Like vapours steaming up behind,
Clanging loud, an endless crowd-

Pan. These are Jove's tempest-walking hounds,
Whom he gluts with groans and blood,
When charioted on sulphurous cloud
He bursts Heaven's bounds.

lone. Are they now led from the thin dead

On new pangs to be fed?

Pan. The Titan looks, as ever, firm, not proud.
First Fury. Ha! I scent life!

Second Fury. Let me but look into his eyes!

[heap

Third Fury. The hope of torturing him smells like a

Of corpses to a death-bird after battle.

[cheer, Hounds

First Fury. Darest thou delay, O Herald?

Of Hell: what if the Son of Maia soon

Take

Should make us food and sport-who can please long The Omnipotent?

Mer. Back to your towers of iron,

And gnash beside the streams of fire and wail

Your foodless teeth. Geryon, arise! and Gorgon,
Chimæra, and thou Sphinx, subtlest of fiends

Who ministered to Thebes Heaven's poisoned wine,
Unnatural love, and more unnatural hate :
These shall perform your task.

First Fury.

O mercy! mercy!

We die with our desire: drive us not back!

Mer. Crouch then in silence.

Awful Sufferer,

To thee unwilling, most unwillingly

I come, by the great Father's will driven down,
To execute a doom of new revenge.

Alas! I pity thee, and hate myself

That I can do no more: aye from thy sight
Returning, for a season, heaven seems hell,
So thy worn form pursues me night and day,
Smiling reproach. Wise art thou, firm and good,
But vainly wouldst stand forth alone in strife
Against the Omnipotent; as yon clear lamps
That measure and divide the weary years
From which there is no refuge, long have taught
And long must teach. Even now the Torturer arnis

With the strange might of unimagined pains
The powers who scheme slow agonies in Heil,
And my commission is to lead them here,
Or what more subtle, foul, or savage fiends
People the abyss, and leave them to their task.
Be it so! There is a secret known

To thee, and to none else of living things,
Which may transfer the sceptre of wide Heaven,
The fear of which perplexes the Supreme:
Clothe it in words, and bid it clasp his throne
In intercession; bend thy soul in prayer,
And, like a suppliant in some gorgeous fane,
Let the will kneel within thy haughty heart :
For benefits and meek submission tame
The fiercest and the mightiest.

Evil minds

Pro, Change good to their own nature. I gave all He has; and in return he chains me here Years, ages, night, and day; whether the Sun Split my parched skin, or in the moony night The crystal-winged snow clinged round my hair: Whilst my beloved race is trampled down By his thought-executing ministers. Such is the tyrants' recompense: 'tis just: He who is evil can receive no good; And for a world bestowed, or a friend lost, He can feel hate, fear, shame; not gratitude: He but requites me for his own misdeed. Kindness to such is keen reproach, which breaks With bitter stings the light sleep of Revenge. Submission, thou dost know I cannot try : For what submission but that fatal word, The death-seal of mankind's captivity, Like the Sicilian's hair-suspended sword, Which trembles o'er his crown, would he accept Oould yield? which yet I will not yield. Let others haver Crime where it sits throned In brief Omnipotence. secure are they : For Justice, when triumphant, wid weep down Pity, not punishment, on her own wrongs, Too much avenged by those who err.

I wait,

Enduring thus, the retributive hour,

Which since we spake is even nearer now.
But hark, the hell-hounds clamour: fear delay:
Behold! Heaven lowers under thy Father's frown.
Mer. Oh, that we might be spared: I to inflict
And thou to suffer! Once more answer me:
Thou knowest not the period of Jove's power?
Pro. I know but this, that it must come.

Mer.

Alas!

[less

Thou canst not count thy years to come of pain?
Pro. They last while Jove must reign; nor more, nor

Do I desire or fear.

Mer.

Yet pause, and plunge

Into Eternity, where recorded time,

Even all that we imagine, age on age,
Seems hut a point, and the reluctant mind
Flags wearily in its unending flight,

Till it sink, dizzy, blind, lost, shelterless;
Perchance it has not numbered the slow years

Which thou might'st spend in torture, unreprieved.
Pro. Perchance no thought can count them, yet they

pass.

