Julian and Maddalo: A Conversation.


   I RODE one evening with Count Maddalo
   Upon the bank of land which breaks the flow
   Of Adria towards Venice. A bare strand
   Of hillocks, heaped from ever-shifting sand,
   Matted with thistles and amphibious weeds,
   Such as from earth's embrace the salt ooze breeds,
   Is this; an uninhabited sea-side,
   Which the lone fisher, when his nets are dried,
   Abandons; and no other object breaks
   The waste but one dwarf tree and some few stakes                   10
   Broken and unrepaired, and the tide makes
   A narrow space of level sand thereon,
   Where 't was our wont to ride while day went down.
   This ride was my delight. I love all waste
   And solitary places; where we taste
   The pleasure of believing what we see
   Is boundless, as we wish our souls to be;
   And such was this wide ocean, and this shore
   More barren than its billows; and yet more
   Than all, with a remembered friend I love                          20
   To ride as then I rode;--for the winds drove
   The living spray along the sunny air
   Into our faces; the blue heavens were bare,
   Stripped to their depths by the awakening north;
   And from the waves sound like delight broke forth
   Harmonizing with solitude, and sent
   Into our hearts aërial merriment.
   So, as we rode, we talked; and the swift thought,
   Winging itself with laughter, lingered not,
   But flew from brain to brain,--such glee was ours,                 30
   Charged with light memories of remembered hours,
   None slow enough for sadness; till we came
   Homeward, which always makes the spirit tame.
   This day had been cheerful but cold, and now
   The sun was sinking, and the wind also.
   Our talk grew somewhat serious, as may be
   Talk interrupted with such raillery
   As mocks itself, because it cannot scorn
   The thoughts it would extinguish. 'T was forlorn,
   Yet pleasing; such as once, so poets tell,                         40
   The devils held within the dales of Hell,
   Concerning God, freewill and destiny;
   Of all that earth has been, or yet may be,
   All that vain men imagine or believe,
   Or hope can paint, or suffering may achieve,
   We descanted; and I (for ever still
   Is it not wise to make the best of ill?)
   Argued against despondency, but pride
   Made my companion take the darker side.
   The sense that he was greater than his kind                        50
   Had struck, methinks, his eagle spirit blind
   By gazing on its own exceeding light.
   Meanwhile the sun paused ere it should alight,
   Over the horizon of the mountains. Oh,
   How beautiful is sunset, when the glow
   Of Heaven descends upon a land like thee,
   Thou Paradise of exiles, Italy!
   Thy mountains, seas and vineyards and the towers
   Of cities they encircle!--It was ours
   To stand on thee, beholding it; and then,                          60
   Just where we had dismounted, the Count's men
   Were waiting for us with the gondola.
   As those who pause on some delightful way
   Though bent on pleasant pilgrimage, we stood
   Looking upon the evening, and the flood,
   Which lay between the city and the shore,
   Paved with the image of the sky. The hoar
   And aëry Alps towards the north appeared,
   Through mist, an heaven-sustaining bulwark reared
   Between the east and west; and half the sky                        70
   Was roofed with clouds of rich emblazonry,
   Dark purple at the zenith, which still grew
   Down the steep west into a wondrous hue
   Brighter than burning gold, even to the rent
   Where the swift sun yet paused in his descent
   Among the many-folded hills. They were
   Those famous Euganean hills, which bear,
   As seen from Lido through the harbor piles,
   The likeness of a clump of peakèd isles;
   And then, as if the earth and sea had been                         80
   Dissolved into one lake of fire, were seen
   Those mountains towering as from waves of flame
   Around the vaporous sun, from which there came
   The inmost purple spirit of light, and made
   Their very peaks transparent. 'Ere it fade,'
   Said my companion, 'I will show you soon
   A better station.' So, o'er the lagune
   We glided; and from that funereal bark
   I leaned, and saw the city, and could mark
   How from their many isles, in evening's gleam,                     90
   Its temples and its palaces did seem
   Like fabrics of enchantment piled to Heaven.
   I was about to speak, when-- 'We are even
   Now at the point I meant,' said Maddalo,
   And bade the gondolieri cease to row.
   'Look, Julian, on the west, and listen well
   If you hear not a deep and heavy bell.'
   I looked, and saw between us and the sun
   A building on an island,--such a one
   As age to age might add, for uses vile,                           100
   A windowless, deformed and dreary pile;
   And on the top an open tower, where hung
   A bell, which in the radiance swayed and swung;
   We could just hear its hoarse and iron tongue;
   The broad sun sunk behind it, and it tolled
   In strong and black relief. 'What we behold
   Shall be the madhouse and its belfry tower,'
   Said Maddalo; 'and ever at this hour
   Those who may cross the water hear that bell,
   Which calls the maniacs each one from his cell                    110
   To vespers.'--'As much skill as need to pray
   In thanks or hope for their dark lot have they
   To their stern Maker,' I replied. 'O ho!
   You talk as in years past,' said Maddalo.
   ''T is strange men change not. You were ever still
   Among Christ's flock a perilous infidel,
   A wolf for the meek lambs--if you can't swim,
   Beware of Providence.' I looked on him,
   But the gay smile had faded in his eye,--
   'And such,' he cried, 'is our mortality;                          120
   And this must be the emblem and the sign
   Of what should be eternal and divine!
   And, like that black and dreary bell, the soul,
   Hung in a heaven-illumined tower, must toll
   Our thoughts and our desires to meet below
   Round the rent heart and pray--as madmen do
   For what? they know not, till the night of death,
   As sunset that strange vision, severeth
   Our memory from itself, and us from all
   We sought, and yet were baffled.' I recall                        130
   The sense of what he said, although I mar
   The force of his expressions. The broad star
   Of day meanwhile had sunk behind the hill,
   And the black bell became invisible,
   And the red tower looked gray, and all between,
   The churches, ships and palaces were seen
   Huddled in gloom; into the purple sea
   The orange hues of heaven sunk silently.
   We hardly spoke, and soon the gondola
   Conveyed me to my lodgings by the way.                            140
     The following morn was rainy, cold, and dim.
   Ere Maddalo arose, I called on him,
   And whilst I waited, with his child I played.
   A lovelier toy sweet Nature never made;
   A serious, subtle, wild, yet gentle being,
   Graceful without design, and unforeseeing,
   With eyes--oh, speak not of her eyes!--which seem
   Twin mirrors of Italian heaven, yet gleam
   With such deep meaning as we never see
   But in the human countenance. With me                             150
   She was a special favorite; I had nursed
   Her fine and feeble limbs when she came first
   To this bleak world; and she yet seemed to know
   On second sight her ancient playfellow,
   Less changed than she was by six months or so;
   For, after her first shyness was worn out,
   We sate there, rolling billiard balls about,
   When the Count entered. Salutations past--
   'The words you spoke last night might well have cast
   A darkness on my spirit. If man be                                160
   The passive thing you say, I should not see
   Much harm in the religions and old saws,
   (Though I may never own such leaden laws)
   Which break a teachless nature to the yoke.
   Mine is another faith.' Thus much I spoke,
   And noting he replied not, added: 'See
   This lovely child, blithe, innocent and free;
   She spends a happy time with little care,
   While we to such sick thoughts subjected are
   As came on you last night. It is our will                         170
   That thus enchains us to permitted ill.
   We might be otherwise, we might be all
   We dream of happy, high, majestical.
   Where is the love, beauty and truth we seek,
   But in our mind? and if we were not weak,
   Should we be less in deed than in desire?'
   'Ay, if we were not weak--and we aspire
   How vainly to be strong!' said Maddalo;
   'You talk Utopia.' 'It remains to know,'
   I then rejoined, 'and those who try may find                      180
   How strong the chains are which our spirit bind;
   Brittle perchance as straw. We are assured
   Much may be conquered, much may be endured
   Of what degrades and crushes us. We know
   That we have power over ourselves to do
   And suffer--what, we know not till we try;
   But something nobler than to live and die.
   So taught those kings of old philosophy,
   Who reigned before religion made men blind;
   And those who suffer with their suffering kind                    190
   Yet feel this faith religion.' 'My dear friend,'
   Said Maddalo, 'my judgment will not bend
   To your opinion, though I think you might
   Make such a system refutation-tight
   As far as words go. I knew one like you,
   Who to this city came some months ago,
   With whom I argued in this sort, and he
   Is now gone mad,--and so he answered me,--
   Poor fellow! but if you would like to go,
   We 'll visit him, and his wild talk will show                     200
   How vain are such aspiring theories.'
   'I hope to prove the induction otherwise,
   And that a want of that true theory still,
   Which seeks "a soul of goodness" in things ill,
   Or in himself or others, has thus bowed
   His being. There are some by nature proud,
   Who patient in all else demand but this--
   To love and be beloved with gentleness;
   And, being scorned, what wonder if they die
   Some living death? this is not destiny                            210
   But man's own wilful ill.'

                               As thus I spoke,
   Servants announced the gondola, and we
   Through the fast-falling rain and high-wrought sea
   Sailed to the island where the madhouse stands.
   We disembarked. The clap of tortured hands,
   Fierce yells and howlings and lamentings keen,
   And laughter where complaint had merrier been,
   Moans, shrieks, and curses, and blaspheming prayers,
   Accosted us. We climbed the oozy stairs
   Into an old courtyard. I heard on high,                           220
   Then, fragments of most touching melody,
   But looking up saw not the singer there.
   Through the black bars in the tempestuous air
   I saw, like weeds on a wrecked palace growing,
   Long tangled locks flung wildly forth, and flowing,
   Of those who on a sudden were beguiled
   Into strange silence, and looked forth and smiled
   Hearing sweet sounds. Then I: 'Methinks there were
   A cure of these with patience and kind care,
   If music can thus move. But what is he,                           230
   Whom we seek here?' 'Of his sad history
   I know but this,' said Maddalo: 'he came
   To Venice a dejected man, and fame
   Said he was wealthy, or he had been so.
   Some thought the loss of fortune wrought him woe;
   But he was ever talking in such sort
   As you do--far more sadly; he seemed hurt,
   Even as a man with his peculiar wrong,
   To hear but of the oppression of the strong,
   Or those absurd deceits (I think with you                         240
   In some respects, you know) which carry through
   The excellent impostors of this earth
   When they outface detection. He had worth,
   Poor fellow! but a humorist in his way.'
   'Alas, what drove him mad?' 'I cannot say;
   A lady came with him from France, and when
   She left him and returned, he wandered then
   About yon lonely isles of desert sand
   Till he grew wild. He had no cash or land
   Remaining; the police had brought him here;                       250
   Some fancy took him and he would not bear
   Removal; so I fitted up for him
   Those rooms beside the sea, to please his whim,
   And sent him busts and books and urns for flowers,
   Which had adorned his life in happier hours,
   And instruments of music. You may guess
   A stranger could do little more or less
   For one so gentle and unfortunate;
   And those are his sweet strains which charm the weight
   From madmen's chains, and make this Hell appear                   260
   A heaven of sacred silence, hushed to hear.'
   'Nay, this was kind of you; he had no claim,
   As the world says.' 'None--but the very same
   Which I on all mankind, were I as he
   Fallen to such deep reverse. His melody
   Is interrupted; now we hear the din
   Of madmen, shriek on shriek, again begin.
   Let us now visit him; after this strain
   He ever communes with himself again,
   And sees nor hears not any.' Having said                          270
   These words, we called the keeper, and he led
   To an apartment opening on the sea.
   There the poor wretch was sitting mournfully
   Near a piano, his pale fingers twined
   One with the other, and the ooze and wind
   Rushed through an open casement, and did sway
   His hair, and starred it with the brackish spray;
   His head was leaning on a music-book,
   And he was muttering, and his lean limbs shook;
   His lips were pressed against a folded leaf,                      280
   In hue too beautiful for health, and grief
   Smiled in their motions as they lay apart.
   As one who wrought from his own fervid heart
   The eloquence of passion, soon he raised
   His sad meek face, and eyes lustrous and glazed,
   And spoke--sometimes as one who wrote, and thought
   His words might move some heart that heeded not,
   If sent to distant lands; and then as one
   Reproaching deeds never to be undone
   With wondering self-compassion; then his speech                   290
   Was lost in grief, and then his words came each
   Unmodulated, cold, expressionless,
   But that from one jarred accent you might guess
   It was despair made them so uniform;
   And all the while the loud and gusty storm
   Hissed through the window, and we stood behind
   Stealing his accents from the envious wind
   Unseen. I yet remember what he said
   Distinctly; such impression his words made.

   'Month after month,' he cried, 'to bear this load,                300
   And, as a jade urged by the whip and goad,
   To drag life on--which like a heavy chain
   Lengthens behind with many a link of pain!--
   And not to speak my grief--oh, not to dare
   To give a human voice to my despair,
   But live, and move, and, wretched thing! smile on
   As if I never went aside to groan;

   And wear this mask of falsehood even to those
   Who are most dear--not for my own repose--
   Alas, no scorn or pain or hate could be                           310
   So heavy as that falsehood is to me!
   But that I cannot bear more altered faces
   Than needs must be, more changed and cold embraces,
   More misery, disappointment and mistrust
   To own me for their father. Would the dust
   Were covered in upon my body now!
   That the life ceased to toil within my brow!
   And then these thoughts would at the least be fled;
   Let us not fear such pain can vex the dead.

   'What Power delights to torture us? I know                        320
   That to myself I do not wholly owe
   What now I suffer, though in part I may.
   Alas! none strewed sweet flowers upon the way
   Where, wandering heedlessly, I met pale Pain,
   My shadow, which will leave me not again.
   If I have erred, there was no joy in error,
   But pain and insult and unrest and terror;
   I have not, as some do, bought penitence
   With pleasure, and a dark yet sweet offence;
   For then--if love and tenderness and truth                        330
   Had overlived hope's momentary youth,
   My creed should have redeemed me from repenting;
   But loathèd scorn and outrage unrelenting
   Met love excited by far other seeming
   Until the end was gained; as one from dreaming
   Of sweetest peace, I woke, and found my state
   Such as it is--

                    'O Thou my spirit's mate!
   Who, for thou art compassionate and wise,
   Wouldst pity me from thy most gentle eyes
   If this sad writing thou shouldst ever see--                      340
   My secret groans must be unheard by thee;
   Thou wouldst weep tears bitter as blood to know
   Thy lost friend's incommunicable woe.
   'Ye few by whom my nature has been weighed
   In friendship, let me not that name degrade
   By placing on your hearts the secret load
   Which crushes mine to dust. There is one road
   To peace, and that is truth, which follow ye!
   Love sometimes leads astray to misery.
   Yet think not, though subdued--and I may well                     350
   Say that I am subdued--that the full hell
   Within me would infect the untainted breast
   Of sacred Nature with its own unrest;
   As some perverted beings think to find
   In soorn or hate a medicine for the mind
   Which soorn or hate have wounded--oh, how vain!
   The dagger heals not, but may rend again!
   Believe that I am ever still the same
   In creed as in resolve; and what may tame
   My heart must leave the understanding free,                       360
   Or all would sink in this keen agony;
   Nor dream that I will join the vulgar cry;
   Or with my silence sanction tyranny;
   Or seek a moment's shelter from my pain
   In any madness which the world calls gain,
   Ambition or revenge or thoughts as stern
   As those which make me what I am; or turn
   To avarice or misanthropy or lust.
   Heap on me soon, O grave, thy welcome dust!
   Till then the dungeon may demand its prey,                        370
   And Poverty and Shame may meet and say,
   Halting beside me on the public way,
   "That love-devoted youth is ours; let 's sit
   Beside him; he may live some six months yet."
   Or the red scaffold, as our country bends,
   May ask some willing victim; or ye, friends,
   May fall under some sorrow, which this heart
   Or hand may share or vanquish or avert;
   I am prepared--in truth, with no proud joy,
   To do or suffer aught, as when a boy                              380
   I did devote to justice and to love
   My nature, worthless now!--

                                'I must remove
   A veil from my pent mind. 'T is torn aside!
   O pallid as Death's dedicated bride,
   Thou mockery which art sitting by my side,
   Am I not wan like thee? at the grave's call
   I haste, invited to thy wedding-ball,
   To greet the ghastly paramour for whom
   Thou hast deserted me--and made the tomb
   Thy bridal bed--but I beside your feet                            390
   Will lie and watch ye from my winding-sheet--
   Thus--wide-awake though dead--yet stay, oh, stay!
   Go not so soon--know not what I say--
   Hear but my reasons--I am mad, I fear,
   My fancy is o'erwrought--thou art not here;
   Pale art thou, 't is most true--but thou art gone,
   Thy work is finished--I am left alone.
   .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .
   'Nay, was it I who wooed thee to this breast,
   Which like a serpent thou envenomest
   As in repayment of the warmth it lent?                            400
   Didst thou not seek me for thine own content?
   Did not thy love awaken mine? I thought
   That thou wert she who said "You kiss me not
   Ever; I fear you do not love me now"--
   In truth I loved even to my overthrow
   Her who would fain forget these words; but they
   Cling to her mind, and cannot pass away.
   .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .
   'You say that I am proud--that when I speak
   My lip is tortured with the wrongs which break
   The spirit it expresses.--Never one                               410
   Humbled himself before, as I have done!
   Even the instinctive worm on which we tread
   Turns, though it wound not--then with prostrate head
   Sinks in the dust and writhes like me--and dies?
   No: wears a living death of agonies!
   As the slow shadows of the pointed grass
   Mark the eternal periods, his pangs pass,
   Slow, ever-moving, making moments be
   As mine seem,--each an immortality!
   .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .
   'That you had never seen me--never heard                          420
   My voice, and more than all had ne'er endured
   The deep pollution of my loathed embrace--
   That your eyes ne'er had lied love in my face--
   That, like some maniac monk, I had torn out
   The nerves of manhood by their bleeding root
   With mine own quivering fingers, so that ne'er
   Our hearts had for a moment mingled there
   To disunite in horror--these were not
   With thee like some suppressed and hideous thought
   Which flits athwart our musings but can find                      430
   No rest within a pure and gentle mind;
   Thou sealedst them with many a bare broad word,
   And sear'dst my memory o'er them,--for I heard
   And can forget not;--they were ministered
   One after one, those curses. Mix them up
   Like self-destroying poisons in one cup,
   And they will make one blessing, which thou ne'er
   Didst imprecate for on me,--death.
   .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .
                                      'It were
   A cruel punishment for one most cruel,
   If such can love, to make that love the fuel                      440
   Of the mind's hell--hate, scorn, remorse, despair;
   But me, whose heart a stranger's tear might wear
   As water-drops the sandy fountain-stone,
   Who loved and pitied all things, and could moan
   For woes which others hear not, and could see
   The absent with the glance of fantasy,
   And with the poor and trampled sit and weep,
   Following the captive to his dungeon deep;
   Me--who am as a nerve o'er which do creep
   The else unfelt oppressions of this earth,                        450
   And was to thee the flame upon thy hearth,
   When all beside was cold:--that thou on me
   Shouldst rain these plagues of blistering agony!
   Such curses are from lips once eloquent
   With love's too partial praise! Let none relent
   Who intend deeds too dreadful for a name
   Henceforth, if an example for the same
   They seek:--for thou on me look'dst so, and so--
   And didst speak thus--and thus. I live to show
   How much men bear and die not!
   .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .
                                  'Thou wilt tell                    460
   With the grimace of hate how horrible
   It was to meet my love when thine grew less;
   Thou wilt admire how I could e'er address
   Such features to love's work. This taunt, though true,
   (For indeed Nature nor in form nor hue
   Bestowed on me her choicest workmanship)
   Shall not be thy defence; for since thy lip
   Met mine first, years long past,--since thine eye kindled
   With soft fire under mine,--I have not dwindled,
   Nor changed in mind or body, or in aught                          470
   But as love changes what it loveth not
   After long years and many trials.

                                     'How vain
   Are words! I thought never to speak again,
   Not even in secret, not to mine own heart;
   But from my lips the unwilling accents start,
   And from my pen the words flow as I write,
   Dazzling my eyes with scalding tears; my sight
   Is dim to see that charactered in vain
   On this unfeeling leaf, which burns the brain
   And eats into it, blotting all things fair                        480
   And wise and good which time had written there.

   Those who inflict must suffer, for they see
   The work of their own hearts, and this must be
   Our chastisement or recompense.--O child!
   I would that thine were like to be more mild
   For both our wretched sakes,--for thine the most
   Who feelest already all that thou hast lost
   Without the power to wish it thine again;
   And as slow years pass, a funereal train,
   Each with the ghost of some lost hope or friend                   490
   Following it like its shadow, wilt thou bend
   No thought on my dead memory?
   .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .
                                 'Alas, love!
   Fear me not--against thee I would not move
   A finger in despite. Do I not live
   That thou mayst have less bitter cause to grieve?
   I give thee tears for scorn, and love for hate;
   And that thy lot may be less desolate
   Than his on whom thou tramplest, I refrain
   From that sweet sleep which medicines all pain.
   Then, when thou speakest of me, never say                         500
   "He could forgive not." Here I cast away
   All human passions, all revenge, all pride;
   I think, speak, act no ill; I do but hide
   Under these words, like embers, every spark
   Of that which has consumed me. Quick and dark
   The grave is yawning--as its roof shall cover
   My limbs with dust and worms under and over,
   So let Oblivion hide this grief--the air
   Closes upon my accents as despair
   Upon my heart--let death upon despair!'                           510

   He ceased, and overcome leant back awhile;
   Then rising, with a melancholy smile,
   Went to a sofa, and lay down, and slept
   A heavy sleep, and in his dreams he wept,
   And muttered some familiar name, and we
   Wept without shame in his society.
   I think I never was impressed so much;
   The man who were not must have lacked a touch
   Of human nature.--Then we lingered not,
   Although our argument was quite forgot;                           520
   But, calling the attendants, went to dine
   At Maddalo's; yet neither cheer nor wine
   Could give us spirits, for we talked of him
   And nothing else, till daylight made stars dim;
   And we agreed his was some dreadful ill
   Wrought on him boldly, yet unspeakable,
   By a dear friend; some deadly change in love
   Of one vowed deeply, which he dreamed not of;
   For whose sake he, it seemed, had fixed a blot
   Of falsehood on his mind which flourished not                     530
   But in the light of all-beholding truth;
   And having stamped this canker on his youth
   She had abandoned him--and how much more
   Might be his woe, we guessed not; he had store
   Of friends and fortune once, as we could guess
   From his nice habits and his gentleness;
   These were now lost--it were a grief indeed
   If he had changed one unsustaining reed
   For all that such a man might else adorn.
   The colors of his mind seemed yet unworn;                         540
   For the wild language of his grief was high--
   Such as in measure were called poetry.
   And I remember one remark which then
   Maddalo made. He said--'Most wretched men
   Are cradled into poetry by wrong;
   They learn in suffering what they teach in song.'

   If I had been an unconnected man,
   I, from this moment, should have formed some plan
   Never to leave sweet Venice,--for to me
   It was delight to ride by the lone sea;                           550
   And then the town is silent--one may write
   Or read in gondolas by day or night,
   Having the little brazen lamp alight,
   Unseen, uninterrupted; books are there,
   Pictures, and casts from all those statues fair
   Which were twin-born with poetry, and all
   We seek in towns, with little to recall
   Regrets for the green country. I might sit
   In Maddalo's great palace, and his wit
   And subtle talk would cheer the winter night                      560
   And make me know myself, and the firelight
   Would flash upon our faces, till the day
   Might dawn and make me wonder at my stay.
   But I had friends in London too. The chief
   Attraction here was that I sought relief
   From the deep tenderness that maniac wrought
   Within me--'t was perhaps an idle thought,
   But I imagined that if day by day
   I watched him, and but seldom went away,
   And studied all the beatings of his heart                         570
   With zeal, as men study some stubborn art
   For their own good, and could by patience find
   An entrance to the caverns of his mind,
   I might reclaim him from this dark estate.
   In friendships I had been most fortunate,
   Yet never saw I one whom I would call
   More willingly my friend; and this was all
   Accomplished not; such dreams of baseless good
   Oft come and go in crowds and solitude
   And leave no trace,--but what I now designed                      580
   Made, for long years, impression on my mind.
   The following morning, urged by my affairs,
   I left bright Venice.

