than freedom long desired

And long delayed.

Asia, thou light of life,

Shadow of Beauty unbeheld; and ye,

Fair sister Nymphs who made long years of pain
Sweet to remember, through your love and care;
Henceforth we will not part. There is a cave
All overgrown with trailing odorous plants
Which curtain out the day with leaves and flowers;
And paved with veinèd emerald; and a fountain,
Leaps in the midst with an awakening sound.
From its curved roof the mountain's frozen tears,
Like snow or silver or long diamond spires,
Hang downward, raining forth a doubtful light.
And there is heard the ever-moving air,
Whispering without from tree to tree, and birds,
And bees; and all around are mossy seats,

And the rough walls are clothed with long soft grass :—

A simple dwelling, which shall be our own ;
Where we will sit and talk of time and change,
As the world ebbs and flows, ourselves unchanged.
What can hide Man from mutability?—

And, if ye sigh, then I will smile; and thou,
Ione, shalt chant fragments of sea-music,
Until I weep,-when ye shall smile away

The tears she brought, which yet were sweet to shed.
We will entangle buds and flowers and beams
Which twinkle on the fountain's brim, and make
Strange combinations out of common things,
Like human babes in their brief innocence.
And we will search, with looks and words of love,
For hidden thoughts each lovelier than the last,
Our unexhausted spirits; and, like lutes
Touched by the skill of the enamoured wind,
Weave harmonies divine, yet ever new,
From difference sweet where discord cannot be.
And hither come, sped on the charmed winds
Which meet from all the points of heaven (as bees,
From every flower aërial Enna feeds,

At their own island-homes in Himera)

The echoes of the human world, which tell
Of the low voice of Love, almost unheard,
'And dove-eyed Pity's murmured pain, and Music,
Itself the echo of the heart, and all

That tempers or improves man's life, now free.
And lovely apparitions, dim at first,

Then radiant, -as the mind, arising bright
From the embrace of beauty (whence the forms
Of which these are the phantoms), casts on them
The gathered rays which are reality,—
Shall visit us; the progeny immortal
Of Painting, Sculpture, and rapt Poesy,
And arts, though unimagined, yet to be.
The wandering voices and the shadows these
Of all that man becomes, the mediators

Of that best worship, love, by him and us

Given and returned; swift shapes and sounds, which grow More fair and soft as man grows wise and kind,

And, veil by veil, evil and error fall.

Such virtue has the cave and place around.

VOL. I.

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