Mer. If thou might'st dwell among the Gods the while Lapped in voluptuous joy,

Pro.
I would not quit
This bleak ravine, these unrepentant pains.
Mer. Alas! I wonder at, yet pity thee.

Pro. Pity the self-despising slaves of Heaven,
Not me, within whose mind sits peace serene,
As light in the sun, throned: how vain is talk!
Call up the fiends.

Ione. O sister, look! White fire

Has cloven to the roots of yon huge snow-loaded cedar; How fearfully God's thunder howls behind!

Mer. I must obey his words and thine: alas!

Most heavily remorse hangs at my heart!

Pan. See where the child of Heaven, with winged feet

Runs down the slanted sunlight of the dawn.

Ione. Dear sister, close thy plumes over thine eyes Lest thou behold and die: they come: they come Blackening the birth of day with countless wings, And hollow underneath like death.

First Fury.

Prometheus!

Second Fury. Immortal Titan!

Third Fury. Champion of Heaven's slaves!

Pro. He whom some dreadful voice invokes is here,
Prometheus, the chained Titan. Horrible forms,
What and who are ye? Never yet there came
Phantasms so foul thro' monster-teeming Hell
From the all-miscreative brain of Jove;
Whilst I behold such execrable shapes,
Methinks I grow like what I contemplate,
And laugh and stare in loathsome sympathy.
First Fury. We are the ministers of pain, and fear,
And disappointment, and mistrust, and hate,
And clinging crime; and, as lean dogs pursue
Thro' wood and lake some struck and sobbing fawn,
We track all things that weep, and bleed, and live,
When the great King betrays them to our will.
Pro. Oh! many fearful natures in one name,
I know ye; and these lakes and echoes know
The darkness and the clangour of your wings.
But why more hideous than your loathed selves
Gather ye up in legions from the deep?

Second Fury. We knew not that: Sisters, rejoice rejoice!

Pro. Can aught exult in its deformity?

Second Fury. The beauty of delight makes lovers giad, Gazing on one another: so are we.

As from the rose which the pale priestess kneels

To gather for her festal crown of flowers

The aerial crimson falls, flushing her cheek,

So from our victim's destined agony

The shade which is our form invests us round,

Else we are shapeless as our mother Night.

Pro. I laugh your power, and his who sent you here,

To lowest scorn. Pour forth the cup of pain.

First Fury. Thou thinkest we will rend thee bone from bone,

And nerve from nerve, working like fire within ?

Pro. Pain is my element, as hate is thine;

Ye rend me now: I care not

Second Fury. Dost imagine

We will but laugh into thy lidless eyes?

Pro. I weigh not what ye do, but what ye suffer,
Being evil. Cruel was the power which called
You, or aught else so wretched, into light.

Third Fury. Thou think'st we will live thro'
Like animal life, and tho' we can obscure not
The soul which burns within, that we will dwell
Beside it, like a vain loud multitude
Vexing the self-content of wisest men ;

[by one,

thee, one

That we will be dread thought beneath thy brain,
And foul desire round thine astonished heart,
And blood within thy labyrinthine veins,
Crawling like agony.

Pro. Why, ye are thus now;

Yet am I king over myself, and rule

The torturing and conflicting throngs within,
As Jove rules you when Hell grows mutinous.

Chorus of Furies.

From the ends of the earth, from the ends of the earth,
Where the night has its grave and the morning its birth,
Come, come, come!

Oh, ye who shake hills with the scream of your mirth,
When cities sink howling in ruin; and ye
Who with wingless footsteps trample the sea,
And, close upon Shipwreck and Famine's track,
Sit chattering with joy on the foodless wreck;
Come, come, come!

Leave the bed, low, cold, and red,
Strewed beneath a nation dead;
Leave the hatred, as in ashes

Fire is left for future burning:
It will burst in bloodier flashes
When ye stir it, soon returning:
Leave the self-contempt implanted
In young spirits, sense enchanted,
Misery's yet unkindled fuel:
Leave Hell's secrets half unchanted,
To the maniac dreamer; cruel