                          After many years,
   And many changes, I returned; the name
   Of Venice, and its aspect, was the same;
   But Maddalo was travelling far away
   Among the mountains of Armenia.
   His dog was dead. His child had now become
   A woman; such as it has been my doom
   To meet with few, a wonder of this earth,                         590
   Where there is little of transcendent worth,
   Like one of Shakespeare's women. Kindly she,
   And with a manner beyond courtesy,
   Received her father's friend; and, when I asked
   Of the lorn maniac, she her memory tasked,
   And told, as she had heard, the mournful tale:
   'That the poor sufferer's health began to fail
   Two years from my departure, but that then
   The lady, who had left him, came again.
   Her mien had been imperious, but she now                          600
   Looked meek--perhaps remorse had brought her low.
   Her coming made him better, and they stayed
   Together at my father's--for I played
   As I remember with the lady's shawl;
   I might be six years old--but after all
   She left him.' 'Why, her heart must have been tough.
   How did it end?' 'And was not this enough?
   They met--they parted.' 'Child, is there no more?'
   'Something within that interval which bore
   The stamp of why they parted, how they met;                     610
   Yet if thine aged eyes disdain to wet
   Those wrinkled cheeks with youth's remembered tears,
   Ask me no more, but let the silent years
   Be closed and cered over their memory,
   As yon mute marble where their corpses lie.'
   I urged and questioned still; she told me how
   All happened--but the cold world shall not know.

Prometheus Unbound: A Lyrical Drama in Four Acts.
Author's Preface


The Greek tragic writers, in selecting as their subject any portion of their national history or mythology, employed in their treatment of it a certain arbitrary discretion. They by no means conceived themselves bound to adhere to the common interpretation or to imitate in story as in title their rivals and predecessors. Such a system would have amounted to a resignation of those claims to preference over their competitors which incited the composition. The Agamemnonian story was exhibited on the Athenian theatre with as many variations as dramas.

I have presumed to employ a similar license. The Prometheus Unbound of Æschylus supposed the reconciliation of Jupiter with his victim as the price of the disclosure of the danger threatened to his empire by the consummation of his marriage with Thetis. Thetis, according to this view of the subject, was given in marriage to Peleus, and Prometheus, by the permission of Jupiter, delivered from his captivity by Hercules. Had I framed my story on this model, I should have done no more than have attempted to restore the lost drama of Æschylus; an ambition which, if my preference to this mode of treating the subject had incited me to cherish, the recollection of the high comparison such an attempt would challenge might well abate. But, in truth, I was averse from a catastrophe so feeble as that of reconciling the Champion with the Oppressor of mankind. The moral interest of the fable, which is so powerfully sustained by the sufferings and endurance of Prometheus, would be annihilated if we could conceive of him as unsaying his high language and quailing before his successful and perfidious adversary. The only imaginary being, resembling in any degree Prometheus, is Satan; and Prometheus is, in my judgment, a more poetical character than Satan, because, in addition to courage, and majesty, and firm and patient opposition to omnipotent force, he is susceptible of being described as exempt from the taints of ambition, envy, revenge, and a desire for personal aggrandizement, which, in the hero of Paradise Lost, interfere with the interest. The character of Satan engenders in the mind a pernicious casuistry which leads us to weigh his faults with his wrongs, and to excuse the former because the latter exceed all measure. In the minds of those who consider that magnificent fiction with a religious feeling it engenders something worse. But Prometheus is, as it were, the type of the highest perfection of moral and intellectual nature impelled by the purest and the truest motives to the best and noblest ends.

This Poem was chiefly written upon the mountainous ruins of the Baths of Caracalla, among the flowery glades and thickets of odoriferous blossoming trees, which are extended in ever winding labyrinths upon its immense platforms and dizzy arches suspended in the air. The bright blue sky of Rome, and the effect of the vigorous awakening spring in that divinest climate, and the new life with which it drenches the spirits even to intoxication, were the inspiration of this drama.

The imagery which I have employed will be found, in many instances, to have been drawn from the operations of the human mind, or from those external actions by which they are expressed. This is unusual in modern poetry, although Dante and Shakespeare are full of instances of the same kind; Dante indeed more than any other poet, and with greater success. But the Greek poets, as writers to whom no resource of awakening the sympathy of their contemporaries was unknown, were in the habitual use of this power; and it is the study of their works (since a higher merit would probably be denied me) to which I am willing that my readers should impute this singularity.

One word is due in candor to the degree in which the study of contemporary writings may have tinged my composition, for such has been a topic of censure with regard to poems far more popular, and indeed more deservedly popular, than mine. It is impossible that any one, who inhabits the same age with such writers as those who stand in the foremost ranks of our own, can conscientiously assure himself that his language and tone of thought may not have been modified by the study of the productions of those extraordinary intellects. It is true that, not the spirit of their genius, but the forms in which it has manifested itself, are due less to the peculiarities of their own minds than to the peculiarity of the moral and intellectual condition of the minds among which they have been produced. Thus a number of writers possess the form, whilst they want the spirit of those whom, it is alleged, they imitate; because the former is the endowment of the age in which they live, and the latter must be the uncommunicated lightning of their own mind.

The peculiar style of intense and comprehensive imagery which distinguishes the modern literature of England has not been, as a general power, the product of the imitation of any particular writer. The mass of capabilities remains at every period materially the same; the circumstances which awaken it to action perpetually change. If England were divided into forty republics, each equal in population and extent to Athens, there is no reason to suppose but that, under institutions not more perfect than those of Athens, each would produce philosophers and poets equal to those who (if we except Shakespeare) have never been surpassed. We owe the great writers of the golden age of our literature to that fervid awakening of the public mind which shook to dust the oldest and most oppressive form of the Christian religion. We owe Milton to the progress and development of the same spirit: the sacred Milton was, let it ever be remembered, a republican and a bold inquirer into morals and religion. The great writers of our own age are, we have reason to suppose, the companions and forerunners of some unimagined change in our social condition or the opinions which cement it. The cloud of mind is discharging its collected lightning, and the equilibrium between institutions and opinions is now restoring or is about to be restored.

As to imitation, poetry is a mimetic art. It creates, but it creates by combination and representation. Poetical abstractions are beautiful and new, not because the portions of which they are composed had no previous existence in the mind of man or in Nature, but because the whole produced by their combination has some intelligible and beautiful analogy with those sources of emotion and thought and with the contemporary condition of them. One great poet is a masterpiece of Nature which another not only ought to study but must study. He might as wisely and as easily determine that his mind should no longer be the mirror of all that is lovely in the visible universe as exclude from his contemplation the beautiful which exists in the writings of a great contemporary. The pretence of doing it would be a presumption in any but the greatest; the effect, even in him, would be strained, unnatural and ineffectual. A poet is the combined product of such internal powers as modify the nature of others, and of such external influences as excite and sustain these powers; he is not one, but both. Every man's mind is, in this respect, modified by all the objects of Nature and art; by every word and every suggestion which he ever admitted to act upon his consciousness; it is the mirror upon which all forms are reflected and in which they compose one form. Poets, not otherwise than philosophers, painters, sculptors and musicians, are, in one sense, the creators, and, in another, the creations, of their age. From this subjection the loftiest do not escape. There is a similarity between Homer and Hesiod, between Æschylus and Euripides, between Virgil and Horace, between Dante and Petrarch, between Shakespeare and Fletcher, between Dryden and Pope; each has a generic resemblance under which their specific distinctions are arranged. If this similarity be the result of imitation, I am willing to confess that I have imitated.

Let this opportunity be conceded to me of acknowledging that I have what a Scotch philosopher characteristically terms a 'passion for reforming the world:' what passion incited him to write and publish his book he omits to explain. For my part I had rather be damned with Plato and Lord Bacon than go to Heaven with Paley and Malthus. But it is a mistake to suppose that I dedicate my poetical compositions solely to the direct enforcement of reform, or that I consider them in any degree as containing a reasoned system on the theory of human life. Didactic poetry is my abhorrence; nothing can be equally well expressed in prose that is not tedious and supererogatory in verse. My purpose has hitherto been simply to familiarize the highly refined imagination of the more select classes of poetical readers with beautiful idealisms of moral excellence; aware that, until the mind can love, and admire, and trust, and hope, and endure, reasoned principles of moral conduct are seeds cast upon the highway of life which the unconscious passenger tramples into dust, although they would bear the harvest of his happiness. Should I live to accomplish what I purpose, that is, produce a systematical history of what appear to me to be the genuine elements of human society, let not the advocates of injustice and superstition flatter themselves that I should take Æschylus rather than Plato as my model.

The having spoken of myself with unaffected freedom will need little apology with the candid; and let the uncandid consider that they injure me less than their own hearts and minds by misrepresentation. Whatever talents a person may possess to amuse and instruct others, be they ever so inconsiderable, he is yet bound to exert them: if his attempt be ineffectual, let the punishment of an unaccomplished purpose have been sufficient; let none trouble themselves to heap the dust of oblivion upon his efforts; the pile they raise will betray his grave which might otherwise have been unknown.

Prometheus Unbound: A Lyrical Drama in Four Acts.



DRAMATIS PERSONÆ
                            _
      PROMETHEUS.   ASIA     |
      DEMOGORGON.   PANTHEA  |-  Oceanides.
      JUPITER.      IONE    _|
      THE EARTH.    THE PHANTASM OF JUPITER.
      OCEAN.        THE SPIRIT OF THE EARTH.
      APOLLO.       THE SPIRIT OF THE MOON.
      MERCURY.      SPIRITS OF THE HOURS.
      HERCULES.     SPIRITS. ECHOES. FAUNS.
                    FURIES.



Act I


SCENE, a Ravine of Icy Rocks in the Indian Caucasus. PROMETHEUS is discovered bound to the Precipice. PANTEA and IONE are seated at his feet. Time, Night. During the Scene morning slowly breaks.

PROMETHEUS
      MONARCH of Gods and Dæmons, and all Spirits
      But One, who throng those bright and rolling worlds
      Which Thou and I alone of living things
      Behold with sleepless eyes! regard this Earth
      Made multitudinous with thy slaves, whom thou
      Requitest for knee-worship, prayer, and praise,
      And toil, and hecatombs of broken hearts,
      With fear and self-contempt and barren hope;
      Whilst me, who am thy foe, eyeless in hate,
      Hast thou made reign and triumph, to thy scorn,                 10
      O'er mine own misery and thy vain revenge.
      Three thousand years of sleep-unsheltered hours,
      And moments aye divided by keen pangs
      Till they seemed years, torture and solitude,
      Scorn and despair--these are mine empire:
      More glorious far than that which thou surveyest
      From thine unenvied throne, O Mighty God!
      Almighty, had I deigned to share the shame
      Of thine ill tyranny, and hung not here
      Nailed to this wall of eagle-baffling mountain,                 20
      Black, wintry, dead, unmeasured; without herb,
      Insect, or beast, or shape or sound of life.
      Ah me! alas, pain, pain ever, forever!

      No change, no pause, no hope! Yet I endure.
      I ask the Earth, have not the mountains felt?
      I ask yon Heaven, the all-beholding Sun,
      Has it not seen? The Sea, in storm or calm,
      Heaven's ever-changing shadow, spread below,
      Have its deaf waves not heard my agony?
      Ah me! alas, pain, pain ever, forever!                          30

      The crawling glaciers pierce me with the spears
      Of their moon-freezing crystals; the bright chains
      Eat with their burning cold into my bones.
      Heaven's wingèd hound, polluting from thy lips
      His beak in poison not his own, tears up
      My heart; and shapeless sights come wandering by,
      The ghastly people of the realm of dream,
      Mocking me; and the Earthquake-fiends are charged
      To wrench the rivets from my quivering wounds
      When the rocks split and close again behind;                    40
      While from their loud abysses howling throng
      The genii of the storm, urging the rage
      Of whirlwind, and afflict me with keen hail.
      And yet to me welcome is day and night,
      Whether one breaks the hoar-frost of the morn,
      Or starry, dim, and slow, the other climbs
      The leaden-colored east; for then they lead
      The wingless, crawling hours, one among whom--
      As some dark Priest hales the reluctant victim--
      Shall drag thee, cruel King, to kiss the blood                  50
      From these pale feet, which then might trample thee
      If they disdained not such a prostrate slave.
      Disdain! Ah, no! I pity thee. What ruin
      Will hunt thee undefended through the wide Heaven!
      How will thy soul, cloven to its depth with terror,
      Gape like a hell within! I speak in grief,
      Not exultation, for I hate no more,
      As then ere misery made me wise. The curse
      Once breathed on thee I would recall. Ye Mountains,
      Whose many-voicèd Echoes, through the mist                      60
      Of cataracts, flung the thunder of that spell!
      Ye icy Springs, stagnant with wrinkling frost,
      Which vibrated to hear me, and then crept
      Shuddering through India! Thou serenest Air
      Through which the Sun walks burning without beams!
      And ye swift Whirlwinds, who on poisèd wings
      Hung mute and moveless o'er yon hushed abyss,
      As thunder, louder than your own, made rock
      The orbèd world! If then my words had power,
      Though I am changed so that aught evil wish                     70
      Is dead within; although no memory be
      Of what is hate, let them not lose it now!
      What was that curse? for ye all heard me speak.

FIRST VOICE: from the Mountains
      Thrice three hundred thousand years
        O'er the earthquake's couch we stood;
      Oft, as men convulsed with fears,
        We trembled in our multitude.

SECOND VOICE: from the Springs
      Thunderbolts had parched our water,
        We had been stained with bitter blood,
      And had run mute, 'mid shrieks of slaughter                     80
        Through a city and a solitude.

THIRD VOICE: from the Air
      I had clothed, since Earth uprose,
        Its wastes in colors not their own,
      And oft had my serene repose
        Been cloven by many a rending groan.

FOURTH VOICE: from the Whirlwinds
      We had soared beneath these mountains
        Unresting ages; nor had thunder,
      Nor yon volcano's flaming fountains,
        Nor any power above or under
        Ever made us mute with wonder.                                90

FIRST VOICE
      But never bowed our snowy crest
      As at the voice of thine unrest.

SECOND VOICE
      Never such a sound before
      To the Indian waves we bore.
      A pilot asleep on the howling sea
      Leaped up from the deck in agony,
      And heard, and cried, 'Ah, woe is me!'
      And died as mad as the wild waves be.

THIRD VOICE
      By such dread words from Earth to Heaven
      My still realm was never riven;                                100
      When its wound was closed, there stood
      Darkness o'er the day like blood.

FOURTH VOICE
      And we shrank back: for dreams of ruin
      To frozen caves our flight pursuing
      Made us keep silence--thus--and thus--
      Though silence is a hell to us.

THE EARTH
      The tongueless caverns of the craggy hills
      Cried, 'Misery!' then; the hollow Heaven replied,
      'Misery!' And the Ocean's purple waves,
      Climbing the land, howled to the lashing winds,                110
      And the pale nations heard it, 'Misery!'

PROMETHEUS
      I hear a sound of voices; not the voice
      Which I gave forth. Mother, thy sons and thou
      Scorn him, without whose all-enduring will
      Beneath the fierce omnipotence of Jove,
      Both they and thou had vanished, like thin mist
      Unrolled on the morning wind. Know ye not me,
      The Titan? He who made his agony
      The barrier to your else all-conquering foe?
      O rock-embosomed lawns and snow-fed streams,                   120
      Now seen athwart frore vapors, deep below,
      Through whose o'ershadowing woods I wandered once
      With Asia, drinking life from her loved eyes;
      Why scorns the spirit, which informs ye, now
      To commune with me? me alone who checked,
      As one who checks a fiend-drawn charioteer,
      The falsehood and the force of him who reigns
      Supreme, and with the groans of pining slaves
      Fills your dim glens and liquid wildernesses:
      Why answer ye not, still? Brethren!

THE EARTH
                                           They dare not.            130

PROMETHEUS
      Who dares? for I would hear that curse again.
      Ha, what an awful whisper rises up!
      'Tis scarce like sound; it tingles through the frame
      As lightning tingles, hovering ere it strike.
      Speak, Spirit! from thine inorganic voice
      I only know that thou art moving near
      And love. How cursed I him?

THE EARTH
                                   How canst thou hear
      Who knowest not the language of the dead?

PROMETHEUS
      Thou art a living spirit; speak as they.

THE EARTH
      I dare not speak like life, lest Heaven's fell King            140
      Should hear, and link me to some wheel of pain
      More torturing than the one whereon I roll.
      Subtle thou art and good; and though the Gods
      Hear not this voice, yet thou art more than God,
      Being wise and kind: earnestly hearken now.

PROMETHEUS
      Obscurely through my brain, like shadows dim,
      Sweep awful thoughts, rapid and thick. I feel
      Faint, like one mingled in entwining love;
      Yet 't is not pleasure.

THE EARTH
                               No, thou canst not hear;
      Thou art immortal, and this tongue is known                    150
      Only to those who die.

PROMETHEUS
                              And what art thou,
      O melancholy Voice?

THE EARTH
                           I am the Earth,
      Thy mother; she within whose stony veins,
      To the last fibre of the loftiest tree
      Whose thin leaves trembled in the frozen air,
      Joy ran, as blood within a living frame,
      When thou didst from her bosom, like a cloud
      Of glory, arise, a spirit of keen joy!
      And at thy voice her pining sons uplifted
      Their prostrate brows from the polluting dust,                 160
      And our almighty Tyrant with fierce dread
      Grew pale, until his thunder chained thee here.
      Then--see those million worlds which burn and roll
      Around us--their inhabitants beheld
      My spherèd light wane in wide Heaven; the sea
      Was lifted by strange tempest, and new fire
      From earthquake-rifted mountains of bright snow
      Shook its portentous hair beneath Heaven's frown;
      Lightning and Inundation vexed the plains;
      Blue thistles bloomed in cities; foodless toads                170
      Within voluptuous chambers panting crawled.
      When Plague had fallen on man and beast and worm,
      And Famine; and black blight on herb and tree;
      And in the corn, and vines, and meadow-grass,
      Teemed ineradicable poisonous weeds
      Draining their growth, for my wan breast was dry
      With grief, and the thin air, my breath, was stained
      With the contagion of a mother's hate
      Breathed on her child's destroyer; ay, I heard
      Thy curse, the which, if thou rememberest not,                 180
      Yet my innumerable seas and streams,
      Mountains, and caves, and winds, and yon wide air,
      And the inarticulate people of the dead,
      Preserve, a treasured spell. We meditate
      In secret joy and hope those dreadful words,
      But dare not speak them.

PROMETHEUS
                                Venerable mother!
      All else who live and suffer take from thee
      Some comfort; flowers, and fruits, and happy sounds,
      And love, though fleeting; these may not be mine.
      But mine own words, I pray, deny me not.                       190

THE EARTH
      They shall be told. Ere Babylon was dust,
      The Magus Zoroaster, my dead child,
      Met his own image walking in the garden.
      That apparition, sole of men, he saw.
      For know there are two worlds of life and death:
      One that which thou beholdest; but the other
      Is underneath the grave, where do inhabit
      The shadows of all forms that think and live,
      Till death unite them and they part no more;
      Dreams and the light imaginings of men,                        200
      And all that faith creates or love desires,
      Terrible, strange, sublime and beauteous shapes.
      There thou art, and dost hang, a writhing shade,
      'Mid whirlwind-peopled mountains; all the gods
      Are there, and all the powers of nameless worlds,
      Vast, sceptred phantoms; heroes, men, and beasts;
      And Demogorgon, a tremendous gloom;
      And he, the supreme Tyrant, on his throne
      Of burning gold. Son, one of these shall utter
      The curse which all remember. Call at will                     210
      Thine own ghost, or the ghost of Jupiter,
      Hades or Typhon, or what mightier Gods
      From all-prolific Evil, since thy ruin,
      Have sprung, and trampled on my prostrate sons.
      Ask, and they must reply: so the revenge
      Of the Supreme may sweep through vacant shades,
      As rainy wind through the abandoned gate
      Of a fallen palace.

PROMETHEUS
                           Mother, let not aught
      Of that which may be evil pass again
      My lips, or those of aught resembling me.                      220
      Phantasm of Jupiter, arise, appear!

IONE
        My wings are folded o'er mine ears;
          My wings are crossèd o'er mine eyes;
        Yet through their silver shade appears,
          And through their lulling plumes arise,
        A Shape, a throng of sounds.
          May it be no ill to thee
        O thou of many wounds!
      Near whom, for our sweet sister's sake,
      Ever thus we watch and wake.                                   230

PANTHEA
        The sound is of whirlwind underground,
          Earthquake, and fire, and mountains cloven;
        The shape is awful, like the sound,
          Clothed in dark purple, star-inwoven.
        A sceptre of pale gold,
          To stay steps proud, o'er the slow cloud,
        His veinèd hand doth hold.
      Cruel he looks, but calm and strong,
      Like one who does, not suffers wrong.

PHANTASM OF JUPITER
      Why have the secret powers of this strange world               240
      Driven me, a frail and empty phantom, hither
      On direst storms? What unaccustomed sounds
      Are hovering on my lips, unlike the voice
      With which our pallid race hold ghastly talk
      In darkness? And, proud sufferer, who art thou?

PROMETHEUS
      Tremendous Image! as thou art must be
      He whom thou shadowest forth. I am his foe,
      The Titan. Speak the words which I would hear,
      Although no thought inform thine empty voice.

THE EARTH
      Listen! And though your echoes must be mute,                   250
      Gray mountains, and old woods, and haunted springs,
      Prophetic caves, and isle-surrounding streams,
      Rejoice to hear what yet ye cannot speak.

PHANTASM
      A spirit seizes me and speaks within;
      It tears me as fire tears a thunder-cloud.

PANTHEA
      See how he lifts his mighty looks! the Heaven
      Darkens above.

IONE
                      He speaks! Oh, shelter me!

PROMETHEUS
      I see the curse on gestures proud and cold,
      And looks of firm defiance, and calm hate,
      And such despair as mocks itself with smiles,                  260
      Written as on a scroll: yet speak! Oh, speak!

PHANTASM
        Fiend, I defy thee! with a calm, fixed mind,
          All that thou canst inflict I bid thee do;
        Foul tyrant both of Gods and humankind,
          One only being shalt thou not subdue.
            Rain then thy plagues upon me here,
            Ghastly disease, and frenzying fear;
            And let alternate frost and fire
            Eat into me, and be thine ire
        Lightning, and cutting hail, and legioned forms              270
      Of furies, driving by upon the wounding storms.

        Ay, do thy worst! Thou art omnipotent.
          O'er all things but thyself I gave thee power,
        And my own will. Be thy swift mischiefs sent
          To blast mankind, from yon ethereal tower.
            Let thy malignant spirit move
            In darkness over those I love;
            On me and mine I imprecate
            The utmost torture of thy hate;
        And thus devote to sleepless agony,                          280
      This undeclining head while thou must reign on high.

