Beneath a dome fretted with graven flowers,
Poised on twelve columns of resplendent stone,
And open to the bright and liquid sky.
Yoked to it by an amphisbaeníc snake

The likeness of those winged steeds will mock
The flight from which they find repose. Alas,
Whither has wandered now my partial tongue
When all remains untold which ye would hear?
As I have said, I floated to the earth:
It was, as it is still, the pain of bliss

To move, to breathe, to be; I wandering, went
Among the haunts and dwellings of mankind,
And first was disappointed not to see
Such mighty change as I had felt within

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125

Expressed in outward things; but soon I looked,
And behold, thrones were kingless, and men walked
One with the other even as spirits do,

130

None fawned, none trampled hate, disdain, or fear,
Self-love or self-contempt, on human brows
No more inscribed, as o'er the gate of hell,
'All hope abandon ye who enter here;'

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None frowned, none trembled, none with eager fear

Gazed on another's eye of cold command,

Until the subject of a tyrant's will

Became, worse fate, the abject of his own,

140

Which spurred him, like an outspent horse, to death.
None wrought his lips in truth-entangling lines
Which smiled the lie his tongue disdained to speak;
None, with firm sneer, trod out in his own heart
The sparks of love and hope till there remained
Those bitter ashes, a soul self-consumed,

145

And the wretch crept a vampire among men,

Infecting all with his own hideous ill;

None talked that common, false, cold, hollow talk

Which makes the heart deny the yes it breathes,
Yet question that unmeant hypocrisy

150

With such a self-mistrust as has no name.

And women, too, frank, beautiful, and kind

As the free heaven which rains fresh light and dew

On the wide earth, past; gentle radiant forms,

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From custom's evil taint exempt and pure;

Speaking the wisdom once they could not think,
Looking emotions once they feared to feel,

And changed to all which once they dared not be,

Yet being now, made earth like heaven; nor pride,
Nor jealousy, nor envy, nor ill shame,

160

The bitterest of those drops of treasured gall,
Spoilt the sweet taste of the nepenthe, love.

Thrones, altars, judgement-seats, and prisons; wherein, 121 flight B, ed. 1839; light 1820.

And beside which, by wretched men were borne
Sceptres, tiaras, swords, and chains, and tomes
Of reasoned wrong, glozed on by ignorance,
Were like those monstrous and barbaric shapes,
The ghosts of a no-more-remembered fame,
Which, from their unworn obelisks, look forth
In triumph o'er the palaces and tombs

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170

Of those who were their conquerors: mouldering round,

These imaged to the pride of kings and priests

A dark yet mighty faith, a power as wide

As is the world it wasted, and are now

But an astonishment; even so the tools
And emblems of its last captivity,

Amid the dwellings of the peopled earth,

And those foul shapes, abhorred by god and man,-

Stand, not o'erthrown, but unregarded now.

Which, under many a name and many a form

Were Jupiter, the tyrant of the world;

Strange, savage, ghastly, dark and execrable,

And which the nations, panic-stricken, served

With blood, and hearts broken by long hope, and love
Dragged to his altars soiled and garlandless,
And slain amid men's unreclaiming tears,

Flattering the thing they feared, which fear was hate,-
Frown, mouldering fast, o'er their abandoned shrines:
The painted veil, by those who were, called life,
Which mimicked, as with colours idly spread,
All men believed or hoped, is torn aside;

The loathsome mask has fallen, the man remains
Sceptreless, free, uncircumscribed, but man
Equal, unclassed, tribeless, and nationless,
Exempt from awe, worship, degree, the king
Over himself; just, gentle, wise: but man
Passionless?no, yet free from guilt or pain,
Which were, for his will made or suffered them,
Nor yet exempt, though ruling them like slaves,
From chance, and death, and mutability,
The clogs of that which else might oversoar
The loftiest star of unascended heaven,
Pinnacled dim in the intense inane.

END OF THE THIRD ACT.

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180

186

190

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200

173 These B; Those 1820. and 1820.

187 amid B; among 1820.

192 or B;

ACT IV

SCENE. A Part of the Forest near the Cave of PROMETHEUS. PANTHEA and IONE are sleeping: they awaken gradually during the first Song.

Voice of unseen Spirits.

The pale stars are gone!

For the sun, their swift shepherd,
To their folds them compelling,

In the depths of the dawn,

Hastes, in meteor-eclipsing array, and they flee

Beyond his blue dwelling,

As fawns flee the leopard.
But where are ye?

A Train of dark Forms and Shadows passes by confusedly,

singing.

Strew, oh, strew

Hair, not yew!

Wet the dusty pall with tears, not dew!
Be the faded flowers

Of Death's bare bowers

Spread on the corpse of the King of Hours!

Haste, oh, haste!

As shades are chased,

Trembling, by day, from heaven's blue wasto.
We melt away,

Like dissolving spray,

From the children of a diviner day,

With the lullaby

Of winds that die

On the bosom of their own harmony!

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25

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They are gathered and driven

By the storm of delight, by the panic of glee!

They shake with emotion,

45

They dance in their mirth.

But where are ye?

The billows and fountains

Fresh music are flinging,

Like the notes of a spirit from land and from sea;

The storms mock the mountains

With the thunder of gladness.

But where are ye

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Where are their chariots?

Ione. What charioteers are these?

Panthea.

Semichorus of Hours.

The voice of the Spirits of Air and of Earth
Have drawn back the figured curtain of sleep
Which covered our being and darkened our birth
In the deep.

A Voice.

In the deep?

Semichorus II.

Semichorus I.

Oh, below the deep. 60

An hundred ages we had been kept
Cradled in visions of hate and care,

And each one who waked as his brother slept,

Found the truth

Semichorus II.

Worse than his visions were!

Semichorus I.

We have heard the lute of Hope in sleep;
We have known the voice of Love in dreams;
We have felt the wand of Power, and leap-
Semichorus II.

As the billows leap in the morning beams!

Chorus.

Weave the dance on the floor of the breeze,
Pierce with song heaven's silent light,
Enchant the day that too swiftly flees,
To check its flight ere the cave of Night.

Once the hungry Hours were hounds

Which chased the day like a bleeding deer,

And it limped and stumbled with many wounds
Through the nightly dells of the desert year.

But now, oh weave the mystic measure
Of music, and dance, and shapes of light,

Let the Hours, and the spirits of might and pleasure,
Like the clouds and sunbeams, unite.

A Voice.

Unite!

Panthea. See, where the Spirits of the human mind Wrapped in sweet sounds, as in bright veils, approach.

Chorus of Spirits.

We join the throng

Of the dance and the song,

By the whirlwind of gladness borne along;

As the flying-fish leap

From the Indian deep,

And mix with the sea-birds, half asleep.

Chorus of Hours.

Whence come ye, so wild and so fleet,

For sandals of lightning are on your feet,

And your wings are soft and swift as thought,

And your eyes are as love which is veiled not?

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Chorus of Spirits.

We come from the mind

Of human kind

Which was late so dusk, and obscene, and blind,

Now 'tis an ocean

Of clear emotion,

A heaven of serene and mighty motion

From that deep abyss

Of wonder and bliss,

Whose caverns are crystal palaces;

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