Thou breathe into the many-folded shell,
Loosening its mighty music; it shall be
As thunder mingled with clear echoes: then
Return; and thou shalt dwell beside our cave.
And thou, O, Mother Earth –
The EAnth.

I hear, I feel;
Thy lips are on me, and thy touch runs down
Even to the adamantine central gloom
Along these marble nerves; t is life, "t is joy,
And through, my wither'd, old, and icy frame
The warmth of an immortal youth shoots down
Circling. Henceforth the many children fair
Folded in my sustaining arms; all plants,
And creeping forms, and insects rainbow-wing’d,
And birds, and heasts, and fish, and human shapes,
Which drew disease and pain from my wan bosom,
Draining the poison of despair, shall take
And interchange sweet nutriment; to me
Shall they become like sister-antelopes
By one fair dam, snow-white and swift as wind,
Nursed among lilies near a brimming stream.
The dew-mists of my sunless sleep shall float
Under the stars like balm : night-folded flowers
Shall suck unwitting hues in their repose:
And men and beasts in happy dreams shall gather
Strength for the coming day, and all its joy:
And death shall be the last embrace of her
Who takes the life she gave, even as a mother
Folding her child, says, “Leave me not again."

ASIA.
Oh, mother! wherefore speak the name of death?
Cease they to love, and move, and breathe, and speak,
Who die?
the EA ath.
It would avail not to reply:

Thou art immortal, and this tongue is known
But to the uncommunicating dead.
Death is the veil which those who live call life:
They sleep, and it is lifted; and meanwhile
In mild variety the seasons mild
With rainbow-skirted showers, and odorous winds,
And long blue meteors cleansing the dull night.
And the life-kindling shafts of the keen sun's
All-piercing bow, and the dew-mingled rain
Of the calin moonbeams, a soft influence mild,
Shall clothe the forests and the fields, aye, even
The crag-built deserts of the barren deep,
With ever-living leaves, and fruits, and flowers.
And thou! There is a cavern where my spirit
Was panted forth in anguish whilst thy pain
Made my heart mad, and those that did inhale it
Became mad too, and built a temple there,
And spoke, and were oracular, and lured
The erring nations round to mutual war,
And faithless faith, such as Jove kept with thee;
Which breath now rises, as amongst tall weeds
A violet's exhalation, and it filis
With a serener light and crimson air
Intense, yet soft, the rocks and woods around;
It feeds the quick growth of the serpent vine,
And the dark link'd ivy tangling wild,
And budding, blown, or odour faded blooms
Which star the winds with points of colour'd light.
As they rain through them, and bright golden globes
Of fruit, suspended in their own green heaven,

And through their veined leaves and amber stems
The flowers whose purple and translucid bowls
Stand ever mantling with aerial dew,
The drink of spirits: and it circles round,
Like the soft waving wings of noonday dreams,
Inspiring calm and happy thoughts, like mine,
Now thou art thus restored. This cave is thine.
Arise! Appear!
[A Spian rises in the likeness of a winged child.
This is my torch-bearer;
Who let his lamp out in old time with gazing
On eyes from which he kindled it anew
With love, which is as fire, sweet daughter mine,
For such is that within thine own. Run, wayward,
And guide this company beyond the peak
Of Bacchic Nysa, Maenad-haunted mountain,
And beyond Indus and its tribute rivers,
Trampling the torrent streams and glassy lakes
With feet unwet, unwearied, undelaying,
And up the green ravine, across the vale,
[eside the windless and crystalline pool,
Where ever lies, on unerasing waves,
The image of a temple, built above,
Distinct with column, arch, and architrave,
And palm-like capital, and over-wrought,
And populous most with living imagery,
Praxitelean shapes, whose marble smiles
Fill the hush'd air with everlasting love.
It is deserted now, but once it bore
Thy name, Prometheus; there the emulous youths
Bore to thy honour through the divine gloom
The lamp which was thine emblem ; even as those
Who bear the untransmitted torch of hope
Into the grave, across the night of life,
As thou has borne it most triumphantly
To this far goal of Time. Depart, farewell.
Beside that temple is the destined cave.