        But thou, who art the God and Lord: O thou
          Who fillest with thy soul this world of woe,
        To whom all things of Earth and Heaven do bow
          In fear and worship--all-prevailing foe!
            I curse thee! let a sufferer's curse
            Clasp thee, his torturer, like remorse;
            Till thine Infinity shall be
            A robe of envenomed agony;
        And thine Omnipotence a crown of pain,                       290
      To cling like burning gold round thy dissolving brain!

        Heap on thy soul, by virtue of this Curse,
          Ill deeds; then be thou damned, beholding good;
        Both infinite as is the universe,
          And thou, and thy self-torturing solitude.
            An awful image of calm power
            Though now thou sittest, let the hour
            Come, when thou must appear to be
            That which thou art internally;
        And after many a false and fruitless crime,                  300
      Scorn track thy lagging fall through boundless space and time!

PROMETHEUS
      Were these my words, O Parent?

THE EARTH
                                      They were thine.

PROMETHEUS
      It doth repent me; words are quick and vain;
      Grief for awhile is blind, and so was mine.
      I wish no living thing to suffer pain.

THE EARTH
        Misery, oh, misery to me,
        That Jove at length should vanquish thee!
        Wail, howl aloud, Land and Sea,
        The Earth's rent heart shall answer ye!
        Howl, Spirits of the living and the dead,                    310
      Your refuge, your defence, lies fallen and vanquishèd!

FIRST ECHO
      Lies fallen and vanquishèd!

SECOND ECHO
                                   Fallen and vanquishèd!

IONE
      Fear not: 't is but some passing spasm,
        The Titan is unvanquished still.
      But see, where through the azure chasm
        Of yon forked and snowy hill,
      Trampling the slant winds on high
        With golden-sandalled feet, that glow
            Under plumes of purple dye,                              320
            Like rose-ensanguined ivory,
              A Shape comes now,
      Stretching on high from his right hand
              A serpent-cinctured wand.

PANTHEA
      'T is Jove's world-wandering herald, Mercury.

IONE
      And who are those with hydra tresses
          And iron wings, that climb the wind,
      Whom the frowning God represses,--
          Like vapors steaming up behind,
      Clanging loud, an endless crowd?                               330

PANTHEA
          These are Jove's tempest-walking hounds,
        Whom he gluts with groans and blood,
        When charioted on sulphurous cloud
          He bursts Heaven's bounds.

IONE
        Are they now led from the thin dead
          On new pangs to be fed?

PANTHEA
      The Titan looks as ever, firm, not proud.

FIRST FURY
      Ha! I scent life!

SECOND FURY
                         Let me but look into his eyes!

THIRD FURY
      The hope of torturing him smells like a heap
      Of corpses to a death-bird after battle.                       340

FIRST FURY
      Darest thou delay, O Herald! take cheer, Hounds
      Of Hell: what if the Son of Maia soon
      Should make us food and sport--who can please long
      The Omnipotent?

MERCURY
                       Back to your towers of iron,
      And gnash, beside the streams of fire and wail,
      Your foodless teeth. Geryon, arise! and Gorgon,
      Chimæra, and thou Sphinx, subtlest of fiends,
      Who ministered to Thebes Heaven's poisoned wine,
      Unnatural love, and more unnatural hate:
      These shall perform your task.

FIRST FURY
                                     Oh, mercy! mercy!               350
      We die with our desire! drive us not back!

MERCURY
      Crouch then in silence.
                               Awful Sufferer!
      To thee unwilling, most unwillingly
      I come, by the great Father's will driven down,
      To execute a doom of new revenge.
      Alas! I pity thee, and hate myself
      That I can do no more; aye from thy sight
      Returning, for a season, Heaven seems Hell,
      So thy worn form pursues me night and day,
      Smiling reproach. Wise art thou, firm and good,                360
      But vainly wouldst stand forth alone in strife
      Against the Omnipotent; as yon clear lamps,
      That measure and divide the weary years
      From which there is no refuge, long have taught
      And long must teach. Even now thy Torturer arms
      With the strange might of unimagined pains
      The powers who scheme slow agonies in Hell,
      And my commission is to lead them here,
      Or what more subtle, foul, or savage fiends
      People the abyss, and leave them to their task.                370
      Be it not so! there is a secret known
      To thee, and to none else of living things,
      Which may transfer the sceptre of wide Heaven,
      The fear of which perplexes the Supreme.
      Clothe it in words, and bid it clasp his throne
      In intercession; bend thy soul in prayer,
      And like a suppliant in some gorgeous fane,
      Let the will kneel within thy haughty heart,
      For benefits and meek submission tame
      The fiercest and the mightiest.

PROMETHEUS
                                       Evil minds                    380
      Change good to their own nature. I gave all
      He has; and in return he chains me here
      Years, ages, night and day; whether the Sun
      Split my parched skin, or in the moony night
      The crystal-wingèd snow cling round my hair;
      Whilst my belovèd race is trampled down
      By his thought-executing ministers.
      Such is the tyrant's recompense. 'T is just.
      He who is evil can receive no good;
      And for a world bestowed, or a friend lost,                    390
      He can feel hate, fear, shame; not gratitude.
      He but requites me for his own misdeed.
      Kindness to such is keen reproach, which breaks
      With bitter stings the light sleep of Revenge.
      Submission thou dost know I cannot try.
      For what submission but that fatal word,
      The death-seal of mankind's captivity,
      Like the Sicilian's hair-suspended sword,
      Which trembles o'er his crown, would he accept,
      Or could I yield? Which yet I will not yield.                  400
      Let others flatter Crime where it sis throned
      In brief Omnipotence; secure are they;
      For Justice, when triumphant, will weep down
      Pity, not punishment, on her own wrongs,
      Too much avenged by those who err. I wait,
      Enduring thus, the retributive hour
      Which since we spake is even nearer now.
      But hark, the hell-hounds clamor: fear delay:
      Behold! Heaven lowers under thy Father's frown.

MERCURY
      Oh, that we might be spared; I to inflict,                     410
      And thou to suffer! Once more answer me.
      Thou knowest not the period of Jove's power?

PROMETHEUS
      I know but this, that it must come.

MERCURY
                                           Alas!
      Thou canst not count thy years to come of pain!

PROMETHEUS
      They last while Jove must reign; nor more, nor less
      Do I desire or fear.

MERCURY
                            Yet pause, and plunge
      Into Eternity, where recorded time,
      Even all that we imagine, age on age,
      Seems but a point, and the reluctant mind
      Flags wearily in its unending flight,                          420
      Till it sink, dizzy, blind, lot, shelterless;
      Perchance it has not numbered the slow years
      Which thou must spend in torture, unreprieved?

PROMETHEUS
      Perchance no thought can count them, yet they pass.

MERCURY
      If thou mightst dwell among the Gods the while,
      Lapped in voluptuous joy?

PROMETHEUS
                                 I would not quit
      This bleak ravine, these unrepentant pains.

MERCURY
      Alas! I wonder at, yet pity thee.

PROMETHEUS
      Pity the self-despising slaves of Heaven,
      Not me, within whose mind sits peace serene,                   430
      As light in the sun, throned. How vain is talk!
      Call up the fiends.

IONE
                           Oh, sister, look! White fire
      Has cloven to the roots yon huge snow-loaded cedar;
      How fearfully God's thunder howls behind!

MERCURY
      I must obey his words and thine. Alas!
      Most heavily remorse hangs at my heart!

PANTHEA
      See where the child of Heaven, with wingèd feet,
      Runs down the slanted sunlight of the dawn.

IONE
      Dear sister, close thy plumes over thine eyes
      Lest thou behold and die; they come--they come--               440
      Blackening the birth of day with countless wings,
      And hollow underneath, like death.

FIRST FURY
                                          Prometheus!

SECOND FURY
      Immortal Titan!

THIRD FURY
                       Champion of Heaven's slaves!

PROMETHEUS
      He whom some dreadful voice invokes is here,
      Prometheus, the chained Titan. Horrible forms,
      What and who are ye? Never yet there came
      Phantasms so foul through monster-teeming Hell
      From the all-miscreative brain of Jove.
      Whilst I behold such execrable shapes,
      Methinks I grow like what I contemplate,                       450
      And laugh and stare in loathsome sympathy.

FIRST FURY
      We are the ministers of pain, and fear,
      And disappointment, and mistrust, and hate,
      And clinging crime; and as lean dogs pursue
      Through wood and lake some struck and sobbing fawn,
      We track all things that weep, and bleed, and live,
      When the great King betrays them to our will.

PROMETHEUS
      O many fearful natures in one name,
      I know ye; and these lakes and echoes know
      The darkness and the clangor of your wings!                    460
      But why more hideous than your loathèd selves
      Gather ye up in legions from the deep?

SECOND FURY
      We knew not that. Sisters, rejoice, rejoice!

PROMETHEUS
      Can aught exult in its deformity?

SECOND FURY
      The beauty of delight makes lovers glad,
      Gazing on one another: so are we.
      As from the rose which the pale priestess kneels
      To gather for her festal crown of flowers
      The aërial crimson falls, flushing her cheek,
      So from our victim's destined agony                            470
      The shade which is our form invests us round;
      Else we are shapeless as our mother Night.

PROMETHEUS
      I laugh your power, and his who sent you here,
      To lowest scorn. Pour forth the cup of pain.

FIRST FURY
      Thou thinkest we will rend thee bone from bone
      And nerve from nerve, working like fire within?

PROMETHEUS
      Pain is my element, as hate is thine;
      Ye rend me now; I care not.

SECOND FURY
                                   Dost imagine
      We will but laugh into thy lidless eyes?

PROMETHEUS
      I weigh not what ye do, but what ye suffer,                    480
      Being evil. Cruel was the power which called
      You, or aught else so wretched, into light.

THIRD FURY
      Thou think'st we will live through thee, one by one,
      Like animal life, and though we can obscure not
      The soul which burns within, that we will dwell
      Beside it, like a vain loud multitude,
      Vexing the self-content of wisest men;
      That we will be dread thought beneath thy brain,
      And foul desire round thine astonished heart,
      And blood within thy labyrinthine veins                        490
      Crawling like agony?

PROMETHEUS
                            Why, ye are thus now;
      Yet am I king over myself, and rule
      The torturing and conflicting throngs within,
      As Jove rules you when Hell grows mutinous.

CHORUS OF FURIES
      From the ends of the earth, from the ends of the earth,
      Where the night has its grave and the morning its birth,
              Come, come, come!
      O ye who shake hills with the scream of your mirth
      When cities sink howling in ruin; and ye
      Who with wingless footsteps trample the sea,                   500
      And close upon Shipwreck and Famine's track
      Sit chattering with joy on the foodless wreck;
              Come, come, come!
        Leave the bed, low, cold, and red,
        Strewed beneath a nation dead;
        Leave the hatred, as in ashes
          Fire is left for future burning;
        It will burst in bloodier flashes
          When ye stir it, soon returning;
        Leave the self-contempt implanted                            510
        In young spirits, sense-enchanted,
          Misery's yet unkindled fuel;
        Leave Hell's secrets half unchanted
          To the maniac dreamer; cruel
        More than ye can be with hate
            Is he with fear.
              Come, come, come!
      We are steaming up from Hell's wide gate
        And we burden the blasts of the atmosphere,
        But vainly we toil till ye come here.                        520

IONE.
      Sister, I hear the thunder of new wings.

PANTHEA
      These solid mountains quiver with the sound
      Even as the tremulous air; their shadows make
      The space within my plumes more black than night.

FIRST FURY
        Your call was as a wingèd car,
        Driven on whirlwinds fast and far;
        It rapt us from red gulfs of war.

SECOND FURY
        From wide cities, famine-wasted;

THIRD FURY
        Groans half heard, and blood untasted;

FOURTH FURY
        Kingly conclaves stern and cold,                             530
        Where blood with gold is bought and sold;

FIFTH FURY
        From the furnace, white and hot,
        In which--

A FURY
      Speak not; whisper not;
      I know all that ye would tell,
        But to speak might break the spell
        Which must bend the Invincible,
          The stern of thought;
      He yet defies the deepest power of Hell.

FURY
      Tear the veil!

ANOTHER FURY
                      It is torn.

CHORUS
                                    The pale stars of the morn
      Shine on a misery, dire to be borne.                           540
      Dost thou faint, mighty Titan? We laugh thee to scorn.
      Dost thou boast the clear knowledge thou waken'dst for man?
      Then was kindled within him a thirst which outran
      Those perishing waters; a thirst of fierce fever,
      Hope, love, doubt, desire, which consume him forever.
        One came forth of gentle worth,
        Smiling on the sanguine earth;
        His words outlived him, like swift poison
          Withering up truth, peace, and pity.
        Look! where round the wide horizon                           550
          Many a million-peopled city
        Vomits smoke in the bright air!
        Mark that outcry of despair!
        'T is his mild and gentle ghost
          Wailing for the faith he kindled.
        Look again! the flames almost
          To a glow-worm's lamp have dwindled;
        The survivors round the embers
            Gather in dread.
              Joy, joy, joy!                                         560
      Past ages crowd on thee, but each one remembers,
      And the future is dark, and the present is spread
      Like a pillow of thorns for thy slumberless head.

SEMICHORUS I
        Drops of bloody agony flow
        From his white and quivering brow.
        Grant a little respite now.
        See! a disenchanted nation
        Spring like day from desolation;
        To Truth its state is dedicate,
        And Freedom leads it forth, her mate;                        570
        A legioned band of linkèd brothers,
        Whom Love calls children--

SEMICHORUS II
                                    'T is another's.
        See how kindred murder kin!
        'T is the vintage-time for Death and Sin;
        Blood, like new wine, bubbles within;
              Till Despair smothers
      The struggling world, which slaves and tyrants win.
                                  [All the FURIES vanish, except one.

IONE
      Hark, sister! what a low yet dreadful groan
      Quite unsuppressed is tearing up the heart
      Of the good Titan, as storms tear the deep,                    580
      And beasts hear the sea moan in inland caves.
      Darest thou observe how the fiends torture him?

PANTHEA
      Alas! I looked forth twice, but will no more.

IONE
      What didst thou see?

PANTHEA
      A woful sight: a youth
      With patient looks nailed to a crucifix.

IONE
      What next?

PANTHEA
                  The heaven around, the earth below,
      Was peopled with thick shapes of human death,
      All horrible, and wrought by human hands;
      And some appeared the work of human hearts,
      For men were slowly killed by frowns and smiles;               590
      And other sights too foul to speak and live
      Were wandering by. Let us not tempt worse fear
      By looking forth; those groans are grief enough.

FURY
      Behold an emblem: those who do endure
      Deep wrongs for man, and scorn, and chains, but heap
      Thousand-fold torment on themselves and him.

PROMETHEUS
      Remit the anguish of that lighted stare;
      Close those wan lips; let that thorn-wounded brow
      Stream not with blood; it mingles with thy tears!
      Fix, fix those tortured orbs in peace and death,               600
      So thy sick throes shake not that crucifix,
      So those pale fingers play not with thy gore.
      Oh, horrible! Thy name I will not speak--
      It hath become a curse. I see, I see
      The wise, the mild, the lofty, and the just,
      Whom thy slaves hate for being like to thee,
      Some hunted by foul lies from their heart's home,
      An early-chosen, late-lamented home,
      As hooded ounces cling to the driven hind;
      Some linked to corpses in unwholesome cells;                   610
      Some--hear I not the multitude laugh loud?--
      Impaled in lingering fire; and mighty realms
      Float by my feet, like sea-uprooted isles,
      Whose sons are kneaded down in common blood
      By the red light of their own burning homes.

FURY
      Blood thou canst see, and fire; and canst hear groans:
      Worse things unheard, unseen, remain behind.

PROMETHEUS
      Worse?

FURY
              In each human heart terror survives
      The ruin it has gorged: the loftiest fear
      All that they would disdain to think were true.                620
      Hypocrisy and custom make their minds
      The fanes of many a worship, now outworn.
      They dare not devise good for man's estate,
      And yet they know not that they do not dare.
      The good want power, but to weep barren tears.
      The powerful goodness want; worse need for them.
      The wise want love; and those who love want wisdom;
      And all best things are thus confused to ill.
      Many are strong and rich, and would be just,
      But live among their suffering fellow-men                      630
      As if none felt; they know not what they do.

PROMETHEUS
      Thy words are like a cloud of wingèd snakes;
      And yet I pity those they torture not.

FURY
      Thou pitiest them? I speak no more!
                                                            [Vanishes.

PROMETHEUS
                                           Ah woe!
      Ah woe! Alas! pain, pain ever, forever!
      I close my tearless eyes, but see more clear
      Thy works within my woe-illumèd mind,
      Thou subtle tyrant! Peace is in the grave.
      The grave hides all things beautiful and good.
      I am a God and cannot find it there,                           640
      Nor would I seek it; for, though dread revenge,
      This is defeat, fierce king, not victory.
      The sights with which thou torturest gird my soul
      With new endurance, till the hour arrives
      When they shall be no types of things which are.

PANTHEA
      Alas! what sawest thou?

PROMETHEUS
                               There are two woes--
      To speak and to behold; thou spare me one.
      Names are there, Nature's sacred watchwords, they
      Were borne aloft in bright emblazonry;
      The nations thronged around, and cried aloud,                  650
      As with one voice, Truth, Liberty, and Love!
      Suddenly fierce confusion fell from heaven
      Among them; there was strife, deceit, and fear;
      Tyrants rushed in, and did divide the spoil.
      This was the shadow of the truth I saw.

THE EARTH
      I felt thy torture, son, with such mixed joy
      As pain and virtue give. To cheer thy state
      I bid ascend those subtle and fair spirits,
      Whose homes are the dim caves of human thought,
      And who inhabit, as birds wing the wind,                       660
      Its world-surrounding ether; they behold
      Beyond that twilight realm, as in a glass,
      The future; may they speak comfort to thee!

PANTHEA
      Look, sister, where a troop of spirits gather,
      Like flocks of clouds in spring's delightful weather,
      Thronging in the blue air!

IONE
                                  And see! more come,
      Like fountain-vapors when the winds are dumb,
      That climb up the ravine in scattered lines.
      And hark! is it the music of the pines?
      Is it the lake? Is it the waterfall?                           670

PANTHEA
      'T is something sadder, sweeter far than all.

CHORUS OF SPIRITS
          From unremembered ages we
          Gentle guides and guardians be
          Of heaven-oppressed mortality;
          And we breathe, and sicken not,
          The atmosphere of human thought:
          Be it dim, and dank, and gray,
          Like a storm-extinguished day,
          Travelled o'er by dying gleams;
            Be it bright as all between                              680
          Cloudless skies and windless streams,
            Silent, liquid, and serene;
          As the birds within the wind,
            As the fish within the wave,
          As the thoughts of man's own mind
            Float through all above the grave;
          We make there our liquid lair,
          Voyaging cloudlike and unpent
          Through the boundless element:
          Thence we bear the prophecy                                690
          Which begins and ends in thee!

IONE
      More yet come, one by one; the air around them
      Looks radiant as the air around a star.

FIRST SPIRIT
        On a battle-trumpet's blast
        I fled hither, fast, fast, fast,
        'Mid the darkness upward cast.
        From the dust of creeds outworn,
        From the tyrant's banner torn,
        Gathering round me, onward borne,
        There was mingled many a cry--                               700
        Freedom! Hope! Death! Victory!
        Till they faded through the sky;
        And one sound above, around,
        One sound beneath, around, above,
        Was moving; 't was the soul of love;
        'T was the hope, the prophecy,
        Which begins and ends in thee.

SECOND SPIRIT
        A rainbow's arch stood on the sea,
        Which rocked beneath, immovably;
        And the triumphant storm did flee,
        Like a conqueror, swift and proud,
        Begirt with many a captive cloud,
        A shapeless, dark and rapid crowd,
        Each by lightning riven in half.
        I heard the thunder hoarsely laugh.
        Mighty fleets were strewn like chaff
        And spread beneath a hell of death
        O'er the white waters. I alit
        On a great ship lightning-split,
        And speeded hither on the sigh                               720
        Of one who gave an enemy
        His plank, then plunged aside to die.

THIRD SPIRIT
      I sat beside a sage's bed,
      And the lamp was burning red
      Near the book where he had fed,
      When a Dream with plumes of flame
      To his pillow hovering came,
      And I knew it was the same
      Which had kindled long ago
      Pity, eloquence, and woe;                                      730
      And the world awhile below
      Wore the shade its lustre made.
      It has borne me here as fleet
      As Desire's lightning feet;
      I must ride it back ere morrow,
      Or the sage will wake in sorrow.

FOURTH SPIRIT
      On a poet's lips I slept
      Dreaming like a love-adept
      In the sound his breathing kept;
      Nor seeks nor finds he mortal blisses,                    &

Prometheus Unbound: A Lyrical Drama in Four Acts.



DRAMATIS PERSONÆ
                            _
      PROMETHEUS.   ASIA     |
      DEMOGORGON.   PANTHEA  |-  Oceanides.
      JUPITER.      IONE    _|
      THE EARTH.    THE PHANTASM OF JUPITER.
      OCEAN.        THE SPIRIT OF THE EARTH.
      APOLLO.       THE SPIRIT OF THE MOON.
      MERCURY.      SPIRITS OF THE HOURS.
      HERCULES.     SPIRITS. ECHOES. FAUNS.
                    FURIES.



Act II


SCENE I.--Morning. A lovely Vale in the Indian Caucasus. ASIA, alone.

ASIA
      FROM all the blasts of heaven thou hast descended;
      Yes, like a spirit, like a thought, which makes
      Unwonted tears throng to the horny eyes,
      And beatings haunt the desolated heart,
      Which should have learned repose; thou hast descended
      Cradled in tempests; thou dost wake, O Spring!
      O child of many winds! As suddenly
      Thou comest as the memory of a dream,
      Which now is sad because it hath been sweet;
      Like genius, or like joy which riseth up                        10
      As from the earth, clothing with golden clouds
      The desert of our life.
      This is the season, this the day, the hour;
      At sunrise thou shouldst come, sweet sister mine,
      Too long desired, too long delaying, come!
      How like death-worms the wingless moments crawl!
      The point of one white star is quivering still
      Deep in the orange light of widening morn
      Beyond the purple mountains; through a chasm
      Of wind-divided mist the darker lake                            20
      Reflects it; now it wanes; it gleams again
      As the waves fade, and as the burning threads
      Of woven cloud unravel in pale air;
      'T is lost! and through yon peaks of cloudlike snow
      The roseate sunlight quivers; hear I not
      The Æolian music of her sea-green plumes
      Winnowing the crimson dawn?

PANTHEA enters
                                   I feel, I see
      Those eyes which burn through smiles that fade in tears,
      Like stars half-quenched in mists of silver dew.
      Belovèd and most beautiful, who wearest                         30
      The shadow of that soul by which I live,
      How late thou art! the spherèd sun had climbed
      The sea; my heart was sick with hope, before
      The printless air felt thy belated plumes.

PANTHEA
      Pardon, great Sister! but my wings were faint
      With the delight of a remembered dream,
      As are the noontide plumes of summer winds
      Satiate with sweet flowers. I was wont to sleep
      Peacefully, and awake refreshed and calm,
      Before the sacred Titan's fall and thy                          40
      Unhappy love had made, through use and pity,
      Both love and woe familiar to my heart
      As they had grown to thine: erewhile I slept
      Under the glaucous caverns of old Ocean
      Within dim bowers of green and purple moss,
      Our young Ione's soft and milky arms
      Locked then, as now, behind my dark, moist hair,
      While my shut eyes and cheek were pressed within
      The folded depth of her life-breathing bosom:
      But not as now, since I am made the wind                        50
      Which fails beneath the music that I bear
      Of thy most wordless converse; since dissolved
      Into the sense with which love talks, my rest
      Was troubled and yet sweet; my waking hours
      Too full of care and pain.

