And palsy-struck it looked. Then all sounds merged Into the rising surges of the pines,
Which, leagues below me, clothing the gaunt loins Of ancient Caucasus with hairy strength, Sent up a murmur in the morning-wind, Sad as the wail that from the populous earth All day and night to high Olympus soars, Fit incense to thy wicked throne, O Jove.
Thy hated name is tossed once more in scorn From off my lips, for I will tell thy doom. And are these tears? Nay, do not triumph, Jove! They are wrung from me but by the agonies Of prophecy, like those sparse drops which fall From clouds in travail of the lightning, when The great wave of the storm, high-curled and black, Rolls steadily onward to its thunderous break. Why art thou made a god of, thou poor type Of anger, and revenge, and cunning force? True Power was never born of brutish Strength, Nor sweet Truth suckled at the shaggy dugs Of that old she-wolf. Are thy thunderbolts, That scare the darkness for a space, so strong As the prevailing patience of meek Light, Who, with the invincible tenderness of peace, Wins it to be a portion of herself? Why art thou made a god of, thou, who hast The never-sleeping terror at thy heart, That birthright of all tyrants, worse to bear Than this thy ravening bird on which I smile? Thou swear'st to free me, if I will unfold What kind of doom it is whose omen flits Across thy heart, as o'er a troop of doves The fearful shadow of the kite.
To know that truth whose knowledge cannot save? Evil its errand hath, as well as Good;
When thine is finished, thou art known no more: There is a higher purity than thou,
And higher purity is greater strength; Thy nature is thy doom, at which thy heart Trembles behind the thick wall of thy might.
Let man but hope, and thou art straightway chilled With thought of that drear silence and deep night Which, like a dream, shall swallow thee and thine: Let man but will, and thou art god no more; More capable of ruin than the gold
And ivory that image thee on earth.
He who hurled down the monstrous Titan-brood
Blinded with lightnings, with rough thunders stunned,
Is weaker than a simple human thought.
My slender voice can shake thee, as the breeze, That seems but apt to stir a maiden's hair, Sways huge Oceanus from pole to pole: For I am still Prometheus, and foreknow In my wise heart the end and doom of all.
Yes, I am still Prometheus, wiser grown By years of solitude,-that holds apart The past and future, giving the soul room To search into itself,-and long commune With this eternal silence-more a god
In my long-suffering and strength to meet With equal front the direst shafts of fate, Than thou in thy faint-hearted despotism, Girt with thy baby-toys of force and wrath. Yes, I am that Prometheus who brought down The light to man which thou in selfish fear Had'st to thyself usurped,-his by sole right, For Man hath right to all save Tyranny,- And which shall free him yet from thy frail throne. Tyrants are but the spawn of Ignorance, Begotten by the slaves they trample on, Who, could they win a glimmer of the light, And see that Tyranny is always weakness, Or Fear with its own bosom ill at ease,
Would laugh away in scorn the sand-wove chain Which their own blindness feigned for adamant. Wrong ever builds on quicksands, but the Right To the firm centre lays its moveless base. The tyrant trembles if the air but stirs The innocent ringlets of a child's free hair,
And crouches, when the thought of some great spirit, With world-wide murmur, like a rising gale, Over men's hearts, as over standing corn, Rushes, and bends them to its own strong will. So shall some thought of mine yet circle earth And puff away thy crumbling altars, Jove.
And, would'st thou know of my supreme revenge, Poor tyrant, even now dethroned in heart, Realmless in soul, as tyrants ever are, Listen and tell me if this bitter peak, This never-glutted vulture, and these chains Shrink not before it; for it shall befit
A sorrow-taught, unconquered Titan-heart.
Men, when their death is on them, seem to stand
On a precipitous crag that overhangs
The abyss of doom, and in that depth to see,
As in a glass, the features dim and huge
Of things to come, the shadows, as it seems,
Of what have been. Death ever fronts the wise,
Not fearfully, but with clear promises
Of larger life, on whose broad vans upborne, Their out-look widens, and they see beyond The horizon of the Present and the Past, Even to the very source and end of things. Such am I now: immortal woe hath made
My heart a seer, and my soul a judge
Between the substance and the shadow of Truth. The sure supremeness of the Beautiful, By all the martyrdoms made doubly sure
Of such as I am, this is my revenge, Which of my wrongs builds a triumphal arch Through which I see a sceptre and a throne. The pipings of glad shepherds on the hills, Tending the flocks no more to bleed for thee,- The songs of maidens pressing with white feet The vintage on thine altars poured no more,― The murmurous bliss of lovers, underneath Dim grape-vine bowers, whose rosy bunches press Not half so closely their warm cheeks, unscared By thoughts of thy brute lusts,—the hivelike hum
Of peaceful commonwealths, where sunburnt Toil Reaps for itself the rich earth made its own By its own labor, lightened with glad hymns To an omnipotence which thy mad bolts Would cope with as a spark with the vast sea, Even the spirit of free love and peace,
Duty's sure recompense through life and death,- These are such harvests as all master-spirits Reap, haply not on earth, but reap no less
Because the sheaves are bound by hands not theirs; These are the bloodless daggers wherewithal They stab fallen tyrants, this their high revenge: For their best part of life on earth is when, Long after death, prisoned and pent no more,
Their thoughts, their wild dreams even, have become Part of the necessary air men breathe;
When, like the moon, herself behind a cloud, They shed down light before us on life's sea, That cheers us to steer onward still in hope. Earth with her twining memories ivies o'er Their holy sepulchres, the chainless sea In tempest or wide calm repeats their thoughts, The lightning and the thunder, all free things, Have legends of them for the ears of men. All other glories are as falling stars,
But universal Nature watches theirs : Such strength is won by love of human kind.
