1

Or were at war with him; he was a mark
For blight and desolation, compass'd round
With Hatred and Contention; Pain was mix'd
In all which was served up to him, until
Like to the Pontic monarch of old days, 6
He fed on poisons, and they had no power,
But were a kind of nutriment; he lived
Through that which had been death to many men,
And made him friends of mountains: with the stars
And the quick Spirit of the Universe

190

He held his dialogues; and they did teach

To him the magic of their mysteries;
To him the book of Night was opened wide,
And voices from the deep abyss reveal'd
A marvel and a secred Be it so.

200

IX.

My dream was past; it had no further change. It was of a strange order, that the doom

Of these two creatures should be thus traced out

Almost like a reality - the one

To end in madness

both in misery.

:

1

PROMETHEUS.

I.

TITAN. to whose immortal eyes
The sufferings of mortality,
Seen in their sad reality,

Were not as things that gods despise;
What was thy pity's recompense?
A silent suffering, and intense;

The rock, the vulture, and the chain,
All that the proud can feel of pain,
The agony they do not show,
The suffocating sense of woe,
Which speaks but in its loneliness,
And then is jealous lest the sky
Should have a listener, nor will sigh
Until its voice is echoless.

II.

Titan! to thee the strife was given

Between the suffering and the will, Which torture where they cannot kill;

And the inexorable Heaven,

And the deaf tyranny of Fate,
The ruling principle of Hate,
Which for its pleasure doth create

The things it may annihilate,

Refused thee even the boon to die:

The wretched gift eternity

Was thine and thou hast borne it well.

All that the Thunderer wrung from thee
Was but the menace which flung back
On him the torments of thy rack;
The fate thou didst so well foresee

But would not to appease him tell;
And in thy Silence was his Sentence,
And in his Soul a vain repentance,
And evil dread so ill dissembled

That in his hand the lightnings trembled.

III.

Thy Godlike crime was to be kind,
To render with thy precepts less
The sum of human wretchedness,
And strengthen Man with his own mind;
But baffled as thou wert from high,
Still in thy patient energy,
In the endurance, and repulse
Of thine impenetrable Spirit,

Which Earth and Heaven could not convulse,

A mighty lesson we inherit:

Thou art a symbol and a sign

To Mortals of their fate and force;

Like thee, Man is in part divine,

A troubled stream from a pure source;
And Man in portions can foresee

1*

:

His own funeral destiny;
His wretchedness, and his resistance,
And his sad unallied existence:

To which his Spirit may oppose

Itself - an equal to all woes,

And a firm will, and a deep sense,
Which even in torture can descry

Its own concentered recompense,
Triumphant where it dares defy,
And making Death a Victory.

NOTES.

TO THE

PRISONER OF CHILLON etc.

Note 1, page 8, line 5.

By Bonnivard! - May none those marks efface!

François de Bonnivard, fils de Louis de Bonnivard, originaire de Seyssel et Seigneur de Lunes, naquit en 1496; il fit ses études à Turin: en 1510 Jean Aimé de Bonnivard, son oncle, lui resigna le Prieuré de St. Victor, qui aboutissoit aux murs de Genève, et qui formait un benefice considerable.

Ce grand homme (Bonnivard mérite ce titre par la force de son âme, la droiture de son coeur, la noblesse de ses intentions, la sagesse de ses conseils, le courage de ses démarches, l'étendue de ses connaissances et la vivacité de son esprit), t), ce grand homme, qui excitera l'admiration de tous ceux qu'une vertu héroïque pent encore émouvoir, inspirera encore la plus vive reconnaissance dans les coeurs

VOL. VI.

D