Asia. And never will we part, till thy chaste sister
Who guides the frozen and inconstant moon
Will look on thy more warm and equal light
Till her heart thaw like flakes of April snow
And love thee.
90
Spirit of the Earth. What; as Asia loves Prometheus?
Asia. Peace, wanton, thou art yet not old enough.
Think ye by gazing on each other’s eyes
To multiply your lovely selves, and fill
With spherèd fires the interlunar air?
Spirit of the Earth. Nay, mother, while my sister trims her lamp
’Tis hard I should go darkling.
Asia. Listen; look!
[The SPIRIT OF THE HOUR enters.
Prometheus. We feel what thou hast heard and seen: yet speak.
Spirit of the Hour. Soon as the sound had ceased whose thunder filled
The abysses of the sky and the wide earth,
100
There was a change: the impalpable thin air
And the all-circling sunlight were transformed,
As if the sense of love dissolved in them
Had folded itself round the spherèd world.
My vision then grew clear, and I could see
105
Into the mysteries of the universe:
Dizzy as with delight I floated down,
Winnowing the lightsome air with languid plumes,
My coursers sought their birthplace in the sun,
Where they henceforth will live exempt from toil,
110
Pasturing flowers of vegetable fire;
And where my moonlike car will stand within
A temple, gazed upon by Phidian forms
Of thee, and Asia, and the Earth, and me,
And you fair nymphs looking the love we feel,—
115
In memory of the tidings it has borne,—
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 amphisbaenic snake
120
The likeness of those wingèd 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:
125
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
130
Expressed in outward things; but soon I looked,
And behold, thrones were kingless, and men walked
One with the other even as spirits do,
None fawned, none trampled; hate, disdain, or fear,
Self-love or self-contempt, on human brows
135
No more inscribed, as o’er the gate of hell,
‘All hope abandon ye who enter here;’
None frowned, none trembled, none with eager fear
Gazed on another’s eye of cold command,
Until the subject of a tyrant’s will
140
Became, worse fate, the abject of his own,
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
145
The sparks of love and hope till there remained
Those bitter ashes, a soul self-consumed,
And the wretch crept a vampire among men,
Infecting all with his own hideous ill;
None talked that common, false, cold, hollow talk
150
Which makes the heart deny the yes it breathes,
Yet question that unmeant hypocrisy
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
155
On the wide earth, past; gentle radiant forms,
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,
160
Yet being now, made earth like heaven; nor pride,
Nor jealousy, nor envy, nor ill shame,
The bitterest of those drops of treasured gall,
Spoilt the sweet taste of the nepenthe, love.
Thrones, altars, judgement-seats, and prisons; wherein,
165
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,
170
Which, from their unworn obelisks, look forth
In triumph o’er the palaces and tombs
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
175
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,
Stand, not o’erthrown, but unregarded now.
180
And those foul shapes, abhorred by god and man,—
Which, under many a name and many a form
Strange, savage, ghastly, dark and execrable,
Were Jupiter, the tyrant of the world;
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:
190
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
195
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,
200
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.
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,
5
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, sin
ging.
Here, oh, here:
10
We bear the bier
Of the Father of many a cancelled year
Spectres we
Of the dead Hours be,
We bear Time to his tomb in eternity.
15
Strew, oh, strew
Hair, not yew!
Wet the dusty pall with tears, not dew!
Be the faded flowers
Of Death’s bare bowers
20
Spread on the corpse of the King of Hours!
Haste, oh, haste!
As shades are chased,
Trembling, by day, from heaven’s blue waste.
We melt away,
25
Like dissolving spray,
From the children of a diviner day,
With the lullaby
Of winds that die
On the bosom of their own harmony!
Ione.
30
What dark forms were they?
Panthea.
The past Hours weak and gray,
With the spoil which their toil
Raked together
From the conquest but One could foil.
Ione.
Have they passed?
Panthea.
35
They have passed;
They outspeeded the blast,
While ’tis said, they are fled:
Ione.