ASIA
                                  Lift up thine eyes,
      And let me read thy dream.

PANTHEA
                                  As I have said,
      With our sea-sister at his feet I slept.
      The mountain mists, condensing at our voice
      Under the moon, had spread their snowy flakes,
      From the keen ice shielding our linkèd sleep.                   60
      Then two dreams came. One I remember not.
      But in the other his pale wound-worn limbs
      Fell from Prometheus, and the azure night
      Grew radiant with the glory of that form
      Which lives unchanged within, and his voice fell
      Like music which makes giddy the dim brain,
      Faint with intoxication of keen joy:
      'Sister of her whose footsteps pave the world
      With loveliness--more fair than aught but her,
      Whose shadow thou art--lift thine eyes on me.'                  70
      I lifted them; the overpowering light
      Of that immortal shape was shadowed o'er
      By love; which, from his soft and flowing limbs,
      And passion-parted lips, and keen, faint eyes,
      Steamed forth like vaporous fire; an atmosphere
      Which wrapped me in its all-dissolving power,
      As the warm ether of the morning sun
      Wraps ere it drinks some cloud of wandering dew.
      I saw not, heard not, moved not, only felt
      His presence flow and mingle through my blood                   80
      Till it became his life, and his grew mine,
      And I was thus absorbed, until it passed,
      And like the vapors when the sun sinks down,
      Gathering again in drops upon the pines,
      And tremulous as they, in the deep night
      My being was condensed; and as the rays
      Of thought were slowly gathered, I could hear
      His voice, whose accents lingered ere they died
      Like footsteps of weak melody; thy name
      Among the many sounds alone I heard                             90
      Of what might be articulate; though still
      I listened through the night when sound was none.
      Ione wakened then, and said to me:
      'Canst thou divine what troubles me tonight?
      I always knew what I desired before,
      Nor ever found delight to wish in vain.
      But now I cannot tell thee what I seek;
      I know not; something sweet, since it is sweet
      Even to desire; it is thy sport, false sister;
      Thou hast discovered some enchantment old,                     100
      Whose spells have stolen my spirit as I slept
      And mingled it with thine; for when just now
      We kissed, I felt within thy parted lips
      The sweet air that sustained me; and the warmth
      Of the life-blood, for loss of which I faint,
      Quivered between our intertwining arms.'
      I answered not, for the Eastern star grew pale,
      But fled to thee.

ASIA
                         Thou speakest, but thy words
      Are as the air; I feel them not. Oh, lift
      Thine eyes, that I may read his written soul!                  110

PANTHEA
      I lift them, though they droop beneath the load
      Of that they would express; what canst thou see
      But thine own fairest shadow imaged there?

ASIA
      Thine eyes are like the deep, blue, boundless heaven
      Contracted to two circles underneath
      Their long, fine lashes; dark, far, measureless,
      Orb within orb, and line through line inwoven.

PANTHEA
      Why lookest thou as if a spirit passed?

ASIA
      There is a change; beyond their inmost depth
      I see a shade, a shape: 't is He, arrayed                      120
      In the soft light of his own smiles, which spread
      Like radiance from the cloud-surrounded moon.
      Prometheus, it is thine! depart not yet!
      Say not those smiles that we shall meet again
      Within that bright pavilion which their beams
      Shall build on the waste world? The dream is told.
      What shape is that between us? Its rude hair
      Roughens the wind that lifts it, its regard
      Is wild and quick, yet 't is a thing of air,
      For through its gray robe gleams the golden dew                130
      Whose stars the noon has quenched not.

DREAM
                                              Follow! Follow!

PANTHEA
      It is mine other dream.

ASIA
                               It disappears.

PANTHEA
      It passes now into my mind. Methought
      As we sate here, the flower-infolding buds
      Burst on yon lightning-blasted almond tree;
      When swift from the white Scythian wilderness
      A wind swept forth wrinkling the Earth with frost;
      I looked, and all the blossoms were blown down;
      But on each leaf was stamped, as the blue bells
      Of Hyacinth tell Apollo's written grief,                       140
      OH, FOLLOW, FOLLOW!

ASIA
                           As you speak, your words
      Fill, pause by pause, my own forgotten sleep
      With shapes. Methought among the lawns together
      We wandered, underneath the young gray dawn,
      And multitudes of dense white fleecy clouds
      Were wandering in thick flocks along the mountains,
      Shepherded by the slow, unwilling wind;
      And the white dew on the new-bladed grass,
      Just piercing the dark earth, hung silently;
      And there was more which I remember not;                       150
      But on the shadows of the morning clouds,
      Athwart the purple mountain slope, was written
      FOLLOW, OH, FOLLOW! as they vanished by;
      And on each herb, from which Heaven's dew had fallen,
      The like was stamped, as with a withering fire;
      A wind arose among the pines; it shook
      The clinging music from their boughs, and then
      Low, sweet, faint sounds, like the farewell of ghosts,
      Were heard: OH, FOLLOW, FOLLOW, FOLLOW ME!
      And then I said, 'Panthea, look on me.'                        160
      But in the depth of those belovèd eyes
      Still I saw, FOLLOW, FOLLOW!

ECHO
                                    Follow, follow!

PANTHEA
      The crags, this clear spring morning, mock our voices,
      As they were spirit-tongued.

ASIA
                                    It is some being
      Around the crags. What fine clear sounds!
            Oh, list!

ECHOES, unseen
                Echoes we: listen!
                  We cannot stay:
                As dew-stars glisten
                  Then fade away--
                    Child of Ocean!                                  170

ASIA
      Hark! Spirits speak. The liquid responses
      Of their aërial tongues yet sound.

PANTHEA
                                         I hear.

ECHOES
            Oh, follow, follow,
              As our voice recedeth
            Through the caverns hollow,
              Where the forest spreadeth;
                  (More distant)
            Oh, follow, follow!
            Through the caverns hollow,
          As the song floats thou pursue,
          Where the wild bee never flew,                             180
          Through the noontide darkness deep,
          By the odor-breathing sleep
          Of faint night-flowers, and the waves
          At the fountain-lighted caves,
          While our music, wild and sweet,
          Mocks thy gently falling feet,
                Child of Ocean!

ASIA
      Shall we pursue the sound? It grows more faint
      And distant.

PANTHEA
                    List! the strain floats nearer now.

ECHOES
            In the world unknown                                     190
              Sleeps a voice unspoken;
            By thy step alone
              Can its rest be broken;
                Child of Ocean!

ASIA
      How the notes sink upon the ebbing wind!

ECHOES
            Oh, follow, follow!
            Through the caverns hollow,
          As the song floats thou pursue,
          By the woodland noontide dew;
          By the forests, lakes, and fountains,                      200
          Through the many-folded mountains;
          To the rents, and gulfs, and chasms,
          Where the Earth reposed from spasms,
          On the day when He and thou
          Parted, to commingle now;
                Child of Ocean!

ASIA
      Come, sweet Panthea, link thy hand in mine,
      And follow, ere the voices fade away.

SCENE II.--A Forest intermingled with Rocks and Caverns. ASIA and PANTHEA pass into it. Two young Fauns are sitting on a Rock, listening.

SEMICHORUS I OF SPIRITS
      The path through which that lovely twain
        Have passed, by cedar, pine, and yew,
        And each dark tree that ever grew,
        Is curtained out from Heaven's wide blue;
      Nor sun, nor moon, nor wind, nor rain,
          Can pierce its interwoven bowers,
      Nor aught, save where some cloud of dew,
      Drifted along the earth-creeping breeze
      Between the trunks of the hoar trees,
          Hangs each a pearl in the pale flowers                      10
        Of the green laurel blown anew,
      And bends, and then fades silently,
      One frail and fair anemone;
      Or when some star of many a one
      That climbs and wanders through steep night,
      Has found the cleft through which alone
      Beams fall from high those depths upon,--
      Ere it is borne away, away,
      By the swift Heavens that cannot stay,
      It scatters drops of golden light,                              20
      Like lines of rain that ne'er unite;
      And the gloom divine is all around;
      And underneath is the mossy ground.

SEMICHORUS II
      There the voluptuous nightingales,
        Are awake through all the broad noon day:
      When one with bliss or sadness fails,
          And through the windless ivy-boughs,
        Sick with sweet love, droops dying away
      On its mate's music-panting bosom;
      Another from the swinging blossom,                              30
          Watching to catch the languid close
        Of the last strain, then lifts on high
        The wings of the weak melody,
      Till some new strain of feeling bear
        The song, and all the woods are mute;
      When there is heard through the dim air
      The rush of wings, and rising there,
        Like many a lake-surrounded flute,
      Sounds overflow the listener's brain
      So sweet, that joy is almost pain.                              40

SEMICHORUS I
      There those enchanted eddies play
        Of echoes, music-tongued, which draw,
        By Demogorgon's mighty law,
        With melting rapture, or sweet awe,
      All spirits on that secret way,
          As inland boats are driven to Ocean
      Down streams made strong with mountain-thaw;
      And first there comes a gentle sound
      To those in talk or slumber bound,
          And wakes the destined; soft emotion                        50
      Attracts, impels them; those who saw
      Say from the breathing earth behind
      There steams a plume-uplifting wind
      Which drives them on their path, while they
        Believe their own swift wings and feet
      The sweet desires within obey;
      And so they float upon their way,
        Until, still sweet, but loud and strong,
        The storm of sound is driven along,
        Sucked up and hurrying; as they fleet                         60
        Behind, its gathering billows meet
      And to the fatal mountain bear
      Like clouds amid the yielding air.

FIRST FAUN
      Canst thou imagine where those spirits live
      Which make such delicate music in the woods?
      We haunt within the least frequented caves
      And closest coverts, and we know these wilds,
      Yet never meet them, though we hear them oft:
      Where may they hide themselves?

SECOND FAUN
                                       'T is hard to tell;
      I have heard those more skilled in spirits say,                 70
      The bubbles, which the enchantment of the sun
      Sucks from the pale faint water-flowers that pave
      The oozy bottom of clear lakes and pools,
      Are the pavilions where such dwell and float
      Under the green and golden atmosphere
      Which noontide kindles through the woven leaves;
      And when these burst, and the thin fiery air,
      The which they breathed within those lucent domes,
      Ascends to flow like meteors through the night,
      They ride on them, and rein their headlong speed,               80
      And bow their burning crests, and glide in fire
      Under the waters of the earth again.

FIRST FAUN
      If such live thus, have others other lives,
      Under pink blossoms or within the bells
      Of meadow flowers or folded violets deep,
      Or on their dying odors, when they die,
      Or in the sunlight of the spherèd dew?

SECOND FAUN
      Ay, many more which we may well divine.
      But should we stay to speak, noontide would come,
      And thwart Silenus find his goats undrawn,                      90
      And grudge to sing those wise and lovely songs
      Of Fate, and Chance, and God, and Chaos old,
      And Love and the chained Titan's woful doom,
      And how he shall be loosed, and make the earth
      One brotherhood; delightful strains which cheer
      Our solitary twilights, and which charm
      To silence the unenvying nightingales.

SCENE III.--A Pinnacle of Rock among Mountains. ASIA and PANTHEA.

PANTHEA
      Hither the sound has borne us--to the realm
      Of Demogorgon, and the mighty portal,
      Like a volcano's meteor-breathing chasm,
      Whence the oracular vapor is hurled up
      Which lonely men drink wandering in their youth,
      And call truth, virtue, love, genius, or joy,
      That maddening wine of life, whose dregs they drain
      To deep intoxication; and uplift,
      Like Mænads who cry loud, Evoe! Evoe!
      The voice which is contagion to the world.                      10

ASIA
      Fit throne for such a Power! Magnificent!
      How glorious art thou, Earth! and if thou be
      The shadow of some spirit lovelier still,
      Though evil stain its work, and it should be
      Like its creation, weak yet beautiful,
      I could fall down and worship that and thee.
      Even now my heart adoreth. Wonderful!
      Look, sister, ere the vapor dim thy brain:
      Beneath is a wide plain of billowy mist,
      As a lake, paving in the morning sky,                           20
      With azure waves which burst in silver light,
      Some Indian vale. Behold it, rolling on
      Under the curdling winds, and islanding
      The peak whereon we stand, midway, around,
      Encinctured by the dark and blooming forests,
      Dim twilight-lawns, and stream-illumined caves,
      And wind-enchanted shapes of wandering mist;
      And far on high the keen sky-cleaving mountains
      From icy spires of sunlike radiance fling
      The dawn, as lifted Ocean's dazzling spray,                     30
      From some Atlantic islet scattered up,
      Spangles the wind with lamp-like waterdrops.
      The vale is girdled with their walls, a howl
      Of cataracts from their thaw-cloven ravines
      Satiates the listening wind, continuous, vast,
      Awful as silence. Hark! the rushing snow!
      The sun-awakened avalanche! whose mass,
      Thrice sifted by the storm, had gathered there
      Flake after flake, in heaven-defying minds
      As thought by thought is piled, till some great truth           40
      Is loosened, and the nations echo round,
      Shaken to their roots, as do the mountains now.

PANTHEA
      Look how the gusty sea of mist is breaking
      In crimson foam, even at our feet! it rises
      As Ocean at the enchantment of the moon
      Round foodless men wrecked on some oozy isle.

ASIA
      The fragments of the cloud are scattered up;
      The wind that lifts them disentwines my hair;
      Its billows now sweep o'er mine eyes; my brain
      Grows dizzy; I see shapes within the mist.                      50

PANTHEA
      A countenance with beckoning smiles; there burns
      An azure fire within its golden locks!
      Another and another: hark! they speak!

SONG OF SPIRITS
        To the deep, to the deep,
                Down down!
        Through the shade of sleep,
        Through the cloudy strife
        Of Death and of Life;
        Through the veil and the bar
        Of things which seem and are,                                 60
        Even to the steps of the remotest throne,
                Down, down!

        While the sound whirls around,
                Down, down!
        As the fawn draws the hound,
        As the lightning the vapor,
        As a weak moth the taper;
        Death, despair; love, sorrow;
        Time, both; to-day, to-morrow;
        As steel obeys the spirit of the stone,                       70
                Down, down!

        Through the gray, void abysm,
                Down, down!
        Where the air is no prism,
        And the moon and stars are not,
        And the cavern-crags wear not
        The radiance of Heaven,
        Nor the gloom to Earth given,
        Where there is one pervading, one alone,
                Down, down!                                           80

        In the depth of the deep
                Down, down!
        Like veiled lightning asleep,
        Like the spark nursed in embers,
        The last look Love remembers,
        Like a diamond, which shines
        On the dark wealth of mines,
        A spell is treasured but for thee alone.
                Down, down!

        We have bound thee, we guide thee;                            90
                Down, down!
        With the bright form beside thee;
            Resist not the weakness,
        Such strength is in meekness
        That the Eternal, the Immortal,
        Must unloose through life's portal
        The snake-like Doom coiled underneath his throne
                By that alone.

SCENE IV.--The Cave of DEMOGORGON. ASIA and PANTHEA.

PANTHEA
      What veilèd form sits on that ebon throne?

ASIA
      The veil has fallen.

PANTHEA
                            I see a mighty darkness
      Filling the seat of power, and rays of gloom
      Dart round, as light from the meridian sun,
      Ungazed upon and shapeless; neither limb,
      Nor form, nor outline; yet we feel it is
      A living Spirit.

DEMOGORGON
                        Ask what thou wouldst know.

ASIA
      What canst thou tell?

DEMOGORGON
                             All things thou dar'st demand.

ASIA
      Who made the living world?

DEMOGORGON
                                  God.

ASIA
                                        Who made all
      That it contains? thought, passion, reason, will,               10
      Imagination?

DEMOGORGON
                    God: Almighty God.

ASIA
      Who made that sense which, when the winds of spring
      In rarest visitation, or the voice
      Of one belovèd heard in youth alone,
      Fills the faint eyes with falling tears which dim
      The radiant looks of unbewailing flowers,
      And leaves this peopled earth a solitude
      When it returns no more?

DEMOGORGON
                                Merciful God.

ASIA
      And who made terror, madness, crime, remorse,
      Which from the links of the great chain of things               20
      To every thought within the mind of man
      Sway and drag heavily, and each one reels
      Under the load towards the pit of death;
      Abandoned hope, and love that turns to hate;
      And self-contempt, bitterer to drink than blood;
      Pain, whose unheeded and familiar speech
      Is howling, and keen shrieks, day after day;
      And Hell, or the sharp fear of Hell?

DEMOGORGON
                                            He reigns.

ASIA
      Utter his name; a world pining in pain
      Asks but his name; curses shall drag him down.                  30

DEMOGORGON
      He reigns.

ASIA
                  I feel, I know it: who?

DEMOGORGON
                                           He reigns.

ASIA
      Who reigns? There was the Heaven and Earth at first,
      And Light and Love; then Saturn, from whose throne
      Time fell, an envious shadow; such the state
      Of the earth's primal spirits beneath his sway,
      As the calm joy of flowers and living leaves
      Before the wind or sun has withered them
      And semivital worms; but he refused
      The birthright of their being, knowledge, power,
      The skill which wields the elements, the thought                40
      Which pierces this dim universe like light,
      Self-empire, and the majesty of love;
      For thirst of which they fainted. Then Prometheus
      Gave wisdom, which is strength, to Jupiter,
      And with this law alone, 'Let man be free,'
      Clothed him with the dominion of wide Heaven.
      To know nor faith, nor love, nor law, to be
      Omnipotent but friendless, is to reign;
      And Jove now reigned; for on the race of man
      First famine, and then toil, and then disease,                  50
      Strife, wounds, and ghastly death unseen before,
      Fell; and the unseasonable seasons drove,
      With alternating shafts of frost and fire,
      Their shelterless, pale tribes to mountain caves;
      And in their desert hearts fierce wants he sent,
      And mad disquietudes, and shadows idle
      Of unreal good, which levied mutual war,
      So ruining the lair wherein they raged.
      Prometheus saw, and waked the legioned hopes
      Which sleep within folded Elysian flowers,                      60
      Nepenthe, Moly, Amaranth, fadeless blooms,
      That they might hide with thin and rainbow wings
      The shape of Death; and Love he sent to bind
      The disunited tendrils of that vine
      Which bears the wine of life, the human heart;
      And he tamed fire which, like some beast of prey,
      Most terrible, but lovely, played beneath
      The frown of man; and tortured to his will
      Iron and gold, the slaves and signs of power,
      And gems and poisons, and all subtlest forms                    70
      Hidden beneath the mountains and the waves.
      He gave man speech, and speech created thought,
      Which is the measure of the universe;
      And Science struck the thrones of earth and heaven,
      Which shook, but fell not; and the harmonious mind
      Poured itself forth in all-prophetic song;
      And music lifted up the listening spirit
      Until it walked, exempt from mortal care,
      Godlike, o'er the clear billows of sweet sound;
      And human hands first mimicked and then mocked,                 80
      With moulded limbs more lovely than its own,
      The human form, till marble grew divine;
      And mothers, gazing, drank the love men see
      Reflected in their race, behold, and perish.
      He told the hidden power of herbs and springs,
      And Disease drank and slept. Death grew like sleep.
      He taught the implicated orbits woven
      Of the wide-wandering stars; and how the sun
      Changes his lair, and by what secret spell
      The pale moon is transformed, when her broad eye                90
      Gazes not on the interlunar sea.
      He taught to rule, as life directs the limbs,
      The tempest-wingèd chariots of the Ocean,
      And the Celt knew the Indian. Cities then
      Were built, and through their snow-like columns flowed
      The warm winds, and the azure ether shone,
      And the blue sea and shadowy hills were seen.
      Such, the alleviations of his state,
      Prometheus gave to man, for which he hangs
      Withering in destined pain; but who rains down                 100
      Evil, the immedicable plague, which, while
      Man looks on his creation like a god
      And sees that it is glorious, drives him on,
      The wreck of his own will, the scorn of earth,
      The outcast, the abandoned, the alone?
      Not Jove: while yet his frown shook heaven ay, when
      His adversary from adamantine chains
      Cursed him, he trembled like a slave. Declare
      Who is his master? Is he too a slave?

DEMOGORGON
      All spirits are enslaved which serve things evil:              110
      Thou knowest if Jupiter be such or no.

ASIA
      Whom called'st thou God?

DEMOGORGON
                                I spoke but as ye speak,
      For Jove is the supreme of living things.

ASIA
      Who is the master of the slave?

DEMOGORGON
                                       If the abysm
      Could vomit forth its secrets--but a voice
      Is wanting, the deep truth is imageless;
      For what would it avail to bid thee gaze
      On the revolving world? What to bid speak
      Fate, Time, Occasion, Chance and Change? To these
      All things are subject but eternal Love.                       120

ASIA
      So much I asked before, and my heart gave
      The response thou hast given; and of such truths
      Each to itself must be the oracle.
      One more demand; and do thou answer me
      As my own soul would answer, did it know
      That which I ask. Prometheus shall arise
      Henceforth the sun of this rejoicing world:
      When shall the destined hour arrive?

DEMOGORGON
                                            Behold!

ASIA
      The rocks are cloven, and through the purple night
      I see cars drawn by rainbow-wingèd steeds                      130
      Which trample the dim winds; in each there stands
      A wild-eyed charioteer urging their flight.
      Some look behind, as fiends pursued them there,
      And yet I see no shapes but the keen stars;
      Others, with burning eyes, lean forth, and drink
      With eager lips the wind of their own speed,
      As if the thing they loved fled on before,
      And now, even now, they clasped it. Their bright locks
      Stream like a comet's flashing hair; they all
      Sweep onward.

DEMOGORGON
                     These are the immortal Hours,                   140
      Of whom thou didst demand. One waits for thee.

ASIA
      A Spirit with a dreadful countenance
      Checks its dark chariot by the craggy gulf.
      Unlike thy brethren, ghastly Charioteer,
      Who art thou? Whither wouldst thou bear me? Speak!

SPIRIT
      I am the Shadow of a destiny
      More dread than is my aspect; ere yon planet
      Has set, the darkness which ascends with me
      Shall wrap in lasting night heaven's kingless throne.

ASIA
      What meanest thou?

PANTHEA
                          That terrible Shadow floats                150
      Up from its throne, as may the lurid smoke
      Of earthquake-ruined cities o'er the sea.
      Lo! it ascends the car; the coursers fly
      Terrified; watch its path among the stars
      Blackening the night!

ASIA
                             Thus I am answered: strange!

PANTHEA
      See, near the verge, another chariot stays;
      An ivory shell inlaid with crimson fire,
      Which comes and goes within its sculptured rim
      Of delicate strange tracery; the young Spirit
      That guides it has the dove-like eyes of hope;                 160
      How it soft smiles attract the soul! as light
      Lures wingèd insects through the lampless air.

SPIRIT
      My coursers are fed with the lightning,
        They drink of the whirlwind's stream,
      And when the red morning is bright'ning
        They bathe in the fresh sunbeam.
        They have strength for their swiftness I deem;
      Then ascend with me, daughter of Ocean.

      I desire--and their speed makes night kindle;
        I fear--they outstrip the typhoon;                           170
      Ere the cloud piled on Atlas can dwindle
        We encircle the earth and the moon.
        We shall rest from long labors at noon;
      Then ascend with me, daughter of Ocean.

SCENE V.--The Car pauses within a Cloud on the Top of a snowy Mountain. ASIA, PANTHEA, and the SPIRIT OF THE HOUR.