Not that I feel that hunger after fame,
Which souls of a half-greatness are beset with; But that the memory of noble deeds Cries shame upon the idle and the vile, And keeps the heart of Man for ever up To the heroic level of old time.
To be forgot at first is little pain To a heart conscious of such high intent As must be deathless on the lips of men; But, having been a name, to sink and be A something which the world can do without, Which, having been or not, would never change The lightest pulse of fate,-this is indeed A cup of bitterness the worst to taste, And this thy heart shall empty to the dregs. Oblivion is lonelier than this peak,- Behold thy destiny! Thou think'st it much That I should brave thee, miserable god! But I have braved a mightier than thou, Even the temptings of this soaring heart Which might have made me, scarcely less than thou, A god among my brethren weak and blind, Scarce less than thou, a pitiable thing, To be down-trodden into darkness soon. But now I am above thee, for thou art The bungling workmanship of fear, the block That scares the swart Barbarian; but I Am what myself have made, a nature wise With finding in itself the types of all,-
With watching from the dim verge of the time What things to be are visible in the gleams
Thrown forward on them from the luminous past,
Wise with the history of its own frail heart,
With reverence and sorrow, and with love Broad as the world for freedom and for man.
Thou and all strength shall crumble, except Love, By whom and for whose glory ye shall cease: And, when thou art but a dim moaning heard From out the pitiless glooms of Chaos, I Shall be a power and a memory,
A name to scare all tyrants with, a light Unsetting as the pole-star, a great voice Heard in the breathless pauses of the fight By truth and freedom ever waged with wrong, Clear as a silver trumpet, to awake
Huge echoes that from age to age live on In kindred spirits, giving them a sense
Of boundless power from boundless suffering wrung. And many a glazing eye shall smile to see The memory of my triumph, (for to meet Wrong with endurance, and to overcome The present with a heart that looks beyond, Are triumph), like a prophet eagle, perch Upon the sacred banner of the right.
Evil springs up, and flowers, and bears no seed, And feeds the green earth with its swift decay, Leaving it richer for the growth of truth; But Good, once put in action or in thought,
Like a strong oak, doth from its boughs shed down The ripe germs of a forest. Thou, weak god, Shalt fade and be forgotten; but this soul, Fresh-living still in the serene abyss,
In every heaving shall partake, that grows From heart to heart among the sons of men,- As the ominous hum before the earthquake runs Far through the Ægean from roused isle to isle,— Foreboding wreck to palaces and shrines, And mighty rents in many a cavernous error That darkens the free light to man:-This heart Unscarred by thy grim vulture, as the truth Grows but more lovely 'neath the beaks and claws Of Harpies blind that fain would soil it, shall In all the throbbing exultations share That wait on freedom's triumphs, and in all The glorious agonies of martyr-spirits,— Sharp lightning-throes to split the jagged clouds That veil the future, showing them the end,- Pain's thorny crown for constancy and truth, Girding the temples like a wreath of stars. This is a thought, that, like the fabled laurel, Makes my faith thunder-proof, and thy dread bolts Fall on me like the silent flakes of snow
On the hoar brows of aged Caucasus :
But, O thought far more blissful, they can rend This cloud of flesh, and make my soul a star!
Unleash thy crouching thunders now, O Jove! Free this high heart which, a poor captive long, Doth knock to be let forth, this heart which still, In its invincible manhood, overtops
Thy puny godship as this mountain doth The pines that moss its roots. O even now, While from my peak of suffering I look down,
Beholding with a far-spread gush of hope The sunrise of that Beauty in whose face, Shone all around with love, no man shall look But straightway like a god he is uplift, Unto the throne long empty for his sake, And clearly oft foreshadowed in wide dreams By his free inward nature, which nor thou, Nor any anarch after thee, can bind
From working its great doom,-now, now set free This essence, not to die, but to become
Part of that awful Presence which doth haunt
The palaces of tyrants, to scare off,
With its grim eyes and fearful whisperings And hideous sense of utter loneliness,
All hope of safety, all desire of peace,
All but the loathed forefeeling of blank death,— Part of that spirit which doth ever brood
In patient calm on the unpilfered nest
Of man's deep heart, till mighty thoughts grow fledged To sail with darkening shadow o'er the world, Until they swoop, and their pale quarry make Of some o'erbloated wrong,—that spirit which Scatters great hopes in the seed-field of man, Like acorns among grain, to grow and be A roof for freedom in all coming time.
But no, this cannot be; for ages yet, In solitude unbroken, shall I hear The angry Caspian to the Euxine shout, And Euxine answer with a muffled roar, On either side storming the giant walls
Of Caucasus with leagues of climbing foam, (Less, from my height, than flakes of downy snow), That draw back baffled but to hurl again, Snatched up in wrath and horrible turmoil, Mountain on mountain, as the Titans erst, My brethren, scaling the high seat of Jove, Heaved Pelion upon Ossa's shoulders broad, In vain emprise. The moon will come and go With her monotonous vicissitude;
Once beautiful, when I was free to walk Among my fellows and to interchange
The influence benign of loving eyes,
But now by aged use grown wearisome;
False thought! most false for how could I endure
These crawling centuries of lonely woe
Unshamed by weak complaining, but for thee, Loneliest, save me, of all created things, Mild-eyed Astartè, my best comforter, With thy pale smile of sad benignity?
Year after year will pass away and seem To me, in mine eternal agony, But as the shadows of dumb summer-clouds, Which I have watched so often darkening o'er The vast Sarmatian plain, league-wide at first, But, with still swiftness, lessening on and on Till cloud and shadow meet and mingle where The grey horizon fades into the sky, Far, far to northward. Yes, for ages yet Must I lie here upon my altar huge,
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