The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning Volume I Part 22

_Prometheus._ I glory? would my foes did glory so, And I stood by to see them!--naming whom, Thou art not unremembered.

_Hermes._ Dost thou charge Me also with the blame of thy mischance?

_Prometheus._ I tell thee I loathe the universal G.o.ds, Who for the good I gave them rendered back The ill of their injustice.

_Hermes._ Thou art mad-- Thou art raving, t.i.tan, at the fever-height.

_Prometheus._ If it be madness to abhor my foes, May I be mad!

_Hermes._ If thou wert prosperous Thou wouldst be unendurable.

_Prometheus._ Alas!

_Hermes._ Zeus knows not that word.

_Prometheus._ But maturing Time Teaches all things.

_Hermes._ Howbeit, thou hast not learnt The wisdom yet, thou needest.

_Prometheus._ If I had, I should not talk thus with a slave like thee.

_Hermes._ No answer thou vouchsafest, I believe, To the great Sire's requirement.

_Prometheus._ Verily I owe him grateful service,--and should pay it.

_Hermes._ Why, thou dost mock me, t.i.tan, as I stood A child before thy face.

_Prometheus._ No child, forsooth, But yet more foolish than a foolish child, If thou expect that I should answer aught Thy Zeus can ask. No torture from his hand Nor any machination in the world Shall force mine utterance ere he loose, himself, These cankerous fetters from me. For the rest, Let him now hurl his blanching lightnings down, And with his white-winged snows and mutterings deep Of subterranean thunders mix all things, Confound them in disorder. None of this Shall bend my st.u.r.dy will and make me speak The name of his dethroner who shall come.

_Hermes._ Can this avail thee? Look to it!

_Prometheus._ Long ago It was looked forward to, precounselled of.

_Hermes._ Vain G.o.d, take righteous courage! dare for once To apprehend and front thine agonies With a just prudence.

_Prometheus._ Vainly dost thou chafe My soul with exhortation, as yonder sea Goes beating on the rock. Oh, think no more That I, fear-struck by Zeus to a woman's mind, Will supplicate him, loathed as he is, With feminine upliftings of my hands, To break these chains. Far from me be the thought!

_Hermes._ I have indeed, methinks, said much in vain, For still thy heart beneath my showers of prayers Lies dry and hard--nay, leaps like a young horse Who bites against the new bit in his teeth, And tugs and struggles against the new-tried rein,-- Still fiercest in the feeblest thing of all, Which sophism is; since absolute will disjoined From perfect mind is worse than weak. Behold, Unless my words persuade thee, what a blast And whirlwind of inevitable woe Must sweep persuasion through thee! For at first The Father will split up this jut of rock With the great thunder and the bolted flame And hide thy body where a hinge of stone Shall catch it like an arm; and when thou hast pa.s.sed A long black time within, thou shalt come out To front the sun while Zeus's winged hound, The strong carnivorous eagle, shall wheel down To meet thee, self-called to a daily feast, And set his fierce beak in thee and tear off The long rags of thy flesh and batten deep Upon thy dusky liver. Do not look For any end moreover to this curse Or ere some G.o.d appear, to accept thy pangs On his own head vicarious, and descend With unreluctant step the darks of h.e.l.l And gloomy abysses around Tartarus.

Then ponder this--this threat is not a growth Of vain invention; it is spoken and meant; King Zeus's mouth is impotent to lie, Consummating the utterance by the act; So, look to it, thou! take heed, and nevermore Forget good counsel, to indulge self-will.

_Chorus._ Our Hermes suits his reasons to the times; At least I think so, since he bids thee drop Self-will for prudent counsel. Yield to him!

When the wise err, their wisdom makes their shame.

_Prometheus._ Unto me the foreknower, this mandate of power He cries, to reveal it.

What's strange in my fate, if I suffer from hate At the hour that I feel it?

Let the locks of the lightning, all bristling and whitening, Flash, coiling me round, While the aether goes surging 'neath thunder and scourging Of wild winds unbound!

Let the blast of the firmament whirl from its place The earth rooted below, And the brine of the ocean, in rapid emotion, Be driven in the face Of the stars up in heaven, as they walk to and fro!

Let him hurl me anon into Tartarus--on-- To the blackest degree, With Necessity's vortices strangling me down; But he cannot join death to a fate meant for _me_!

_Hermes._ Why, the words that he speaks and the thoughts that he thinks Are maniacal!--add, If the Fate who hath bound him should loose not the links, He were utterly mad.

Then depart ye who groan with him, Leaving to moan with him,-- Go in haste! lest the roar of the thunder anearing Should blast you to idiocy, living and hearing.

_Chorus._ Change thy speech for another, thy thought for a new, If to move me and teach me indeed be thy care!

For thy words swerve so far from the loyal and true That the thunder of Zeus seems more easy to bear.

How! couldst teach me to venture such vileness? behold!

I _choose_, with this victim, this anguish foretold!

I recoil from the traitor in hate and disdain, And I know that the curse of the treason is worse Than the pang of the chain.

_Hermes._ Then remember, O nymphs, what I tell you before, Nor, when pierced by the arrows that Ate will throw you, Cast blame on your fate and declare evermore That Zeus thrust you on anguish he did not foreshow you.

Nay, verily, nay! for ye perish anon For your deed--by your choice. By no blindness of doubt, No abruptness of doom, but by madness alone, In the great net of Ate, whence none cometh out, Ye are wound and undone.

_Prometheus._ Ay! in act now, in word now no more, Earth is rocking in s.p.a.ce.

And the thunders crash up with a roar upon roar, And the eddying lightnings flash fire in my face, And the whirlwinds are whirling the dust round and round, And the blasts of the winds universal leap free And blow each upon each with a pa.s.sion of sound, And aether goes mingling in storm with the sea.

Such a curse on my head, in a manifest dread, From the hand of your Zeus has been hurtled along.

O my mother's fair glory! O aether, enringing All eyes with the sweet common light of thy bringing!

Dost see how I suffer this wrong?

A LAMENT FOR ADONIS

FROM THE GREEK OF BION

I.

I mourn for Adonis--Adonis is dead, Fair Adonis is dead and the Loves are lamenting.

Sleep, Cypris, no more on thy purple-strewed bed: Arise, wretch stoled in black; beat thy breast unrelenting, And shriek to the worlds, "Fair Adonis is dead!"

II.

I mourn for Adonis--the Loves are lamenting.

He lies on the hills in his beauty and death; The white tusk of a boar has transpierced his white thigh.

Cytherea grows mad at his thin gasping breath, While the black blood drips down on the pale ivory, And his eyeb.a.l.l.s lie quenched with the weight of his brows, The rose fades from his lips, and upon them just parted The kiss dies the G.o.ddess consents not to lose, Though the kiss of the Dead cannot make her glad-hearted: He knows not who kisses him dead in the dews.

III.

I mourn for Adonis--the Loves are lamenting.

Deep, deep in the thigh is Adonis's wound, But a deeper, is Cypris's bosom presenting.

The youth lieth dead while his dogs howl around, And the nymphs weep aloud from the mists of the hill, And the poor Aphrodite, with tresses unbound, All dishevelled, unsandaled, shrieks mournful and shrill Through the dusk of the groves. The thorns, tearing her feet, Gather up the red flower of her blood which is holy, Each footstep she takes; and the valleys repeat The sharp cry she utters and draw it out slowly.

She calls on her spouse, her a.s.syrian, on him Her own youth, while the dark blood spreads over his body, The chest taking hue from the gash in the limb, And the bosom, once ivory, turning to ruddy.

IV.