SPIRIT
      On the brink of the night and the morning
        My coursers are wont to respire;
      But the Earth has just whispered a warning
        That their flight must be swifter than fire;
        They shall drink the hot speed of desire!

ASIA
      Thou breathest on their nostrils, but my breath
      Would give them swifter speed.

SPIRIT
                                      Alas! it could not

PANTHEA
      O Spirit! pause, and tell whence is the light
      Which fills the cloud? the sun is yet unrisen.

SPIRIT
      The sun will rise not until noon. Apollo                        10
      Is held in heaven by wonder; and the light
      Which fills this vapor, as the aërial hue
      Of fountain-gazing roses fills the water,
      Flows from thy mighty sister.

PANTHEA
                                     Yes, I feel--

ASIA
      What is it with thee, sister? Thou art pale.

PANTHEA
      How thou art changed! I dare not look on thee;
      I feel but see thee not. I scarce endure
      The radiance of thy beauty. Some good change
      Is working in the elements, which suffer
      Thy presence thus unveiled. The Nereids tell                    20
      That on the day when the clear hyaline
      Was cloven at thy uprise, and thou didst stand
      Within a veinèd shell, which floated on
      Over the calm floor of the crystal sea,
      Among the Ægean isles, and by the shores
      Which bear thy name,--love, like the atmosphere
      Of the sun's fire filling the living world,
      Burst from thee, and illumined earth and heaven
      And the deep ocean and the sunless caves
      And all that dwells within them; till grief cast                30
      Eclipse upon the soul from which it came.
      Such art thou now; nor is it I alone,
      Thy sister, thy companion, thine own chosen one,
      But the whole world which seeks thy sympathy.
      Hearest thou not sounds i' the air which speak the love
      Of all articulate beings? Feelest thou not
      The inanimate winds enamoured of thee? List!            [Music.

ASIA
      Thy words are sweeter than aught else but his
      Whose echoes they are; yet all love is sweet,
      Given or returned. Common as light is love,                     40
      And its familiar voice wearies not ever.
      Like the wide heaven, the all-sustaining air,
      It makes the reptile equal to the God;
      They who inspire it most are fortunate,
      As I am now; but those who feel it most
      Are happier still, after long sufferings,
      As I shall soon become.

PANTHEA
                               List! Spirits speak.

VOICE in the air, singing
      Life of Life, thy lips enkindle
        With their love the breath between them;
      And thy smiles before they dwindle                              50
        Make the cold air fire; then screen them
      In those looks, where whoso gazes
      Faints, entangled in their mazes.

      Child of Light! thy limbs are burning
        Through the vest which seems to hide them;
      As the radiant lines of morning
        Through the clouds, ere they divide them;
      And this atmosphere divinest
      Shrouds thee wheresoe'er thou shinest.

      Fair are others; none beholds thee,                             60
        But thy voice sounds low and tender
      Like the fairest, for it folds thee
        From the sight, that liquid splendor,
      And all feel, yet see thee never,
      As I feel now, lost forever!

      Lamp of Earth! where'er thou movest
        Its dim shapes are clad with brightness,
      And the souls of whom thou lovest
        Walk upon the winds with lightness,
      Till they fail, as I am failing,                                70
      Dizzy, lost, yet unbewailing!

ASIA
        My soul is an enchanted boat,
        Which, like a sleeping swan, doth float
      Upon the silver waves of thy sweet singing;
        And thine doth like an angel sit
        Beside a helm conducting it,
      Whilst all the winds with melody are ringing.
        It seems to float ever, forever,
        Upon that many-winding river,
        Between mountains, woods, abysses,                            80
        A paradise of wildernesses!
      Till, like one in slumber bound,
      Borne to the ocean, I float down, around,
      Into a sea profound of ever-spreading sound.

        Meanwhile thy spirit lifts its pinions
        In music's most serene dominions;
      Catching the winds that fan that happy heaven.
        And we sail on, away, afar,
        Without a course, without a star,
        But, by the instinct of sweet music driven;                   90
      Till through Elysian garden islets
        By thee most beautiful of pilots,
        Where never mortal pinnace glided,
        The boat of my desire is guided;
      Realms where the air we breathe is love,
      Which in the winds on the waves doth move,
      Harmonizing this earth with what we feel above.

        We have passed Age's icy caves,
        And Manhood's dark and tossing waves,
      And Youth's smooth ocean, smiling to betray;                   100
        Beyond the glassy gulfs we flee
        Of shadow-peopled Infancy,
      Through Death and Birth, to a diviner day;
        A paradise of vaulted bowers
        Lit by downward-gazing flowers,
        And watery paths that wind between
        Wildernesses calm and green,
      Peopled by shapes too bright to see,
      And rest, having beheld; somewhat like thee;
      Which walk upon the sea, and chant melodiously!                110

Prometheus Unbound: A Lyrical Drama in Four Acts.



DRAMATIS PERSONÆ
                            _
      PROMETHEUS.   ASIA     |
      DEMOGORGON.   PANTHEA  |-  Oceanides.
      JUPITER.      IONE    _|
      THE EARTH.    THE PHANTASM OF JUPITER.
      OCEAN.        THE SPIRIT OF THE EARTH.
      APOLLO.       THE SPIRIT OF THE MOON.
      MERCURY.      SPIRITS OF THE HOURS.
      HERCULES.     SPIRITS. ECHOES. FAUNS.
                    FURIES.



Act III


SCENE I.--Heaven. JUPITER on his Throne; THETIS and the other Deities assembled.

JUPITER
      YE congregated powers of heaven, who share
      The glory and the strength of him ye serve,
      Rejoice! henceforth I am omnipotent.
      All else had been subdued to me; alone
      The soul of man, like unextinguished fire,
      Yet burns towards heaven with fierce reproach, and doubt,
      And lamentation, and reluctant prayer,
      Hurling up insurrection, which might make
      Our antique empire insecure, though built
      On eldest faith, and hell's coeval, fear;                       10
      And though my curses through the pendulous air,
      Like snow on herbless peaks, fall flake by flake,
      And cling to it; though under my wrath's night
      It climb the crags of life, step after step,
      Which wound it, as ice wounds unsandalled feet,
      It yet remains supreme o'er misery,
      Aspiring, unrepressed, yet soon to fall;
      Even now have I begotten a strange wonder,
      That fatal child, the terror of the earth,
      Who waits but till the destined hour arrive,                    20
      Bearing from Demogorgon's vacant throne
      The dreadful might of ever-living limbs
      Which clothed that awful spirit unbeheld,
      To redescend, and trample out the spark.
      Pour forth heaven's wine, Idæan Ganymede,
      And let it fill the dædal cups like fire,
      And from the flower-inwoven soil divine,
      Ye all-triumphant harmonies, arise,
      As dew from earth under the twilight stars.
      Drink! be the nectar circling through your veins                30
      The soul of joy, ye ever-living Gods,
      Till exultation burst in one wide voice
      Like music from Elysian winds.
                                      And thou
      Ascend beside me, veilèd in the light
      Of the desire which makes thee one with me,
      Thetis, bright image of eternity!
      When thou didst cry, 'Insufferable might!
      God! spare me! I sustain not the quick flames,
      The penetrating presence; all my being,
      Like him whom the Numidian seps did thaw                        40
      Into a dew with poison, is dissolved,
      Sinking through its foundations,'--even then
      Two mighty spirits, mingling, made a third
      Mightier than either, which, unbodied now,
      Between us floats, felt, although unbeheld,
      Waiting the incarnation, which ascends,
      (Hear ye the thunder of the fiery wheels
      Griding the winds?) from Demogorgon's throne.
      Victory! victory! Feel'st thou not, O world,
      The earthquake of his chariot thundering up                     50
      Olympus?

[The Car of the HOUR arrives. DEMOGORGON descends and moves towards the Throne of JUPITER.

                Awful shape, what art thou? Speak!

DEMOGORGON
      Eternity. Demand no direr name.
      Descend, and follow me down the abyss.
      I am thy child, as thou wert Saturn's child;
      Mightier than thee; and we must dwell together
      Henceforth in darkness. Lift thy lightnings not.
      The tyranny of heaven none may retain,
      Or reassume, or hold, succeeding thee;
      Yet if thou wilt, as 't is the destiny
      Of trodden worms to writhe till they are dead,                  60
      Put forth thy might.

JUPITER
                            Detested prodigy!
      Even thus beneath the deep Titanian prisons
      I trample thee! Thou lingerest?
                                       Mercy! mercy!
      No pity, no release, no respite! Oh,
      That thou wouldst make mine enemy my judge,
      Even where he hangs, seared by my long revenge,
      On Caucasus! he would not doom me thus.
      Gentle, and just, and dreadless, is he not
      The monarch of the world? What then art thou?
      No refuge! no appeal!
                             Sink with me then,                       70
      We two will sink on the wide waves of ruin,
      Even as a vulture and a snake outspent
      Drop, twisted in inextricable fight,
      Into a shoreless sea! Let hell unlock
      Its mounded oceans of tempestuous fire,
      And whelm on them into the bottomless void
      This desolated world, and thee, and me,
      The conqueror and the conquered, and the wreck
      Of that for which they combated!
                                        Ai, Ai!
      The elements obey me not. I sink                                80
      Dizzily down, ever, forever, down.
      And, like a cloud, mine enemy above
      Darkens my fall with victory! Ai, Ai!

SCENE II.--The Mouth of a great River in the Island Atlantis. OCEAN is discovered reclining near the shore; APOLLO stands beside him.

OCEAN
      He fell, thou sayest, beneath his conqueror's frown?

APOLLO
      Ay, when the strife was ended which made dim
      The orb I rule, and shook the solid stars,
      The terrors of his eye illumined heaven
      With sanguine light, through the thick ragged skirts
      Of the victorious darkness, as he fell;
      Like the last glare of day's red agony,
      Which, from a rent among the fiery clouds,
      Burns far along the tempest-wrinkled deep.

OCEAN
      He sunk to the abyss? to the dark void?                         10

APOLLO
      An eagle so caught in some bursting cloud
      On Caucasus, his thunder-baffled wings
      Entangled in the whirlwind, and his eyes,
      Which gazed on the undazzling sun, now blinded
      By the white lightning, while the ponderous hail
      Beats on his struggling form, which sinks at length
      Prone, and the aërial ice clings over it.

OCEAN
      Henceforth the fields of Heaven-reflecting sea
      Which are my realm, will heave, unstained with blood,
      Beneath the uplifting winds, like plains of corn                20
      Swayed by the summer air; my streams will flow
      Round many-peopled continents, and round
      Fortunate isles; and from their glassy thrones
      Blue Proteus and his humid nymphs shall mark
      The shadow of fair ships, as mortals see
      The floating bark of the light-laden moon
      With that white star, its sightless pilot's crest,
      Borne down the rapid sunset's ebbing sea;
      Tracking their path no more by blood and groans,
      And desolation, and the mingled voice                           30
      Of slavery and command; but by the light
      Of wave-reflected flowers, and floating odors,
      And music soft, and mild, free, gentle voices,
      That sweetest music, such as spirits love.

APOLLO
      And I shall gaze not on the deeds which make
      My mind obscure with sorrow, as eclipse
      Darkens the sphere I guide. But list, I hear
      The small, clear, silver lute of the young Spirit
      That sits i' the morning star.

OCEAN
                                      Thou must away;
      Thy steeds will pause at even, till when farewell.              40
      The loud deep calls me home even now to feed it
      With azure calm out of the emerald urns
      Which stand forever full beside my throne.
      Behold the Nereids under the green sea,
      Their wavering limbs borne on the windlike stream,
      Their white arms lifted o'er their streaming hair,
      With garlands pied and starry sea-flower crowns,
      Hastening to grace their mighty sister's joy.
                                          [A sound of waves is heard.
      It is the unpastured sea hungering for calm.
      Peace, monster; I come now. Farewell.

APOLLO
                                             Farewell.                50

SCENE III.--Caucasus. PROMETHEUS, HERCULES, IONE, the EARTH, SPIRITS, ASIA, and PANTHEA, borne in the Car with the SPIRIT OF THE HOUR. HERCULES unbinds PROMETHEUS, who descends.

HERCULES
      Most glorious among spirits! thus doth strength
      To wisdom, courage, and long-suffering love,
      And thee, who art the form they animate,
      Minister like a slave.

PROMETHEUS
                              Thy gentle words
      Are sweeter even than freedom long desired
      And long delayed.

                         Asia, thou light of life,
      Shadow of beauty unbeheld; and ye,
      Fair sister nymphs, who made long years of pain
      Sweet to remember, through your love and care;
      Henceforth we will not part. There is a cave,                   10
      All overgrown with trailing odorous plants,
      Which curtain out the day with leaves and flowers,
      And paved with veinèd emerald; and a fountain
      Leaps in the midst with an awakening sound.
      From its curved roof the mountain's frozen tears,
      Like snow, or silver, or long diamond spires,
      Hang downward, raining forth a doubtful light;
      And there is heard the ever-moving air
      Whispering without from tree to tree, and birds,
      And bees; and all around are mossy seats,                       20
      And the rough walls are clothed with long soft grass;
      A simple dwelling, which shall be our own;
      Where we will sit and talk of time and change,
      As the world ebbs and flows, ourselves unchanged.
      What can hide man from mutability?
      And if ye sigh, then I will smile; and thou,
      Ione, shalt chant fragments of sea-music,
      Until I weep, when ye shall smile away
      The tears she brought, which yet were sweet to shed.
      We will entangle buds and flowers and beams                     30
      Which twinkle on the fountain's brim, and make
      Strange combinations out of common things,
      Like human babes in their brief innocence;
      And we will search, with looks and words of love,
      For hidden thoughts, each lovelier than the last,
      Our unexhausted spirits; and, like lutes
      Touched by the skill of the enamoured wind,
      Weave harmonies divine, yet ever new,
      From difference sweet where discord cannot be;
      And hither come, sped on the charmèd winds,                     40
      Which meet from all the points of heaven--as bees
      From every flower aërial Enna feeds
      At their known island-homes in Himera--
      The echoes of the human world, which tell
      Of the low voice of love, almost unheard,
      And dove-eyed pity's murmured pain, and music,
      Itself the echo of the heart, and all
      That tempers or improves man's life, now free;
      And lovely apparitions,--dim at first,
      Then radiant, as the mind arising bright                        50
      From the embrace of beauty (whence the forms
      Of which these are the phantoms) casts on them
      The gathered rays which are reality--
      Shall visit us the progeny immortal
      Of Painting, Sculpture, and rapt Poesy,
      And arts, though unimagined, yet to be;
      The wandering voices and the shadows these
      Of all that man becomes, the mediators
      Of that best worship, love, by him and us
      Given and returned; swift shapes and sounds, which grow         60
      More fair and soft as man grows wise and kind,
      And, veil by veil, evil and error fall.
      Such virtue has the cave and place around.
                                  [Turning to the SPIRIT OF THE HOUR.
      For thee, fair Spirit, one toil remains. Ione,
      Give her that curvèd shell, which Proteus old
      Made Asia's nuptial boon, breathing within it
      A voice to be accomplished, and which thou
      Didst hide in grass under the hollow rock.

IONE
      Thou most desired Hour, more loved and lovely
      Than all thy sisters, this is the mystic shell.                 70
      See the pale azure fading into silver
      Lining it with a soft yet glowing light.
      Looks it not like lulled music sleeping there?

SPIRIT
      It seems in truth the fairest shell of Ocean:
      Its sound must be at once both sweet and strange.

PROMETHEUS
      Go, borne over the cities of mankind
      On whirlwind-footed coursers; once again
      Outspeed the sun around the orbèd world;
      And as thy chariot cleaves the kindling air,
      Thou breathe into the many-folded shell,                        80
      Loosening its mighty music; it shall be
      As thunder mingled with clear echoes; then
      Return; and thou shalt dwell beside our cave.

      And thou, O Mother Earth!--

THE EARTH
                                   I hear, I feel;
      Thy lips are on me, and thy touch runs down
      Even to the adamantine central gloom
      Along these marble nerves; 't is life, 't is joy,
      And, through my withered, old, and icy frame
      The warmth of an immortal youth shoots down
      Circling. Henceforth the many children fair                     90
      Folded in my sustaining arms; all plants,
      And creeping forms, and insects rainbow-winged,
      And birds, and beasts, and fish, and human shapes,
      Which drew disease and pain from my wan bosom,
      Draining the poison of despair, shall take
      And interchange sweet nutriment; to me
      Shall they become like sister-antelopes
      By one fair dam, snow-white, and swift as wind,
      Nursed among lilies near a brimming stream.
      The dew-mists of my sunless sleep shall float                  100
      Under the stars like balm; night-folded flowers
      Shall suck unwithering hues in their repose;
      And men and beasts in happy dreams shall gather
      Strength for the coming day, and all its joy;
      And death shall be the last embrace of her
      Who takes the life she gave, even as a mother,
      Folding her child, says, 'Leave me not again.'

ASIA
      Oh, mother! wherefore speak the name of death?
      Cease they to love, and move, and breathe, and speak,
      Who die?

THE EARTH
                It would avail not to reply;                         110
      Thou art immortal and this tongue is known
      But to the uncommunicating dead.
      Death is the veil which those who live call life;
      They sleep, and it is lifted; and meanwhile
      In mild variety the seasons mild
      With rainbow-skirted showers, and odorous winds,
      And long blue meteors cleansing the dull night,
      And the life-kindling shafts of the keen sun's
      All-piercing bow, and the dew-mingled rain
      Of the calm moonbeams, a soft influence mild,                  120
      Shall clothe the forests and the fields, ay, even
      The crag-built deserts of the barren deep,
      With ever-living leaves, and fruits, and flowers.
      And thou! there is a cavern where my spirit
      Was panted forth in anguish whilst thy pain
      Made my heart mad, and those who did inhale it
      Became mad too, and built a temple there,
      And spoke, and were oracular, and lured
      The erring nations round to mutual war,
      And faithless faith, such as Jove kept with thee;              130
      Which breath now rises as amongst tall weeds
      A violet's exhalation, and it fills
      With a serener light and crimson air
      Intense, yet soft, the rocks and woods around;
      It feeds the quick growth of the serpent vine,
      And the dark linkèd ivy tangling wild,
      And budding, blown, or odor-faded blooms
      Which star the winds with points of colored light
      As they rain through them, and bright golden globes
      Of fruit suspended in their own green heaven,                  140
      And through their veinèd leaves and amber stems
      The flowers whose purple and translucid bowls
      Stand ever mantling with aërial dew,
      The drink of spirits; and it circles round,
      Like the soft waving wings of noonday dreams,
      Inspiring calm and happy thoughts, like mine,
      Now thou art thus restored. This cave is thine.
      Arise! Appear!
                   [A SPIRIT rises in the likeness of a winged child.
                      This is my torch-bearer;
      Who let his lamp out in old time with gazing
      On eyes from which he kindled it anew                          150
      With love, which is as fire, sweet daughter mine,
      For such is that within thine own. Run, wayward,
      And guide this company beyond the peak
      Of Bacchic Nysa, Mænad-haunted mountain,
      And beyond Indus and its tribute rivers,
      Trampling the torrent streams and glassy lakes
      With feet unwet, unwearied, undelaying,
      And up the green ravine, across the vale,
      Beside the windless and crystalline pool,
      Where ever lies, on unerasing waves,                           160
      The image of a temple, built above,
      Distinct with column, arch, and architrave,
      And palm-like capital, and overwrought,
      And populous most with living imagery,
      Praxitelean shapes, whose marble smiles
      Fill the hushed air with everlasting love.
      It is deserted now, but once it bore
      Thy name, Prometheus; there the emulous youths
      Bore to thy honor through the divine gloom
      The lamp which was thine emblem; even as those                 170
      Who bear the untransmitted torch of hope
      Into the grave, across the night of life,
      As thou hast borne it most triumphantly
      To this far goal of Time. Depart, farewell!
      Beside that temple is the destined cave.

SCENE IV.--A Forest. In the background a Cave. PROMETHEUS, ASIA, PANTHEA, IONE, and the SPIRIT OF THE EARTH.

IONE
      Sister, it is not earthly; how it glides
      Under the leaves! how on its head there burns
      A light, like a green star, whose emerald beams
      Are twined with its fair hair! how, as it moves,
      The splendor drops in flakes upon the grass!
      Knowest thou it?

PANTHEA
                        It is the delicate spirit
      That guides the earth through heaven. From afar
      The populous constellations call that light
      The loveliest of the planets; and sometimes
      It floats along the spray of the salt sea,                      10
      Or makes its chariot of a foggy cloud,
      Or walks through fields or cities while men sleep,
      Or o'er the mountain tops, or down the rivers,
      Or through the green waste wilderness, as now,
      Wondering at all it sees. Before Jove reigned
      It loved our sister Asia, and it came
      Each leisure hour to drink the liquid light
      Out of her eyes, for which it said it thirsted
      As one bit by a dipsas, and with her
      It made its childish confidence, and told her                   20
      All it had known or seen, for it saw much,
      Yet idly reasoned what it saw; and called her,
      For whence it sprung it knew not, nor do I,
      Mother, dear mother.

THE SPIRIT OF THE EARTH, running to ASIA
                            Mother, dearest mother!
      May I then talk with thee as I was wont?
      May I then hide my eyes in thy soft arms,
      After thy looks have made them tired of joy?
      May I then play beside thee the long noons,
      When work is none in the bright silent air?

ASIA
      I love thee, gentlest being, and henceforth                     30
      Can cherish thee unenvied. Speak, I pray;
      Thy simple talk once solaced, now delights.

SPIRIT OF THE EARTH
      Mother, I am grown wiser, though a child
      Cannot be wise like thee, within this day;
      And happier too; happier and wiser both.
      Thou knowest that toads, and snakes, and loathly worms,
      And venomous and malicious beasts, and boughs
      That bore ill berries in the woods, were ever
      An hindrance to my walks o'er the green world;
      And that, among the haunts of humankind,                        40
      Hard-featured men, or with proud, angry looks,
      Or cold, staid gait, or false and hollow smiles,
      Or the dull sneer of self-loved ignorance,
      Or other such foul masks, with which ill thoughts
      Hide that fair being whom we spirits call man;
      And women too, ugliest of all things evil,
      (Though fair, even in a world where thou art fair,
      When good and kind, free and sincere like thee)
      When false or frowning made me sick at heart
      To pass them, though they slept, and I unseen.                  50
      Well, my path lately lay through a great city
      Into the woody hills surrounding it;
      A sentinel was sleeping at the gate;
      When there was heard a sound, so loud, it shook
      The towers amid the moonlight, yet more sweet
      Than any voice but thine, sweetest of all;
      A long, long sound, as it would never end;
      And all the inhabitants leapt suddenly
      Out of their rest, and gathered in the streets,
      Looking in wonder up to Heaven, while yet                       60
      The music pealed along. I hid myself
      Within a fountain in the public square,
      Where I lay like the reflex of the moon
      Seen in a wave under green leaves; and soon
      Those ugly human shapes and visages
      Of which I spoke as having wrought me pain,
      Passed floating through the air and fading still
      Into the winds that scattered them; and those
      From whom they passed seemed mild and lovely forms
      After some foul disguise had fallen, and all                    70
      Were somewhat changed, and after brief surprise
      And greetings of delighted wonder, all
      Went to their sleep again; and when the dawn
      Came, wouldst thou think that toads, and snakes, and efts,
      Could e'er be beautiful? yet so they were,
      And that with little change of shape or hue;
      All things had put their evil nature off;
      I cannot tell my joy, when o'er a lake,
      Upon a drooping bough with nightshade twined,
      I saw two azure halcyons clinging downward                      80
      And thinning one bright bunch of amber berries,
      With quick long beaks, and in the deep there lay
      Those lovely forms imaged as in a sky;
      So with my thoughts full of these happy changes,
      We meet again, the happiest change of all.

