Like vapours steaming up behind, Pan. These are Jove's tempest-walking hounds, lone. Are they now led from the thin dead On new pangs to be fed? Pan. The Titan looks, as ever, firm, not proud. 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, Who ministered to Thebes Heaven's poisoned wine, 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, Alas! I pity thee, and hate myself That I can do no more: aye from thy sight With the strange might of unimagined pains To thee, and to none else of living things, 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. Mer. Alas! [less Thou canst not count thy years to come of pain? Do I desire or fear. Mer. Yet pause, and plunge Into Eternity, where recorded time, Even all that we imagine, age on age, Till it sink, dizzy, blind, lost, shelterless; Which thou might'st spend in torture, unreprieved. pass. Mer. If thou might'st dwell among the Gods the while Lapped in voluptuous joy, Pro. Pro. Pity the self-despising slaves of Heaven, 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, 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, Third Fury. Thou think'st we will live thro' [by one, thee, one That we will be dread thought beneath thy brain, Pro. Why, ye are thus now; Yet am I king over myself, and rule The torturing and conflicting throngs within, Chorus of Furies. From the ends of the earth, from the ends of the earth, Oh, ye who shake hills with the scream of your mirth, Leave the bed, low, cold, and red, Fire is left for future burning: |