1 on E. Sister, it is not earthly: how it glides Under the leaves' how on its head there burns A light, like a green star, whose emerald beams Are twined with its fair hair! how, as it moves, The splendour drops in flakes upon the grass! Knowest thou it? PANTHEA. It is the delicate spirit That guides the earth through heaven. From afar The populous constellations call that light The loveliest of the planets; and sometimes It floats along the spray of the salt sea, Or makes its chariot of a foggy cloud, Or walks through fields or cities while men sleep, Or o'er the mountain tops, or down the rivers, Or through the green waste wilderness, as now, Wondering at all it sees. Before Jove reign'd It loved our sister Asia, and it came Each leisure hour to drink the liquid light Out of her eyes, for which it said it thirsted As one bit by a dipsas, and with her It made its childish confidence, and told her

! could eer be beautiful! yet so they were,

All it had known or seen, for it saw much,
Yet idly reason'd what it saw ; and call'd her,
For whence it sprung it knew not, nor do I,
Mother, dear mother.
The spirit of the EAnth (running to Asia).
Mother, dearest mother;
May I then talk with thee as I was went?
May 1 then hide my eyes in thy soft arms,
After thy looks have made them tired of joy!
May I then play beside thee the long noons, -
When work is none in the bright silent air?
Asia.
I love thee, gentlest being ! and henceforth
Can cherish thee unenvied : speak, I pray:
Thy simple talk once solaced, now delights.
spin it of the EA arti.
Mother, I am grown wiser, though a child
Cannot be wise like thee, within this day;
And happier too; happier and wiser both.
Thou knowest that toads, and snakes, and loathly
worms,
And venomous and malicious beasts, and boughs
That bore ill berries in the woods, were ever
A hindrance to my walks o'er the green world:
And that, among the haunts of humankind,
Hard-featured men, or with proud, angry looks,
Or cold, staid gait, or false and hollow smiles,
Or the dull sneer of self-loved ignorance,
Or other such foul masks, with which ill thoughts
Hide that fair being whom we spirits call man;
And women too, ugliest of all things evil
(Though fair, even in a world where thou art fair,
When good and kind, free and sincere like thee),
When false or frowning made me sick at heart
To pass them, though they slept, and I unseen.
Well, my path lately lay through a great city
Into the woody hills surrounding it:
A sentinel was sleeping at the gate:
When there was heard a sound, so loud, it shook
The towers amid the moonlight, yet more sweet
Than any voice but thine, sweetest of all;
A long, long sound, as it would never end
And all the inhabitants leapt suddenly
Out of their rest, and gathered in the streets,
Looking in wonder up to Heaven, while yet
The music peal’d along. I hid myself
within a fountain in the public square,
where I lay like the reflex of the moon
Seen in a wave under green leaves; and soon
Those ugly human shapes and visages
Of which I spoke as having wrought me pain,
Past floating through the air, and fading still
Into the winds that scatter d them; and those
From whom they past seemed mild and lovely forms
After some foul disguise had fallen, and all
were somewhat changed, and after brief surprise
And greetings of delighted wonder, all
went to their sleep again ; and when the dawn
Came, wouldst thou think that toads, and snakes, and
efts,

And that with little change of shape or hue: All things had put their evil nature off:

I cannot tell my joy, when o'er a lake
Upon a drooping bough with nightshade twined,
I saw two azure halcyons clinging downward

And thinning one bright bunch of amber berries,
with quick long beaks, and in the deep there lay
Those lovely forms imaged as in a sky;
So with my thoughts full of these happy changes,
We meet again, the happiest change of all.
Asia.
And never will we part, till thy chaste sister
Who guides the frozen and inconstant moon
Will look on thy more warm and equal light
Till her heart thaw like flakes of April snow
And love thee.
spintr of the ranth.
What as Asia loves Prometheus’
Asia.
Peace, wanton, thou art yet not old enough.
Think ye by gazing on each other's eyes
To multiply your lovely selves, and fill
With sphered fires the interlunar air?
spi air of the earth.
Nay, mother, while my sister trims her lamp
'T is hard I should go darkling.
Asia-
Listen; look

The SP1 air or The Hota enters.

Paoxtetheus.

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

spitalt of the hoton. Soon as the sound had ceased whose thunder fill'd The abysses of the sky and the wide earth, There was a change: the impalpable thin air And the all-circling sunlight were transform'd, As if the sense of love dissolved in thern Had folded itself round the sphered world. My vision then grew clear, and I could see Into the mvsteries of the universe: Dizzy as with delight I floated down, Winnowing the lightsome air with languid plumes, My coursers sought their birth-place in the sun, Where they henceforth will live exempt from toil Pasturing flowers of vegetable fire. And where my moonlike car will stand within A temple, gazed upon by Phidian forms Of thee, and Asia, and the Earth, and me, And you fair nymphs looking the love we feel; In memory of the udings it has borne; Beneath a dome fretted with graven towers, Poised on twelve columns of resplendent stone, And open to the bright and liquid sky. Yoked to it by an amphisbenic snake The likeness of those winged sterds will mock The light from which they find repose. Alas, whither has wandered now my partial tongue When all remains untold which we would hear” As I have said, I floated to the earth : It was, as it is still, the pain of bliss To move, to breathe, to be; I wandering went Among the haunts and dwellings of mankind, And first was disappointed not to see Such mighty change as I had felt within Express'd in outward things; but soon I look'd, And behold, thrones were kingless, and men walk'd One with the other even as spirits do, None fawn'd, none trampled; hate, disdain, or fear, Self-love or self-contempt, on human brows No more inseribed, as o'er the gate of hell,

CHORUs or spiraits and Houas.