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.

SPIRIT OF THE EARTH
                      What! as Asia loves Prometheus?                 90

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
      'T is 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,
      There was a change; the impalpable thin air                    100
      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
      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,
      Pasturing flowers of vegetable fire,                           110
      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,--
      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 amphisbenic snake
      The likeness of those wingèd steeds will mock                  120
      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
      Expressed in outward things; but soon I looked,                130
      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
      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
      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,
      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,               150
      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
      On the wide earth, passed; 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,
      Yet being now, made earth like heaven; nor pride,              160
      Nor jealousy, nor envy, nor ill shame,
      The bitterest of those drops of treasured gall,
      Spoiled the sweet taste of the nepenthe, love.

      Thrones, altars, judgment-seats, and prisons, wherein,
      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                   170
      In triumph o'er the palaces and tombs
      Of those who were their conquerors; mouldering round,
      Those 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,
      Stand, not o'erthrown, but unregarded now.
      And those foul shapes,--abhorred by god and man,               180
      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 among 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,              190
      Which mimicked, as with colors idly spread,
      All men believed and 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,                200
      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.

Prometheus Unbound: A Lyrical Drama in Four Acts.



DRAMATIS PERSONÆ
                            _
      PROMETHEUS.   ASIA     |
      DEMOGORGON.   PANTHEA  |-  Oceanides.
      JUPITER.      IONE    _|
      THE EARTH.    THE PHANTASM OF JUPITER.
      OCEAN.        THE SPIRIT OF THE EARTH.
      APOLLO.       THE SPIRIT OF THE MOON.
      MERCURY.      SPIRITS OF THE HOURS.
      HERCULES.     SPIRITS. ECHOES. FAUNS.
                    FURIES.



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 the 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.

          Here, oh, here!
          We bear the bier                                            10
      Of the father of many a cancelled year!
          Spectres we
          Of the dead Hours be;
      We bear Time to his tomb in eternity.

          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!                      20

          Haste, oh, haste!
          As shades are chased,
      Trembling, by day, from heaven's blue waste,
          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!

IONE
      What dark forms were they?                                      30

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
                         They have passed;
      They outspeeded the blast,
      While 't is said, they are fled!

IONE
          Whither, oh, whither?

PANTHEA
      To the dark, to the past, to the dead.

VOICE OF UNSEEN SPIRITS
          Bright clouds float in heaven,                              40
          Dew-stars gleam on earth,
          Waves assemble on ocean,
          They are gathered and driven
      By the storm of delight, by the panic of glee!
          They shake with emotion,
          They dance in their mirth.
            But where are ye?

          The pine boughs are singing
          Old songs with new gladness,
          The billows and fountains                                   50
          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?

IONE
      What charioteers are these?

PANTHEA
                                   Where are their chariots?

SEMICHORUS OF HOURS
      The voice of the Spirits of Air and of Earth
        Has 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
                                    Oh! below the deep.               60

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
      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,                       70
      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!                  80

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,                      90
      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 humankind,
      Which was late so dusk, and obscene, and blind;
            Now 't is an ocean
            Of clear emotion,
      A heaven of serene and mighty motion.

            From that deep abyss
            Of wonder and bliss,                                     100
      Whose caverns are crystal palaces;
            From those skyey towers
            Where Thought's crowned powers
      Sit watching your dance, ye happy Hours!

            From the dim recesses
            Of woven caresses,
      Where lovers catch ye by your loose tresses;
            From the azure isles,
            Where sweet Wisdom smiles,
      Delaying your ships with her siren wiles.                      110

            From the temples high
            Of Man's ear and eye,
      Roofed over Sculpture and Poesy;
            From the murmurings
            Of the unsealed springs,
      Where Science bedews his dædal wings.

            Years after years,
            Through blood, and tears,
      And a thick hell of hatreds, and hopes, and fears,
            We waded and flew,                                       120
            And the islets were few
      Where the bud-blighted flowers of happiness grew.

            Our feet now, every palm,
            Are sandalled with calm,
      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,        130
      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 splendor and harmony!

CHORUS OF SPIRITS
            Our spoil is won,
            Our task is done,
      We are free to dive, or soar, or run;
            Beyond and around,
            Or within the bound
      Which clips the world with darkness round.                     140

            We 'll pass the eyes
            Of the starry skies
      Into the hoar deep to colonize;
            Death, Chaos and Night,
            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;
            And Love, Thought and Breath,                            150
            The powers that quell Death,
      Wherever we soar shall assemble beneath.

            And our singing shall build
            In the void's loose field
      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;
          Let some depart, and some remain;                          160

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,
      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,
      Till the trees, and the beasts, and the clouds appear          170
      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
      Break the dance, and scatter the song;
        Let some depart, and some remain;
      Wherever we fly we lead along
      In leashes, like star-beams, soft yet strong,
        The clouds that are heavy with love's sweet rain.

PANTHEA
      Ha! they are gone!

IONE
                          Yet feel you no delight                    180
      From the past sweetness?

PANTHEA
                                As the bare green hill,
      When some soft cloud vanishes into rain,
      Laughs with a thousand drops of sunny water
      To the unpavilioned sky!

IONE
                                Even whilst we speak
      New notes arise. What is that awful sound?

PANTHEA
      'T is the deep music of the rolling world,
      Kindling within the strings of the waved air
      Æolian modulations.

IONE
                            Listen too,
      How every pause is filled with under-notes,
      Clear, silver, icy, keen awakening tones,                      190
      Which pierce the sense, and live within the soul,
      As the sharp stars pierce winter's crystal air
      And gaze upon themselves within the sea.

PANTHEA
      But see where, through two openings in the forest
      Which hanging branches overcanopy,
      And where two runnels of a rivulet,
      Between the close moss violet-inwoven,
      Have made their path of melody, like sisters
      Who part with sighs that they may meet in smiles,
      Turning their dear disunion to an isle                         200
      Of lovely grief, a wood of sweet sad thoughts;
      Two visions of strange radiance float upon
      The ocean-like enchantment of strong sound,
      Which flows intenser, keener, deeper yet,
      Under the ground and through the windless air.

IONE
      I see a chariot like that thinnest boat
      In which the mother of the months is borne
      By ebbing night into her western cave,
      When she upsprings from interlunar dreams;
      O'er which is curved an orb-like canopy                        210
      Of gentle darkness, and the hills and woods,
      Distinctly seen through that dusk airy veil,
      Regard like shapes in an enchanter's glass;
      Its wheels are solid clouds, azure and gold,
      Such as the genii of the thunder-storm
      Pile on the floor of the illumined sea
      When the sun rushes under it; they roll
      And move and grow as with an inward wind;
      Within it sits a wingèd infant--white
      Its countenance, like the whiteness of bright snow,            220
      Its plumes are as feathers of sunny frost,
      Its limbs gleam white, through the wind-flowing folds
      Of its white robe, woof of ethereal pearl,
      Its hair is white, the brightness of white light
      Scattered in strings; yet its two eyes are heavens
      Of liquid darkness, which the Deity
      Within seems pouring, as a storm is poured
      From jagged clouds, out of their arrowy lashes,
      Tempering the cold and radiant air around
      With fire that is not brightness; in its hand                  230
      It sways a quivering moonbeam, from whose point
      A guiding power directs the chariot's prow
      Over its wheelèd clouds, which as they roll
      Over the grass, and flowers, and waves, wake sounds,
      Sweet as a singing rain of silver dew.

PANTHEA
      And from the other opening in the wood
      Rushes, with loud and whirlwind harmony,
      A sphere, which is as many thousand spheres;
      Solid as crystal, yet through all its mass
      Flow, as through empty space, music and light;                 240
      Ten thousand orbs involving and involved,
      Purple and azure, white, green and golden,
      Sphere within sphere; and every space between
      Peopled with unimaginable shapes,
      Such as ghosts dream dwell in the lampless deep;
      Yet each inter-transpicuous; and they whirl
      Over each other with a thousand motions,
      Upon a thousand sightless axles spinning,
      And with the force of self-destroying swiftness,
      Intensely, slowly, solemnly, roll on,                          250
      Kindling with mingled sounds, and many tones,
      Intelligible words and music wild.
      With mighty whirl the multitudinous orb
      Grinds the bright brook into an azure mist
      Of elemental subtlety, like light;
      And the wild odor of the forest flowers,
      The music of the living grass and air,
      The emerald light of leaf-entangled beams,
      Round its intense yet self-conflicting speed
      Seem kneaded into one aërial mass                              260
      Which drowns the sense. Within the orb itself,
      Pillowed upon its alabaster arms,
      Like to a child o'erwearied with sweet toil,
      On its own folded wings and wavy hair
      The Spirit of the Earth is laid asleep,
      And you can see its little lips are moving,
      Amid the changing light of their own smiles,
      Like one who talks of what he loves in dream.

IONE
      'T is only mocking the orb's harmony.

PANTHEA
      And from a star upon its forehead shoot,                       270
      Like swords of azure fire or golden spears
      With tyrant-quelling myrtle overtwined,
      Embleming heaven and earth united now,
      Vast beams like spokes of some invisible wheel
      Which whirl as the orb whirls, swifter than thought,
      Filling the abyss with sun-like lightnings,
      And perpendicular now, and now transverse,
      Pierce the dark soil, and as they pierce and pass
      Make bare the secrets of the earth's deep heart;
      Infinite mine of adamant and gold,                             280
      Valueless stones, and unimagined gems,
      And caverns on crystalline columns poised
      With vegetable silver overspread;
      Wells of unfathomed fire, and water-springs
      Whence the great sea even as a child is fed,
      Whose vapors clothe earth's monarch mountain-tops
      With kingly, ermine snow. The beams flash on
      And make appear the melancholy ruins
      Of cancelled cycles; anchors, beaks of ships;
      Planks turned to marble; quivers, helms, and spears,           290
      And gorgon-headed targes, and the wheels
      Of scythèd chariots, and the emblazonry
      Of trophies, standards, and armorial beasts,
      Round which death laughed, sepulchred emblems
      Of dead destruction, ruin within ruin!
      The wrecks beside of many a city vast,
      Whose population which the earth grew over
      Was mortal, but not human; see, they lie,
      Their monstrous works, and uncouth skeletons,
      Their statues, homes and fanes; prodigious shapes              300
      Huddled in gray annihilation, split,
      Jammed in the hard, black deep; and over these,
      The anatomies of unknown wingèd things,
      And fishes which were isles of living scale,
      And serpents, bony chains, twisted around
      The iron crags, or within heaps of dust
      To which the tortuous strength of their last pangs
      Had crushed the iron crags; and over these
      The jagged alligator, and the might
      Of earth-convulsing behemoth, which once                       310
      Were monarch beasts, and on the slimy shores,
      And weed-overgrown continents of earth,
      Increased and multiplied like summer worms
      On an abandoned corpse, till the blue globe
      Wrapped deluge round it like a cloke, and they
      Yelled, gasped, and were abolished; or some God,
      Whose throne was in a comet, passed, and cried,
      Be not! and like my words they were no more.

THE EARTH
      The joy, the triumph, the delight, the madness!
      The boundless, overflowing, bursting gladness,                 320
      The vaporous exultation not to be confined!
        Ha! ha! the animation of delight
        Which wraps me, like an atmosphere of light,
      And bears me as a cloud is borne by its own wind.

THE MOON
        Brother mine, calm wanderer,
        Happy globe of land and air,
      Some Spirit is darted like a beam from thee,
        Which penetrates my frozen frame,
        And passes with the warmth of flame,
      With love, and odor, and deep melody                           330
          Through me, through me!

THE EARTH
        Ha! ha! the caverns of my hollow mountains,
        My cloven fire-crags, sound-exulting fountains,
      Laugh with a vast and inextinguishable laughter.
        The oceans, and the deserts, and the abysses,
        And the deep air's unmeasured wildernesses,
      Answer from all their clouds and billows, echoing after.

        They cry aloud as I do. Sceptred curse,
        Who all our green and azure universe
      Threatenedst to muffle round with black destruction, sending   340
        A solid cloud to rain hot thunder-stones
        And splinter and knead down my children's bones,
      All I bring forth, to one void mass battering and blending,

        Until each crag-like tower, and storied column,
        Palace, and obelisk, and temple solemn,
      My imperial mountains crowned with cloud, and snow, and fire,
        My sea-like forests, every blade and blossom
        Which finds a grave or cradle in my bosom,
      Were stamped by thy strong hate into a lifeless mire:

        How art thou sunk, withdrawn, covered, drunk up              350
        By thirsty nothing, as the brackish cup
      Drained by a desert-troop, a little drop for all;
        And from beneath, around, within, above,
        Filling thy void annihilation, love
      Bursts in like light on caves cloven by the thunder-ball!

THE MOON
        The snow upon my lifeless mountains
        Is loosened into living fountains,
      My solid oceans flow, and sing and shine;
        A spirit from my heart bursts forth,
        It clothes with unexpected birth                             360
      My cold bare bosom. Oh, it must be thine
                On mine, on mine!

        Gazing on thee I feel, I know,
        Green stalks burst forth, and bright flowers grow,
      And living shapes upon my bosom move;
        Music is in the sea and air,
        Wingèd clouds soar here and there
      Dark with the rain new buds are dreaming of:
                'T is love, all love!

THE EARTH
        It interpenetrates my granite mass,                          370
        Through tangled roots and trodden clay doth pass
      Into the utmost leaves and delicatest flowers;
        Upon the winds, among the clouds 't is spread,
        It wakes a life in the forgotten dead,--
      They breathe a spirit up from their obscurest bowers;

        And like a storm bursting its cloudy prison
        With thunder, and with whirlwind, has arisen
      Out of the lampless caves of unimagined being;
        With earthquake shock and swiftness making shiver
        Thought's stagnant chaos, unremoved forever,                 380
      Till hate, and fear, and pain, light-vanquished shadows, fleeing,

        Leave Man, who was a many-sided mirror
        Which could distort to many a shape of error
      This true fair world of things, a sea reflecting love;
        Which over all his kind, as the sun's heaven
        Gliding o'er ocean, smooth, serene, and even,
      Darting from starry depths radiance and life doth move:

        Leave Man even as a leprous child is left,
        Who follows a sick beast to some warm cleft
      Of rocks, through which the might of healing springs is
            poured;                                                  390
        Then when it wanders home with rosy smile,
        Unconscious, and its mother fears awhile
      It is a spirit, then weeps on her child restored:

        Man, oh, not men! a chain of linkèd thought,
        Of love and might to be divided not,
      Compelling the elements with adamantine stress;
        As the sun rules even with a tyrant's gaze
        The unquiet republic of the maze
      Of planets, struggling fierce towards heaven's free wilderness:

        Man, one harmonious soul of many a soul,                     400
        Whose nature is its own divine control,
      Where all things flow to all, as rivers to the sea;
        Familiar acts are beautiful through love;
        Labor, and pain, and grief, in life's green grove
      Sport like tame beasts; none knew how gentle they could be!

        His will, with all mean passions, bad delights,
        And selfish cares, its trembling satellites,
      A spirit ill to guide, but mighty to obey,
        Is as a tempest-wingèd ship, whose helm
        Love rules, through waves which dare not overwhelm,          410
      Forcing life's wildest shores to own its sovereign sway.

        All things confess his strength. Through the cold mass
        Of marble and of color his dreams pass--
      Bright threads whence mothers weave the robes their children wear;
        Language is a perpetual Orphic song,
        Which rules with dædal harmony a throng
      Of thoughts and forms, which else senseless and shapeless were.

        The lightning is his slave; heaven's utmost deep
        Gives up her stars, and like a flock of sheep
      They pass before his eye, are numbered, and roll on!           420
        The tempest is his steed, he strides the air;
        And the abyss shouts from her depth laid bare,
      'Heaven, hast thou secrets? Man unveils me; I have none.'

THE MOON
          The shadow of white death has passed
          From my path in heaven at last,
        A clinging shroud of solid frost and sleep;
          And through my newly woven bowers,
          Wander happy paramours,
        Less mighty, but as mild as those who keep
              Thy vales more deep.                                   430

THE EARTH
        As the dissolving warmth of dawn may fold
        A half unfrozen dew-globe, green, and gold,
      And crystalline, till it becomes a wingèd mist,
        And wanders up the vault of the blue day,
      Outlives the noon, and on the sun's last ray
      Hangs o'er the sea, a fleece of fire and amethyst.

THE MOON
          Thou art folded, thou art lying
          In the light which is undying
        Of thine own joy, and heaven's smile divine;
          All suns and constellations shower                         440
          On thee a light, a life, a power,
        Which doth array thy sphere; thou pourest thine
            On mine, on mine!

THE EARTH
        I spin beneath my pyramid of night
        Which points into the heavens, dreaming delight,
      Murmuring victorious joy in my enchanted sleep;
        As a youth lulled in love-dreams faintly sighing,
        Under the shadow of his beauty lying,
      Which round his rest a watch of light and warmth doth keep.

THE MOON
          As in the soft and sweet eclipse,                          450
          When soul meets soul on lovers' lips,
        High hearts are calm, and brightest eyes are dull;
          So when thy shadow falls on me,
          Then am I mute and still, by thee
        Covered; of thy love, Orb most beautiful,
              Full, oh, too full!

          Thou art speeding round the sun,
          Brightest world of many a one;
          Green and azure sphere which shinest
          With a light which is divinest                             460
          Among all the lamps of Heaven
          To whom life and light is given;
          I, thy crystal paramour,
          Borne beside thee by a power
          Like the polar Paradise,
          Magnet-like, of lovers' eyes;
          I, a most enamoured maiden,
          Whose weak brain is overladen
          With the pleasure of her love,
          Maniac-like around thee move,
          Gazing, an insatiate bride,                                470
          On thy form from every side,
          Like a Mænad round the cup
          Which Agave lifted up
          In the weird Cadmean forest.
          Brother, wheresoe'er thou soarest
          I must hurry, whirl and follow
          Through the heavens wide and hollow,
          Sheltered by the warm embrace
          Of thy soul from hungry space,                             480
          Drinking from thy sense and sight
          Beauty, majesty and might,
          As a lover or a chameleon
          Grows like what it looks upon,
          As a violet's gentle eye
          Gazes on the azure sky
        Until its hue grows like what it beholds,
          As a gray and watery mist
          Glows like solid amethyst
        Athwart the western mountain it enfolds,                     490
          When the sunset sleeps
            Upon its snow.

THE EARTH
        And the weak day weeps
          That it should be so.
      O gentle Moon, the voice of thy delight
      Falls on me like thy clear and tender light
      Soothing the seaman borne the summer night
        Through isles forever calm;
      O gentle Moon, thy crystal accents pierce
      The caverns of my pride's deep universe,                       500
      Charming the tiger joy, whose tramplings fierce
        Made wounds which need thy balm.

PANTHEA
      I rise as from a bath of sparkling water,
      A bath of azure light, among dark rocks,
      Out of the stream of sound.

IONE
                                   Ah me! sweet sister,
      The stream of sound has ebbed away from us,
      And you pretend to rise out of its wave,
      Because your words fall like the clear soft dew
      Shaken from a bathing wood-nymph's limbs and hair.

PANTHEA
      Peace, peace! a mighty Power, which is as darkness,            510
      Is rising out of Earth, and from the sky
      Is showered like night, and from within the air
      Bursts, like eclipse which had been gathered up
      Into the pores of sunlight; the bright visions,
      Wherein the singing Spirits rode and shone,
      Gleam like pale meteors through a watery night.

IONE
      There is a sense of words upon mine ear.

PANTHEA
      An universal sound like words: Oh, list!

DEMOGORGON
      Thou, Earth, calm empire of a happy soul,
        Sphere of divinest shapes and harmonies,                     520
      Beautiful orb! gathering as thou dost roll
        The love which paves thy path along the skies:

THE EARTH
      I hear: I am as a drop of dew that dies.

DEMOGORGON
      Thou, Moon, which gazest on the nightly Earth
        With wonder, as it gazes upon thee;
      Whilst each to men, and beasts, and the swift birth
      Of birds, is beauty, love, calm, harmony:

THE MOON
      I hear: I am a leaf shaken by thee.

DEMOGORGON
      Ye kings of suns and stars, Dæmons and Gods,
        Ethereal Dominations, who possess                            530
      Elysian, windless, fortunate abodes
        Beyond Heaven's constellated wilderness:

A VOICE (from above)
      Our great Republic hears: we are blessed, and bless.

DEMOGORGON
      Ye happy dead, whom beams of brightest verse
        Are clouds to hide, not colors to portray,
      Whether your nature is that universe
        Which once ye saw and suffered--

A VOICE FROM BENEATH
                                          Or, as they
      Whom we have left, we change and pass away.

DEMOGORGON
      Ye elemental Genii, who have homes
        From man's high mind even to the central stone               540
      Of sullen lead; from Heaven's star-fretted domes
        To the dull weed some sea-worm battens on:

A CONFUSED VOICE
      We hear: thy words waken Oblivion.

DEMOGORGON
      Spirits, whose homes are flesh; ye beasts and birds,
        Ye worms and fish; ye living leaves and buds;
      Lightning and wind; and ye untamable herds,
        Meteors and mists, which throng air's solitudes:

A VOICE
      Thy voice to us is wind among still woods.

DEMOGORGON
      Man, who wert once a despot and a slave,
        A dupe and a deceiver! a decay,                              550
      A traveller from the cradle to the grave
        Through the dim night of this immortal day:

ALL
      Speak: thy strong words may never pass away.

DEMOGORGON
      This is the day which down the void abysm
      At the Earth-born's spell yawns for Heaven's despotism,
        And Conquest is dragged captive through the deep;
      Love, from its awful throne of patient power
      In the wise heart, from the last giddy hour
        Of dread endurance, from the slippery, steep,
      And narrow verge of crag-like agony, springs                   560
      And folds over the world its healing wings.

      Gentleness, Virtue, Wisdom, and Endurance--
      These are the seals of that most firm assurance
        Which bars the pit over Destruction's strength;
      And if, with infirm hand, Eternity,
      Mother of many acts and hours, should free
        The serpent that would clasp her with his length,
      These are the spells by which to reassume
      An empire o'er the disentangled doom.

      To suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite;                     570
      To forgive wrongs darker than death or night;
        To defy Power, which seems omnipotent;
      To love, and bear; to hope till Hope creates
      From its own wreck the thing it contemplates;
        Neither to change, nor falter, nor repent;
      This, like thy glory, Titan, is to be
      Good, great and joyous, beautiful and free;
      This is alone Life; Joy, Empire, and Victory!

The Cenci: A Tragedy in Five Acts.
Dedication to Leigh Hunt, Esq.


MY DEAR FRIEND,--I inscribe with your name, from a distant country, and after an absence whose months have seemed years, this the latest of my literary efforts.

Those writings which I have hitherto published have been little else than visions which impersonate my own apprehensions of the beautiful and the just. I can also perceive in them the literary defects incidental to youth and impatience; they are dreams of what ought to be or may be. The drama which I now present to you is a sad reality. I lay aside the presumptuous attitude of an instructor and am content to paint, with such colors as my own heart furnishes, that which has been.

