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Prometheus
Prometheus
Prometheus
I 30 But would not to appease him tell;
Titan! to whose immortal eyes And in thy Silence was his Sentence,
The sufferings of mortality And in his Soul a vain repentance,
Seen in their sad reality, And evil dread so ill dissembled
Were not as things that gods despise; That in his hand the lightnings trembled.
5 What was thy pity's recompense? III
A silent suffering, and intense; 35 Thy Godlike crime was to be kind,
The rock, the vulture, and the chain, To render with thy precepts less
All that the proud can feel of pain, The sum of human wretchedness,
The agony they do not show, And strengthen Man with his own mind;
10 The suffocating sense of woe, But baffled as thou wert from high,
Which speaks but in its loneliness, 40 Still in thy patient energy,
And then is jealous lest the sky In the endurance, and repulse
Should have a listener, nor will sigh Of thine impenetrable Spirit,
Until its voice is echoless. Which Earth and Heaven could not convulse,
II A mighty lesson we inherit:
15 Titan! to thee the strife was given 45 Thou art a symbol and a sign
Between the suffering and the will, To Mortals of their fate and force;