Then weave the web of the mystic measure; From the depths of the sky and the ends of the earth, H Come, swift Spirits of might and of pleasure, | Fill the dance and the music of mirth, | As the waves of a thousand streams rush by To an ocean of splendour and harmony:

chońus or spisits. Our spoil is won, Our task is done, We are free to dive, or soar, or run; Beyond and around, Or within the bound Which clips the world with darkness round.

We'll pass the eyes Of the starry skies Into the hoar deep to colonize: Death, Chaos, and Night, From the sound of our flight, Shall flee, like mist from a tempest's might.

And Earth, Air, and Light, And the Spirit of Might, Which drives round the stars in their fiery flight; And Love, Thought, and Breath, The powers that quell Death, Wherever we soar shall assemble beneath. And our singing shall build In the void's loose field A world for the Spirit of Wisdom to wield; We will take our plan From the new world of man, And our work shall be call'd the Promethean.

CHORUs of Houns. Break the dance, and scatter the song; Let some depart, and some remain.

SEMichonus I. We, beyond heaven, are driven along.

SEMicho Rus in. Us the enchantments of earth retain :

SEMichorus 1. Ceaseless, and rapid, and fierce, and free, With the Spirits which build a new earth and sea, And a heaven where yet heaven could never be.

SEMictionus II. Solemn, and slow, and serene, and bright, Leading the day and outspeeding the Night, With the powers of a world of perfect light.

sextichonus i. We whirl, singing loud, round the gathering sphere, Till the trees, and the beasts, and the clouds appear From its chaos made calm by love, not fear.

semichonus 11. We encircle the ocean and mountains of earth, And the happy forms of its death and birth Change to the music of our sweet mirth.

Which pierce the sense, and live within the soul,

cBohus of hourts And SPiaits. Break the dance, and scatter the song, Let some depart, and some remain; Wherever we fly we lead along In leashes, like star-beams, soft yet strong, The clouds that are heavy with love's sweet rain.

PANTHEA. Ha! they are gone! lone. Yet feel you no delight From the past sweetness? Panthe A. As the bare green hill When some soft cloud vanishes into rain, Laughs with a thousand drops of sunny water To the unpavilion'd sky! Ione. Even whilst we speak New notes arise. What is that awful sound? PANTHEA. 'T is the deep music of the rolling world, Kindling within the strings of the waved air AEolian modulations.

10 Ne.

Listen too,

How every pause is fill'd with under-notes,
Clear, silver, icy, keen awakening tones,

As the sharp stars pierce winter's crystal air
And gaze upon themselves within the sea.
PANThe A.
But see where, through two openings in the forest
Which hanging branches overcanopy,
And where two runnels of a rivulet,
Between the close moss violet inwoven,
Have made their path of melody, like sisters
Who part with sighs that they may meet in smiles.
Turning their dear disunion to an isle
Of lovely grief, a wood of sweet sad thoughts;
Two visions of strange radiance float upon
The ocean-like enchantment of strong sound,
Which flows intenser, keener, deeper yet
Under the ground and through the windless air.
10NE.
I see a chariot like that thinnest boat
In which the mother of the months is borne
By ebbing night into her western cave,
When she upsprings from interlunar dreams,
O'er which is curved an orblike canopy
Of gentle darkness, and the hills and woods
Distinctly seen through that dusk airy veil,
legard like shapes in an enchanter's glass;
Its wheels are solid clouds, azure and gold,
Such as the genii of the thunder-storm
Pile on the floor of the illumined sea
When the sun rushes under it; they roll
And move and grow as with an inward wind;
Within it sits a winged infant, white
Its countenance, like the whiteness of bright snow,
Its plumes are as feathers of sunny frost,
Its limbs gleam white, through the wind-flowing folds
Of its white robe, woof of etherial pearl.
Its hair is white, the brightness of white light
Scatter'd in string; yet its two eyes are heavens
of liquid darkness, which the Deity