Had I known a person more highly endowed than yourself with all that it becomes a man to possess, I had solicited for this work the ornament of his name. One more gentle, honorable, innocent and brave; one of more exalted toleration for all who do and think evil, and yet himself more free from evil; one who knows better how to receive and how to confer a benefit, though he must ever confer far more than he can receive; one of simpler, and, in the highest sense of the word, of purer life and manners, I never knew; and I had already been fortunate in friendships when your name was added to the list. In that patient and irreconcilable enmity with domestic and political tyranny and imposture which the tenor of your life has illustrated, and which, had I health and talents, should illustrate mine, let us, comforting each other in our task, live and die.


    All happiness attend you!
      Your affectionate friend,
        PERCY B. SHELLEY.
  ROME, May 29, 1819.

The Cenci: A Tragedy in Five Acts.
Author's Preface


A MANUSCRIPT was communicated to me during my travels in Italy, which was copied from the archives of the Cenci Palace at Rome and contains a detailed account of the horrors which ended in the extinction of one of the noblest and richest families of that city, during the Pontificate of Clement VIII., in the year 1599. The story is that an old man, having spent his life in debauchery and wickedness, conceived at length an implacable hatred towards his children; which showed itself towards one daughter under the form of an incestuous passion, aggravated by every circumstance of cruelty and violence. This daughter, after long and vain attempts to escape from what she considered a perpetual contamination both of body and mind, at length plotted with her mother-in-law and brother to murder their common tyrant. The young maiden who was urged to this tremendous deed by an impulse which overpowered its horror was evidently a most gentle and amiable being, a creature formed to adorn and be admired, and thus violently thwarted from her nature by the necessity of circumstance and opinion. The deed was quickly discovered, and, in spite of the most earnest prayers made to the Pope by the highest persons in Rome, the criminals were put to death. The old man had during his life repeatedly bought his pardon from the Pope for capital crimes of the most enormous and unspeakable kind at the price of a hundred thousand crowns; the death therefore of his victims can scarcely be accounted for by the love of justice. The Pope, among other motives for severity, probably felt that whoever killed the Count Cenci deprived his treasury of a certain and copious source of revenue. Such a story, if told so as to present to the reader all the feelings of those who once acted it, their hopes and fears, their confidences and misgivings, their various interests, passions and opinions, acting upon and with each other yet all conspiring to one tremendous end, would be as a light to make apparent some of the most dark and secret caverns of the human heart.

On my arrival at Rome I found that the story of the Cenci was a subject not to be mentioned in Italian society without awakening a deep and breathless interest; and that the feelings of the company never failed to incline to a romantic pity for the wrongs and a passionate exculpation of the horrible deed to which they urged her who has been mingled two centuries with the common dust. All ranks of people knew the outlines of this history and participated in the overwhelming interest which it seems to have the magic of exciting in the human heart. I had a copy of Guido's picture of Beatrice which is preserved in the Colonna Palace, and my servant instantly recognized it as the portrait of La Cenci.

This national and universal interest which the story produces and has produced for two centuries and among all ranks of people in a great City, where the imagination is kept forever active and awake, first suggested to me the conception of its fitness for a dramatic purpose. In fact it is a tragedy which has already received, from its capacity of awakening and sustaining the sympathy of men, approbation and success. Nothing remained as I imagined but to clothe it to the apprehensions of my countrymen in such language and action as would bring it home to their hearts. The deepest and the sublimest tragic compositions, King Lear and the two plays in which the tale of Oedipus is told, were stories which already existed in tradition, as matters of popular belief and interest, before Shakespeare and Sophocles made them familiar to the sympathy of all succeeding generations of mankind.

This story of the Cenci is indeed eminently fearful and monstrous; anything like a dry exhibition of it on the stage would be insupportable. The person who would treat such a subject must increase the ideal and diminish the actual horror of the events, so that the pleasure which arises from the poetry which exists in these tempestuous sufferings and crimes may mitigate the pain of the contemplation of the moral deformity from which they spring. There must also be nothing attempted to make the exhibition subservient to what is vulgarly termed a moral purpose. The highest moral purpose aimed at in the highest species of the drama is the teaching the human heart, through its sympathies and antipathies, the knowledge of itself; in proportion to the possession of which knowledge every human being is wise, just, sincere, tolerant and kind. If dogmas can do more, it is well: but a drama is no fit place for the enforcement of them. Undoubtedly no person can be truly dishonored by the act of another; and the fit return to make to the most enormous injuries is kindness and forbearance and a resolution to convert the injurer from his dark passions by peace and love. Revenge, retaliation, atonement, are pernicious mistakes. If Beatrice had thought in this manner she would have been wiser and better; but she would never have been a tragic character. The few whom such an exhibition would have interested could never have been sufficiently interested for a dramatic purpose, from the want of finding sympathy in their interest among the mass who surround them. It is in the restless and anatomizing casuistry with which men seek the justification of Beatrice, yet feel that she has done what needs justification; it is in the superstitious horror with which they contemplate alike her wrongs and their revenge,--that the dramatic character of what she did and suffered, consists.

I have endeavored as nearly as possible to represent the characters as they probably were, and have sought to avoid the error of making them actuated by my own conceptions of right or wrong, false or true: thus under a thin veil converting names and actions of the sixteenth century into cold impersonations of my own mind. They are represented as Catholics, and as Catholics deeply tinged with religion. To a Protestant apprehension there will appear something unnatural in the earnest and perpetual sentiment of the relations between God and men which pervade the tragedy of the Cenci. It will especially be startled at the combination of an undoubting persuasion of the truth of the popular religion with a cool and determined perseverance in enormous guilt. But religion in Italy is not, as in Protestant countries, a cloak to be worn on particular days; or a passport which those who do not wish to be railed at carry with them to exhibit; or a gloomy passion for penetrating the impenetrable mysteries of our being, which terrifies its possessor at the darkness of the abyss to the brink of which it has conducted him. Religion coexists, as it were, in the mind of an Italian Catholic, with a faith in that of which all men have the most certain knowledge. It is interwoven with the whole fabric of life. It is adoration, faith, submission, penitence, blind admiration; not a rule for moral conduct. It has no necessary connection with any one virtue. The most atrocious villain may be rigidly devout, and without any shock to established faith confess himself to be so. Religion pervades intensely the whole frame of society, and is, according to the temper of the mind which it inhabits, a passion, a persuasion, an excuse, a refuge; never a check. Cenci himself built a chapel in the court of his Palace, and dedicated it to St. Thomas the Apostle, and established masses for the peace of his soul. Thus in the first scene of the fourth act Lucretia's design in exposing herself to the consequences of an expostulation with Cenci after having administered the opiate was to induce him by a feigned tale to confess himself before death, this being esteemed by Catholics as essential to salvation; and she only relinquishes her purpose when she perceives that her perseverance would expose Beatrice to new outrages.

I have avoided with great care in writing this play the introduction of what is commonly called mere poetry, and I imagine there will scarcely be found a detached simile or a single isolated description, unless Beatrice's description of the chasm appointed for her father's murder should be judged to be of that nature.

In a dramatic composition the imagery and the passion should interpenetrate one another, the former being reserved simply for the full development and illustration of the latter. Imagination is as the immortal God which should assume flesh for the redemption of mortal passion. It is thus that the most remote and the most familiar imagery may alike be fit for dramatic purposes when employed in the illustration of strong feeling, which raises what is low and levels to the apprehension that which is lofty, casting over all the shadow of its own greatness. In other respects I have written more carelessly; that is, without an overfastidious and learned choice of words. In this respect I entirely agree with those modern critics who assert that in order to move men to true sympathy we must use the familiar language of men, and that our great ancestors the ancient English poets are the writers, a study of whom might incite us to do that for our own age which they have done for theirs. But it must be the real language of men in general and not that of any particular class to whose society the writer happens to belong. So much for what I have attempted; I need not be assured that success is a very different matter; particularly for one whose attention has but newly been awakened to the study of dramatic literature.

I endeavored whilst at Rome to observe such monuments of this story as might be accessible to a stranger. The portrait of Beatrice at the Colonna Palace is admirable as a work of art; it was taken by Guido during her confinement in prison. But it is most interesting as a just representation of one of the loveliest specimens of the workmanship of Nature. There is a fixed and pale composure upon the features; she seems sad and stricken down in spirit, yet the despair thus expressed is lightened by the patience of gentleness. Her head is bound with folds of white drapery from which the yellow strings of her golden hair escape and fall about her neck. The moulding of her face is exquisitely delicate; the eyebrows are distinct and arched; the lips have that permanent meaning of imagination and sensibility which suffering has not repressed and which it seems as if death scarcely could extinguish. Her forehead is large and clear; her eyes, which we are told were remarkable for their vivacity, are swollen with weeping and lustreless, but beautifully tender and serene. In the whole mien there is a simplicity and dignity which, united with her exquisite loveliness and deep sorrow, are inexpressibly pathetic. Beatrice Cenci appears to have been one of those rare persons in whom energy and gentleness dwell together without destroying one another; her nature was simple and profound. The crimes and miseries in which she was an actor and a sufferer are as the mask and the mantle in which circumstances clothed her for her impersonation on the scene of the world.

The Cenci Palace is of great extent; and, though in part modernized, there yet remains a vast and gloomy pile of feudal architecture in the same state as during the dreadful scenes which are the subject of this tragedy. The Palace is situated in an obscure corner of Rome, near the quarter of the Jews, and from the upper windows you see the immense ruins of Mount Palatine half hidden under their profuse overgrowth of trees. There is a court in one part of the Palace (perhaps that in which Cenci built the Chapel to St. Thomas), supported by granite columns and adorned with antique friezes of fine workmanship, and built up, according to the ancient Italian fashion, with balcony over balcony of openwork. One of the gates of the Palace formed of immense stones and leading through a passage, dark and lofty and opening into gloomy subterranean chambers, struck me particularly.

Of the Castle of Petrella, I could obtain no further information than that which is to be found in the manuscript.

The Cenci: A Tragedy in Five Acts.



DRAMATIS PERSONÆ
      COUNT FRANCESCO CENCI.
      GIACOMO, BERNARDO, his Sons.
      CARDINAL CAMILLO.
      PRINCE COLONNA.
      ORSINO, a Prelate.
      SAVELLA, the Pope's Legate.
      OLIMPIO, MARZIO, Assassins.
      ANDREA, Servant to CENCI.
      NOBLES. JUDGES. GUARDS, SERVANTS.
      LUCRETIA, Wife of CENCI and Stepmother of his children.
      BEATRICE, his Daughter.
      The SCENE lies principally in Rome, but changes during the fourth
                Act to Pretrella, a castle among the Apulian Apennines.
      TIME. During the Pontificate of Clement VIII.



Act I


SCENE I.--An Apartment in the CENCI Palace. Enter COUNT CENCI and CARDINAL CAMILLO.

CAMILLO
      THAT matter of the murder is hushed up
      If you consent to yield his Holiness
      Your fief that lies beyond the Pincian gate.
      It needed all my interest in the conclave
      To bend him to this point; he said that you
      Bought perilous impunity with your gold;
      That crimes like yours if once or twice compounded
      Enriched the Church, and respited from hell
      An erring soul which might repent and live;
      But that the glory and the interest                             10
      Of the high throne he fills little consist
      With making it a daily mart of guilt
      As manifold and hideous as the deeds
      Which you scarce hide from men's revolted eyes.

CENCI
      The third of my possessions--let it go!
      Ay, I once heard the nephew of the Pope
      Had sent his architect to view the ground,
      Meaning to build a villa on my vines
      The next time I compounded with his uncle.
      I little thought he should outwit me so!                        20
      Henceforth no witness--not the lamp--shall see
      That which the vassal threatened to divulge,
      Whose throat is choked with dust for his reward.
      The deed he saw could not have rated higher
      Than his most worthless life--it angers me!
      Respited me from Hell! So may the Devil
      Respite their souls from Heaven! No doubt Pope Clement,
      And his most charitable nephews, pray
      That the Apostle Peter and the saints
      Will grant for their sake that I long enjoy                     30
      Strength, wealth, and pride, and lust, and length of days
      Wherein to act the deeds which are the stewards
      Of their revenue.--But much yet remains
      To which they show no title.

CAMILLO
                                    Oh, Count Cenci!
      So much that thou mightst honorably live
      And reconcile thyself with thine own heart
      And with thy God and with the offended world.
      How hideously look deeds of lust and blood
      Through those snow-white and venerable hairs!
      Your children should be sitting round you now                   40
      But that you fear to read upon their looks
      The shame and misery you have written there.
      Where is your wife? Where is your gentle daughter?
      Methinks her sweet looks, which make all things else
      Beauteous and glad, might kill the fiend within you.
      Why is she barred from all society
      But her own strange and uncomplaining wrongs?
      Talk with me, Count,--you know I mean you well.
      I stood beside your dark and fiery youth,
      Watching its bold and bad career, as men                        50
      Watch meteors, but it vanished not; I marked
      Your desperate and remorseless manhood; now
      Do I behold you in dishonored age
      Charged with a thousand unrepented crimes.
      Yet I have ever hoped you would amend,
      And in that hope have saved your life three times.

CENCI
      For which Aldobrandino owes you now
      My fief beyond the Pincian. Cardinal,
      One thing, I pray you, recollect henceforth,
      And so we shall converse with less restraint.                   60
      A man you knew spoke of my wife and daughter;
      He was accustomed to frequent my house;
      So the next day his wife and daughter came
      And asked if I had seen him; and I smiled.
      I think they never saw him any more.

CAMILLO
      Thou execrable man, beware!

CENCI
                                   Of thee?
      Nay, this is idle. We should know each other.
      As to my character for what men call crime,
      Seeing I please my senses as I list,
      And vindicate that right with force or guile,                   70
      It is a public matter, and I care not
      If I discuss it with you. I may speak
      Alike to you and my own conscious heart,
      For you give out that you have half reformed me;
      Therefore strong vanity will keep you silent,
      If fear should not; both will, I do not doubt.
      All men delight in sensual luxury;
      All men enjoy revenge, and most exult
      Over the tortures they can never feel,
      Flattering their secret peace with others' pain.                80
      But I delight in nothing else. I love
      The sight of agony, and the sense of joy,
      When this shall be another's and that mine;
      And I have no remorse and little fear,
      Which are, I think, the checks of other men.
      This mood has grown upon me, until now
      Any design my captious fancy makes
      The picture of its wish--and it forms none
      But such as men like you would start to know--
      Is as my natural food and rest debarred                         90
      Until it be accomplished.

CAMILLO
                                 Art thou not
      Most miserable?

CENCI
                       Why miserable?
      No. I am what your theologians call
      Hardened; which they must be in impudence,
      So to revile a man's peculiar taste.
      True, I was happier than I am, while yet
      Manhood remained to act the thing I thought,--
      While lust was sweeter than revenge; and now
      Invention palls. Ay, we must all grow old.
      And but that there remains a deed to act                       100
      Whose horror might make sharp an appetite
      Duller than mine--I 'd do,--I know not what.
      When I was young I thought of nothing else
      But pleasure; and I fed on honey sweets.
      Men, by St. Thomas! cannot live like bees,--
      And I grew tired; yet, till I killed a foe,
      And heard his groans, and heard his children's groans,
      Knew I not what delight was else on earth,--
      Which now delights me little. I the rather
      Look on such pangs as terror ill conceals--                    110
      The dry, fixed eyeball, the pale, quivering lip,
      Which tell me that the spirit weeps within
      Tears bitterer than the bloody sweat of Christ.
      I rarely kill the body, which preserves,
      Like a strong prison, the soul within my power,
      Wherein I feed it with the breath of fear
      For hourly pain.

CAMILLO
                        Hell's most abandoned fiend
      Did never, in the drunkenness of guilt,
      Speak to his heart as now you speak to me.
      I thank my God that I believe you not.                         120

Enter ANDREA

ANDREA
      My Lord, a gentleman from Salamanca
      Would speak with you.

CENCI
                             Bid him attend me
      In the grand saloon.

                                                         [Exit ANDREA.

CAMILLO
      Farewell; and I will pray
      Almighty God that thy false, impious words
      Tempt not his spirit to abandon thee.

                                                        [Exit CAMILLO.

CENCI
      The third of my possessions! I must use
      Close husbandry, or gold, the old man's sword,
      Falls from my withered hand. But yesterday
      There came an order from the Pope to make
      Fourfold provision for my cursèd sons,                  130
      Whom I had sent from Rome to Salamanca,
      Hoping some accident might cut them off,
      And meaning, if I could, to starve them there.
      I pray thee, God, send some quick death upon them!
      Bernardo and my wife could not be worse
      If dead and damned. Then, as to Beatrice--
      [Looking around him suspiciously.
      I think they cannot hear me at that door.
      What if they should? And yet I need not speak,
      Though the heart triumphs with itself in words.
      O thou most silent air, that shalt not hear                    140
      What now I think! Thou pavement which I tread
      Towards her chamber,--let your echoes talk
      Of my imperious step, scorning surprise,
      But not of my intent!--Andrea!

Enter ANDREA

ANDREA
                                      My Lord?

CENCI
      Bid Beatrice attend me in her chamber
      This evening:--no, at midnight and alone.
                                                              [Exeunt.

SCENE II.--A Garden of the Cenci Palace. Enter BEATRICE and ORSINO, as in conversation.

BEATRICE
                        Pervert not truth,
      Orsino. You remember where we held
      That conversation; nay, we see the spot
      Even from this cypress; two long years are passed
      Since, on an April midnight, underneath
      The moonlight ruins of Mount Palatine,
      I did confess to you my secret mind.

ORSINO
      You said you loved me then.

BEATRICE
                                   You are a priest.
      Speak to me not of love.

ORSINO
                                I may obtain
      The dispensation of the Pope to marry.                          10
      Because I am a priest do you believe
      Your image, as the hunter some struck deer,
      Follows me not whether I wake or sleep?

BEATRICE
      As I have said, speak to me not of love;
      Had you a dispensation, I have not;
      Nor will I leave this home of misery
      Whilst my poor Bernard, and that gentle lady
      To whom I owe life and these virtuous thoughts,
      Must suffer what I still have strength to share.
      Alas, Orsino! All the love that once                            20
      I felt for you is turned to bitter pain.
      Ours was a youthful contract, which you first
      Broke by assuming vows no Pope will loose.
      And thus I love you still, but holily,
      Even as a sister or a spirit might;
      And so I swear a cold fidelity.
      And it is well perhaps we shall not marry.
      You have a sly, equivocating vein
      That suits me not.--Ah, wretched that I am!
      Where shall I turn? Even now you look on me                     30
      As you were not my friend, and as if you
      Discovered that I thought so, with false smiles
      Making my true suspicion seem your wrong.
      Ah, no, forgive me; sorrow makes me seem
      Sterner than else my nature might have been;
      I have a weight of melancholy thoughts,
      And they forebode,--but what can they forebode
      Worse than I now endure?

ORSINO
                                All will be well.
      Is the petition yet prepared? You know
      My zeal for all you wish, sweet Beatrice;                       40
      Doubt not but I will use my utmost skill
      So that the Pope attend to your complaint.

BEATRICE
      Your zeal for all I wish. Ah me, you are cold!
      Your utmost skill--speak but one word--
                                    (Aside) Alas!
      Weak and deserted creature that I am,
      Here I stand bickering with my only friend!

(To ORSINO)
      This night my father gives a sumptuous feast,
      Orsino; he has heard some happy news
      From Salamanca, from my brothers there,
      And with this outward show of love he mocks                     50
      His inward hate. 'T is bold hypocrisy,
      For he would gladlier celebrate their deaths,
      Which I have heard him pray for on his knees.
      Great God! that such a father should be mine!
      But there is mighty preparation made,
      And all our kin, the Cenci, will be there,
      And all the chief nobility of Rome.
      And he has bidden me and my pale mother
      Attire ourselves in festival array.
      Poor lady! she expects some happy change                        60
      In his dark spirit from this act; I none.
      At supper I will give you the petition;
      Till when--farewell.

ORSINO
                            Farewell.
                                                       [Exit BEATRICE.
                                       I know the Pope
      Will ne'er absolve me from my priestly vow
      But by absolving me from the revenue
      Of many a wealthy see; and, Beatrice,
      I think to win thee at an easier rate.
      Nor shall he read her eloquent petition.
      He might bestow her on some poor relation
      Of his sixth cousin, as he did her sister,                      70
      And I should be debarred from all access.
      Then as to what she suffers from her father,
      In all this there is much exaggeration.
      Old men are testy, and will have their way.
      A man may stab his enemy, or his vassal,
      And live a free life as to wine or women,
      And with a peevish temper may return
      To a dull home, and rate his wife and children;
      Daughters and wives call this foul tyranny.
      I shall be well content if on my conscience                     80
      There rest no heavier sin than what they suffer
      From the devices of my love--a net
      From which he shall escape not. Yet I fear
      Her subtle mind, her awe-inspiring gaze,
      Whose beams anatomize me, nerve by nerve,
      And lay me bare, and make me blush to see
      My hidden thoughts.--Ah, no! a friendless girl
      Who clings to me, as to her only hope!
      I were a fool, not less than if a panther
      Were panic-stricken by the antelope's eye,                      90
      If she escape me.
                                                                [Exit.

SCENE III.--A magnificent Hall in the Cenci Palace. A Banquet. Enter CENCI, LUCRETIA, BEATRICE, ORSINO, CAMILLO, NOBLES.

CENCI
      Welcome, my friends and kinsmen; welcome ye,
      Princes and Cardinals, pillars of the church,
      Whose presence honors our festivity.
      I have too long lived like an anchorite,
      And in my absence from your merry meetings
      An evil word is gone abroad of me;
      But I do hope that you, my noble friends,
      When you have shared the entertainment here,
      And heard the pious cause for which 't is given,
      And we have pledged a health or two together,                   10
      Will think me flesh and blood as well as you;
      Sinful indeed, for Adam made all so,
      But tender-hearted, meek and pitiful.

FIRST GUEST
      In truth, my Lord, you seem too light of heart,
      Too sprightly and companionable a man,
      To act the deeds that rumor pins on you.
                                                    [To his companion.
      I never saw such blithe and open cheer
      In any eye!

SECOND GUEST
                   Some most desired event,
      In which we all demand a common joy,
      Has brought us hither; let us hear it, Count.                   20

CENCI
      It is indeed a most desired event.
      If when a parent from a parent's heart
      Lifts from this earth to the great Father of all
      A prayer, both when he lays him down to sleep,
      And when he rises up from dreaming it;
      One supplication, one desire, one hope,
      That he would grant a wish for his two sons,
      Even all that he demands in their regard,
      And suddenly beyond his dearest hope
      It is accomplished, he should then rejoice,                     30
      And call his friends and kinsmen to a feast,
      And task their love to grace his merriment,--
      Then honor me thus far, for I am he.

BEATRICE (to LUCRETIA)
      Great God! How horrible! some dreadful ill
      Must have befallen my brothers.

LUCRETIA
                                       Fear not, child,
      He speaks too frankly.

BEATRICE
                              Ah! My blood runs cold.
      I fear that wicked laughter round his eye,
      Which wrinkles up the skin even to the hair.

CENCI
      Here are the letters brought from Salamanca.
      Beatrice, read them to your mother. God!                        40
      I thank thee! In one night didst thou perform,
      By ways inscrutable, the thing I sought.
      My disobedient and rebellious sons
      Are dead!--Why, dead!--What means this change of cheer?
      You hear me not--I tell you they are dead;
      And they will need no food or raiment more;
      The tapers that did light them the dark way
      Are their last cost. The Pope, I think, will not
      Expect I should maintain them in their coffins.
      Rejoice with me--my heart is wondrous glad.                     50

BEATRICE (LUCRETIA sinks, half fainting; BEATRICE supports her)
      It is not true!--Dear Lady, pray look up.
      Had it been true--there is a God in Heaven--
      He would not live to boast of such a boon.
      Unnatural man, thou knowest that it is false.