Whither, oh, whither?
Panthea.
To the dark, to the past, to the dead.
Voice of unseen Spirits.
40
Bright clouds float in heaven,
Dew-stars gleam on earth,
Waves assemble on ocean,
They are gathered and driven
By the storm of delight, by the panic of glee!
45
They shake with emotion,
They dance in their mirth.
But where are ye?
The pine boughs are singing
Old songs with new gladness,
50
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.
55
But where are ye?
Ione. What charioteers are these?
Panthea. Where are their chariots?
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.
60
Oh, below the deep.
Semichorus I.
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.
65
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,
70
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,
75
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.
80
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,
85
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,
90
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 veilèd not?
Chorus of Spirits.
We come from the mind
Of human kind
95
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
100
Of wonder and bliss,
Whose caverns are crystal palaces;
From those skiey towers
Where Thought’s crowned powers
Sit watching your dance, ye happy Hours!
105
From the dim recesses
Of woven caresses,
Where lovers catch ye by your loose tresses
From the azure isles,
Where sweet Wisdom smiles,
110
Delaying your ships with her siren wiles.
From the temples high
Of Man’s ear and eye,
Roofed over Sculpture and Poesy;
From the murmurings
115
Of the unsealed springs
Where Science bedews her Dædal wings.
Years after years,
Through blood, and tears,
And a thick hell of hatreds, and hopes, and fears;
120
We waded and flew,
And the islets were few
Where the bud-blighted flowers of happiness grew.
Our feet now, every palm,
Are sandalled with calm,
125
And the dew of our wings is a rain of balm;
And, beyond our eyes,
The human love lies
Which makes all it gazes on Paradise.
Chorus of Spirits and Hours.
Then weave the web of the mystic measure;
From the depths of the sky and the ends of the earth,
Come, swift Spirits of might and of pleasure,
Fill the dance and the music of mirth,
As the waves of a thousand streams rush by
To an ocean of splendour and harmony!
Chorus of Spirits.
135
Our spoil is won,
Our task is done,
We are free to dive, or soar, or run;
Beyond and around,
Or within the bound
140
Which clips the world with darkness round.
We’ll pass the eyes
Of the starry skies
Into the hoar deep to colonize;
Death, Chaos, and Night,
145
From the sound of our flight,
Shall flee, like mist from a tempest’s might.
And Earth, Air, and Light,
And the Spirit of Might,
Which drives round the stars in their fiery flight;
150
And Love, Thought, and Breath,
The powers that quell Death,
Wherever we soar shall assemble beneath.
And our singing shall build
In the void’s loose field
155
A world for the Spirit of Wisdom to wield;
We will take our plan
From the new world of man,
And our work shall be called the Promethean.
Chorus of Hours.
Break the dance, and scatter the song;
160
Let some depart, and some remain.
Semichorus I.
We, beyond heaven, are driven along:
Semichorus II.
Us the enchantments of earth retain:
Semichorus I.
Ceaseless, and rapid, and fierce, and free,
With the Spirits which build a new earth and sea,
165
And a heaven where yet heaven could never be.
Semichorus II.
Solemn, and slow, and serene, and bright,
Leading the Day and outspeeding the Night,
With the powers of a world of perfect light.
Semichorus I.
We whirl, singing loud, round the gathering sphere,
170
Till the trees, and the beasts, and the clouds appear
From its chaos made calm by love, not fear.
Semichorus II.
We encircle the ocean and mountains of earth,
And the happy forms of its death and birth
Change to the music of our sweet mirth.
Chorus of Hours and Spirits.
175
Break the dance, and scatter the song,
Let some depart, and some remain,
Wherever we fly we lead along
In leashes, like starbeams, soft yet strong,
The clouds that are heavy with love’s sweet rain.
Panthea. Ha! they are gone!
180
Ione. Yet feel you no delight
From the past sweetness?
Panthea. As the bare green hill
The Complete Poems of Percy Bysshe Shelley: (A Modern Library E-Book) Page 41