CENCI
      Ay, as the word of God; whom here I call
      To witness that I speak the sober truth;
      And whose most favoring providence was shown
      Even in the manner of their deaths. For Rocco
      Was kneeling at the mass, with sixteen others,
      When the church fell and crushed him to a mummy;                60
      The rest escaped unhurt. Cristofano
      Was stabbed in error by a jealous man,
      Whilst she he loved was sleeping with his rival,
      All in the self-same hour of the same night;
      Which shows that Heaven has special care of me.
      I beg those friends who love me that they mark
      The day a feast upon their calendars.
      It was the twenty-seventh of December.
      Ay, read the letters if you doubt my oath.

[The assembly appears confused; several of the guests rise.

FIRST GUEST
      Oh, horrible! I will depart.

SECOND GUEST
                                    And I.

THIRD GUEST
                                            No, stay!                 70
      I do believe it is some jest; though, faith!
      'T is mocking us somewhat too solemnly.
      I think his son has married the Infanta,
      Or found a mine of gold in El Dorado.
      'T is but to season some such news; stay, stay!
      I see 't is only raillery by his smile.

CENCI (filling a bowl of wine, and lifting it up)
      O thou bright wine, whose purple splendor leaps
      And bubbles gayly in this golden bowl
      Under the lamp-light, as my spirits do,
      To hear the death of my accursèd sons!                          80
      Could I believe thou wert their mingled blood,
      Then would I taste thee like a sacrament,
      And pledge with thee the mighty Devil in Hell,
      Who, if a father's curses, as men say,
      Climb with swift wings after their children's souls,
      And drag them from the very throne of Heaven,
      Now triumphs in my triumph!--But thou art
      Superfluous; I have drunken deep of joy,
      And I will taste no other wine to-night.
      Here, Andrea! Bear the bowl around.                             90

A GUEST (rising)
                                           Thou wretch!
      Will none among this noble company
      Check the abandoned villain?

CAMILLO
                                    For God's sake,
      Let me dismiss the guests! You are insane.
      Some ill will come of this.

SECOND GUEST
                                   Seize, silence him!

FIRST GUEST
      I will!

THIRD GUEST
               And I!

CENCI (addressing those who rise with a threatening gesture)
                       Who moves? Who speaks?
                                              [Turning to the company.
                                               'T is nothing,
      Enjoy yourselves.--Beware! for my revenge
      Is as the sealed commission of a king,
      That kills, and none dare name the murderer.
       [The Banquet is broken up; several of the Guests are departing.

BEATRICE
      I do entreat you, go not, noble guests;
      What although tyranny and impious hate                         100
      Stand sheltered by a father's hoary hair?
      What if 't is he who clothed us in these limbs
      Who tortures them, and triumphs? What, if we,
      The desolate and the dead, were his own flesh,
      His children and his wife, whom he is bound
      To love and shelter? Shall we therefore find
      No refuge in this merciless wide world?
      Oh, think what deep wrongs must have blotted out
      First love, then reverence, in a child's prone mind,
      Till it thus vanquish shame and fear! Oh, think!               110
      I have borne much, and kissed the sacred hand
      Which crushed us to the earth, and thought its stroke
      Was perhaps some paternal chastisement!
      Have excused much, doubted; and when no doubt
      Remained, have sought by patience, love and tears
      To soften him; and when this could not be,
      I have knelt down through the long sleepless nights,
      And lifted up to God, the father of all,
      Passionate prayers; and when these were not heard,
      I have still borne,--until I meet you here,                    120
      Princes and kinsmen, at this hideous feast
      Given at my brothers' deaths. Two yet remain;
      His wife remains and I, whom if ye save not,
      Ye may soon share such merriment again
      As fathers make over their children's graves.
      Oh! Prince Colonna, thou art our near kinsman;
      Cardinal, thou art the Pope's chamberlain;
      Camillo, thou art chief justiciary;
      Take us away!

CENCI (he has been conversing with CAMILLO during the first
      part of BEATRICE'S speech; he hears the conclusion,
      and now advances)
                     I hope my good friends here
      Will think of their own daughters--or perhaps                  130
      Of their own throats--before they lend an ear
      To this wild girl.

BEATRICE (not noticing the words of CENCI)
                          Dare no one look on me?
      None answer? Can one tyrant overbear
      The sense of many best and wisest men?
      Or is it that I sue not in some form
      Of scrupulous law that ye deny my suit?
      Oh, God! that I were buried with my brothers!
      And that the flowers of this departed spring
      Were fading on my grave! and that my father
      Were celebrating now one feast for all!                        140

CAMILLO
      A bitter wish for one so young and gentle.
      Can we do nothing?--

COLONNA
                            Nothing that I see
      Count Cenci were a dangerous enemy;
      Yet I would second any one.

A CARDINAL
                                   And I.

CENCI
      Retire to your chamber, insolent girl!

BEATRICE
      Retire thou, impious man! Ay, hide thyself
      Where never eye can look upon thee more!
      Wouldst thou have honor and obedience,
      Who art a torturer? Father, never dream,
      Though thou mayst overbear this company,                       150
      But ill must come of ill. Frown not on me!
      Haste, hide thyself, lest with avenging looks
      My brothers' ghosts should hunt thee from thy seat!
      Cover thy face from every living eye,
      And start if thou but hear a human step;
      Seek out some dark and silent corner--there
      Bow thy white head before offended God,
      And we will kneel around, and fervently
      Pray that he pity both ourselves and thee.

CENCI
      My friends, I do lament this insane girl                       160
      Has spoiled the mirth of our festivity.
      Good night, farewell; I will not make you longer
      Spectators of our dull domestic quarrels.
      Another time.--
                            [Exeunt all but CENCI and BEATRICE.
                       My brain is swimming round.
      Give me a bowl of wine!

(To BEATRICE)
                               Thou painted viper!
      Beast that thou art! Fair and yet terrible!
      I know a charm shall make thee meek and tame,
      Now get thee from my sight!
                                                       [Exit BEATRICE.
                                   Here, Andrea,
      Fill up this goblet with Greek wine. I said
      I would not drink this evening, but I must;                    170
      For, strange to say, I feel my spirits fail
      With thinking what I have decreed to do.
                                                   (Drinking the wine)
      Be thou the resolution of quick youth
      Within my veins, and manhood's purpose stern,
      And age's firm, cold, subtle villainy;
      As if thou wert indeed my children's blood
      Which I did thirst to drink! The charm works well.
      It must be done; it shall be done, I swear!
                                                                [Exit.

The Cenci: A Tragedy in Five Acts.



DRAMATIS PERSONÆ
      COUNT FRANCESCO CENCI.
      GIACOMO, BERNARDO, his Sons.
      CARDINAL CAMILLO.
      PRINCE COLONNA.
      ORSINO, a Prelate.
      SAVELLA, the Pope's Legate.
      OLIMPIO, MARZIO, Assassins.
      ANDREA, Servant to CENCI.
      NOBLES. JUDGES. GUARDS, SERVANTS.
      LUCRETIA, Wife of CENCI and Stepmother of his children.
      BEATRICE, his Daughter.
      The SCENE lies principally in Rome, but changes during the fourth
                Act to Pretrella, a castle among the Apulian Apennines.
      TIME. During the Pontificate of Clement VIII.



Act II


SCENE I.--An Apartment in the Cenci Palace. Enter LUCRETIA and BERNARDO.

LUCRETIA
      WEEP not, my gentle boy; he struck but me,
      Who have borne deeper wrongs. In truth, if he
      Had killed me, he had done a kinder deed.
      O God Almighty, do thou look upon us,
      We have no other friend but only thee!
      Yet weep not; though I love you as my own,
      I am not your true mother.

BERNARDO
                                  Oh, more, more
      Than ever mother was to any child,
      That have you been to me! Had he not been
      My father, do you think that I should weep?                     10

LUCRETIA
      Alas! poor boy, what else couldst thou have done!

Enter BEATRICE

BEATRICE (in a hurried voice)
      Did he pass this way? Have you seen him, brother?
      Ah, no! that is his step upon the stairs;
      'T is nearer now; his hand is on the door;
      Mother, if I to thee have ever been
      A duteous child, now save me! Thou, great God,
      Whose image upon earth a father is,
      Dost thou indeed abandon me? He comes;
      The door is opening now; I see his face;
      He frowns on others, but he smiles on me,                       20
      Even as he did after the feast last night.

Enter a Servant
      Almighty God, how merciful thou art!
      'T is but Orsino's servant.--Well, what news?

SERVANT
      My master bids me say the Holy Father
      Has sent back your petition thus unopened.
                                                      (Giving a paper)
      And he demands at what hour 't were secure
      To visit you again?

LUCRETIA
                           At the Ave Mary.
                                                        [Exit Servant.
      So, daughter, our last hope has failed. Ah me,
      How pale you look! you tremble, and you stand
      Wrapped in some fixed and fearful meditation,                   30
      As if one thought were overstrong for you;
      Your eyes have a chill glare; oh, dearest child!
      Are you gone mad? If not, pray speak to me.

BEATRICE
      You see I am not mad; I speak to you.

LUCRETIA
      You talked of something that your father did
      After that dreadful feast? Could it be worse
      Than when he smiled, and cried, 'My sons are dead!'
      And every one looked in his neighbor's face
      To see if others were as white as he?
      At the first word he spoke I felt the blood                     40
      Rush to my heart, and fell into a trance;
      And when it passed I sat all weak and wild;
      Whilst you alone stood up, and with strong words
      Checked his unnatural pride; and I could see
      The devil was rebuked that lives in him.
      Until this hour thus you have ever stood
      Between us and your father's moody wrath
      Like a protecting presence; your firm mind
      Has been our only refuge and defence.
      What can have thus subdued it? What can now                     50
      Have given you that cold melancholy look,
      Succeeding to your unaccustomed fear?

BEATRICE
      What is it that you say? I was just thinking
      'T were better not to struggle any more.
      Men, like my father, have been dark and bloody;
      Yet never--oh! before worse comes of it,
      'T were wise to die; it ends in that at last.

LUCRETIA
      Oh, talk not so, dear child! Tell me at once
      What did your father do or say to you?
      He stayed not after that accursèd feast                        60
      One moment in your chamber.--Speak to me.

BERNARDO
      Oh, sister, sister, prithee, speak to us!

BEATRICE (speaking very slowly, with a forced calmness)
      It was one word, mother, one little word;
      One look, one smile.
                                                              (Wildly)
                            Oh! he has trampled me
      Under his feet, and made the blood stream down
      My pallid cheeks. And he has given us all
      Ditch-water, and the fever-stricken flesh
      Of buffaloes, and bade us eat or starve,
      And we have eaten. He has made me look
      On my beloved Bernardo, when the rust                           70
      Of heavy chains has gangrened his sweet limbs;
      And I have never yet despaired--but now!
      What would I say?
                                                  (Recovering herself)
                         Ah no! 't is nothing new.
      The sufferings we all share have made me wild;
      He only struck and cursed me as he passed;
      He said, he looked, he did,--nothing at all
      Beyond his wont, yet it disordered me.
      Alas! I am forgetful of my duty;
      I should preserve my senses for your sake.

LUCRETIA
      Nay, Beatrice; have courage, my sweet girl.                     80
      If any one despairs it should be I,
      Who loved him once, and now must live with him
      Till God in pity call for him or me.
      For you may, like your sister, find some husband,
      And smile, years hence, with children round your knees;
      Whilst I, then dead, and all this hideous coil,
      Shall be remembered only as a dream.

BEATRICE
      Talk not to me, dear Lady, of a husband.
      Did you not nurse me when my mother died?
      Did you not shield me and that dearest boy?                     90
      And had we any other friend but you
      In infancy, with gentle words and looks,
      To win our father not to murder us?
      And shall I now desert you? May the ghost
      Of my dead mother plead against my soul,
      If I abandon her who filled the place
      She left, with more, even, than a mother's love!

BERNARDO
      And I am of my sister's mind. Indeed
      I would not leave you in this wretchedness,
      Even though the Pope should make me free to live               100
      In some blithe place, like others of my age,
      With sports, and delicate food, and the fresh air.
      Oh, never think that I will leave you, mother!

LUCRETIA
      My dear, dear children!

Enter CENCI, suddenly

CENCI
                               What! Beatrice here!
      Come hither!
                               [She shrinks back, and covers her face.
                    Nay, hide not your face, 't is fair;
      Look up! Why, yesternight you dared to look
      With disobedient insolence upon me,
      Bending a stern and an inquiring brow
      On what I meant; whilst I then sought to hide
      That which I came to tell you--but in vain.                    110

BEATRICE (wildly staggering towards the door)
      Oh, that the earth would gape! Hide me, O God!

CENCI
      Then it was I whose inarticulate words
      Fell from my lips, and who with tottering steps
      Fled from your presence, as you now from mine.
      Stay, I command you! From this day and hour
      Never again, I think, with fearless eye,
      And brow superior, and unaltered cheek,
      And that lip made for tenderness or scorn,
      Shalt thou strike dumb the meanest of mankind;
      Me least of all. Now get thee to thy chamber!                  120
      Thou too, loathed image of thy cursèd mother,

(To BERNARDO)
      Thy milky, meek face makes me sick with hate!

                                 [Exeunt BEATRICE and BERNARDO.
      (Aside) So much has passed between us as must make
      Me bold, her fearful.--'T is an awful thing
      To touch such mischief as I now conceive;
      So men sit shivering on the dewy bank
      And try the chill stream with their feet; once in--
      How the delighted spirit pants for joy!

LUCRETIA (advancing timidly towards him)
      O husband! pray forgive poor Beatrice.
      She meant not any ill.

CENCI
                              Nor you perhaps?                       130
      Nor that young imp, whom you have taught by rote
      Parricide with his alphabet? nor Giacomo?
      Nor those two most unnatural sons who stirred
      Enmity up against me with the Pope?
      Whom in one night merciful God cut off.
      Innocent lambs! They thought not any ill.
      You were not here conspiring? you said nothing
      Of how I might be dungeoned as a madman;
      Or be condemned to death for some offence,
      And you would be the witnesses? This failing,                  140
      How just it were to hire assassins, or
      Put sudden poison in my evening drink?
      Or smother me when overcome by wine?
      Seeing we had no other judge but God,
      And he had sentenced me, and there were none
      But you to be the executioners
      Of his decree enregistered in heaven?
      Oh, no! You said not this?

LUCRETIA
                                  So help me God,
      I never thought the things you charge me with!

CENCI
      If you dare to speak that wicked lie again,                    150
      I 'll kill you. What! it was not by your counsel
      That Beatrice disturbed the feast last night?
      You did not hope to stir some enemies
      Against me, and escape, and laugh to scorn
      What every nerve of you now trembles at?
      You judged that men were bolder than they are;
      Few dare to stand between their grave and me.

LUCRETIA
      Look not so dreadfully! By my salvation
      I knew not aught that Beatrice designed;
      Nor do I think she designed anything                           160
      Until she heard you talk of her dead brothers.

CENCI
      Blaspheming liar! you are damned for this!
      But I will take you where you may persuade
      The stones you tread on to deliver you;
      For men shall there be none but those who dare
      All things--not question that which I command.
      On Wednesday next I shall set out; you know
      That savage rook, the Castle of Petrella;
      'T is safely walled, and moated round about;
      Its dungeons under ground and its thick towers                 170
      Never told tales; though they have heard and seen
      What might make dumb things speak. Why do you linger?
      Make speediest preparation for the journey!
                                                       [Exit LUCRETIA.
      The all-beholding sun yet shines; I hear
      A busy stir of men about the streets;
      I see the bright sky through the window panes.
      It is a garish, broad, and peering day;
      Loud, light, suspicious, full of eyes and ears;
      And every little corner, nook, and hole,
      Is penetrated with the insolent light.                         180
      Come, darkness! Yet, what is the day to me?
      And wherefore should I wish for night, who do
      A deed which shall confound both night and day?
      'T is she shall grope through a bewildering mist
      Of horror; if there be a sun in heaven,
      She shall not dare to look upon its beams;
      Nor feel its warmth. Let her, then, wish for night;
      The act I think shall soon extinguish all
      For me; I bear a darker, deadlier gloom
      Than the earth's shade, or interlunar air,                     190
      Or constellations quenched in murkiest cloud,
      In which I walk secure and unbeheld
      Towards my purpose.--Would that it were done!
                                                                [Exit.

SCENE II.--A Chamber in the Vatican. Enter CAMILLO and GIACOMO, in conversation.

CAMILLO
      There is an obsolete and doubtful law
      By which you might obtain a bare provision
      Of food and clothing.

GIACOMO
                             Nothing more? Alas!
      Bare must be the provision which strict law
      Awards, and aged sullen avarice pays.
      Why did my father not apprentice me
      To some mechanic trade? I should have then
      Been trained in no highborn necessities
      Which I could meet not by my daily toil.
      The eldest son of a rich nobleman                               10
      Is heir to all his incapacities;
      He has wide wants, and narrow powers. If you,
      Cardinal Camillo, were reduced at once
      From thrice-driven beds of down, and delicate food,
      An hundred servants, and six palaces,
      To that which nature doth indeed require?--

CAMILLO
      Nay, there is reason in your plea; 't were hard.

GIACOMO
      'T is hard for a firm man to bear; but I
      Have a dear wife, a lady of high birth,
      Whose dowry in ill hour I lent my father,                       20
      Without a bond or witness to the deed;
      And children, who inherit her fine senses,
      The fairest creatures in this breathing world;
      And she and they reproach me not. Cardinal,
      Do you not think the Pope will interpose
      And stretch authority beyond the law?

CAMILLO
      Though your peculiar case is hard, I know
      The Pope will not divert the course of law.
      After that impious feast the other night
      I spoke with him, and urged him then to check                   30
      Your father's cruel hand; he frowned and said,
      'Children are disobedient, and they sting
      Their fathers' hearts to madness and despair,
      Requiting years of care with contumely.
      I pity the Count Cenci from my heart;
      His outraged love perhaps awakened hate,
      And thus he is exasperated to ill.
      In the great war between the old and young,
      I, who have white hairs and a tottering body,
      Will keep at least blameless neutrality.'                       40

Enter ORSINO
      You, my good lord Orsino, heard those words.

ORSINO
      What words?

GIACOMO
                   Alas, repeat them not again!
      There then is no redress for me; at least
      None but that which I may achieve myself,
      Since I am driven to the brink.--But, say,
      My innocent sister and my only brother
      Are dying underneath my father's eye.
      The memorable torturers of this land,
      Galeaz Visconti, Borgia, Ezzelin,
      Never inflicted on their meanest slave                          50
      What these endure; shall they have no protection?

CAMILLO
      Why, if they would petition to the Pope,
      I see not how he could refuse it; yet
      He holds it of most dangerous example
      In aught to weaken the paternal power,
      Being, as 't were, the shadow of his own.
      I pray you now excuse me. I have business
      That will not bear delay.
                                                        [Exit CAMILLO.

GIACOMO
                                 But you, Orsino,
      Have the petition; wherefore not present it?

ORSINO
      I have presented it, and backed it with                         60
      My earnest prayers and urgent interest;
      It was returned unanswered. I doubt not
      But that the strange and execrable deeds
      Alleged in it--in truth they might well baffle
      Any belief--have turned the Pope's displeasure
      Upon the accusers from the criminal.
      So I should guess from what Camillo said.

GIACOMO
      My friend, that palace-walking devil, Gold,
      Has whispered silence to His Holiness;
      And we are left, as scorpions ringed with fire.                 70
      What should we do but strike ourselves to death?
      For he who is our murderous persecutor
      Is shielded by a father's holy name,
      Or I would--
                                                      [Stops abruptly.

ORSINO
                    What? Fear not to speak your thought.
      Words are but holy as the deeds they cover;
      A priest who has forsworn the God he serves,
      A judge who makes Truth weep at his decree,
      A friend who should weave counsel, as I now,
      But as the mantle of some selfish guile,
      A father who is all a tyrant seems,--                           80
      Were the profaner for his sacred name.

GIACOMO
      Ask me not what I think; the unwilling brain
      Feigns often what it would not; and we trust
      Imagination with such fantasies
      As the tongue dares not fashion into words--
      Which have no words, their horror makes them dim
      To the mind's eye. My heart denies itself
      To think what you demand.

ORSINO
                                 But a friend's bosom
      Is as the inmost cave of our own mind,
      Where we sit shut from the wide gaze of day                     90
      And from the all-communicating air.
      You look what I suspected--

GIACOMO
                                   Spare me now!
      I am as one lost in a midnight wood,
      Who dares not ask some harmless passenger
      The path across the wilderness, lest he,
      As my thoughts are, should be--a murderer.
      I know you are my friend, and all I dare
      Speak to my soul that will I trust with thee.
      But now my heart is heavy, and would take
      Lone counsel from a night of sleepless care.                   100
      Pardon me that I say farewell--farewell!
      I would that to my own suspected self
      I could address a word so full of peace.

ORSINO
      Farewell!--Be your thoughts better or more bold.
                                                        [Exit GIACOMO.
      I had disposed the Cardinal Camillo
      To feed his hope with cold encouragement.
      It fortunately serves my close designs
      That 't is a trick of this same family
      To analyze their own and other minds.
      Such self-anatomy shall teach the will                         110
      Dangerous secrets; for it tempts our powers,
      Knowing what must be thought, and may be done,
      Into the depth of darkest purposes.
      So Cenci fell into the pit; even I,
      Since Beatrice unveiled me to myself,
      And made me shrink from what I cannot shun,
      Show a poor figure to my own esteem,
      To which I grow half reconciled. I 'll do
      As little mischief as I can; that thought
      Shall fee the accuser conscience.
                                                       (After a pause)
                                         Now what harm               120
      If Cenci should be murdered?--Yet, if murdered,
      Wherefore by me? And what if I could take
      The profit, yet omit the sin and peril
      In such an action? Of all earthly things
      I fear a man whose blows outspeed his words;
      And such is Cenci; and, while Cenci lives,
      His daughter's dowry were a secret grave
      If a priest wins her.--O fair Beatrice!
      Would that I loved thee not, or, loving thee,
      Could but despise danger and gold and all                      130
      That frowns between my wish and its effect,
      Or smiles beyond it! There is no escape;
      Her bright form kneels beside me at the altar,
      And follows me to the resort of men,
      And fills my slumber with tumultuous dreams,
      So when I wake my blood seems liquid fire;
      And if I strike my damp and dizzy head,
      My hot palm scorches it; her very name,
      But spoken by a stranger, makes my heart
      Sicken and pant; and thus unprofitably                         140
      I clasp the phantom of unfelt delights
      Till weak imagination half possesses
      The self-created shadow. Yet much longer
      Will I not nurse this life of feverous hours.
      From the unravelled hopes of Giacomo
      I must work out my own dear purposes.
      I see, as from a tower, the end of all:
      Her father dead; her brother bound to me
      By a dark secret, surer than the grave;
      Her mother scared and unexpostulating                          150
      From the dread manner of her wish achieved;
      And she!--Once more take courage, my faint heart;
      What dares a friendless maiden matched with thee?
      I have such foresight as assures success.
      Some unbeheld divinity doth ever,
      When dread events are near, stir up men's minds
      To black suggestions; and he prospers best,
      Not who becomes the instrument of ill,
      But who can flatter the dark spirit that makes
      Its empire and its prey of other hearts                        160
      Till it become his slave--as I will do.
                                                                [Exit.