And greetings of delighted wonder, all The abysses of the sky and the wide Went to their sleep again : and when earth, the dawn

There was a change : the impalpable Came, would’st thou think that toads, thin air and snakes, and efts,

And the all-circling sunlight were transCould e'er be beautiful? yet so they were, formed, And that with little change of shape or As if the sense of love dissolved in them hue :

Had folded itself round the sphered All things had put their evil nature off : world. I cannot tell my joy, when o'er a lake My vision then grew clear, and I could Upon a drooping bough with night- see shade twined,

Into the mysteries of the universe : I saw two azure halcyons clinging down. Dizzy as with delight I floated down, ward

Winnowing the lightsome air with languid And thinning one bright bunch of amber plumes, berries,

My coursers sought their birthplace in With quick long beaks, and in the deep

the sun, there lay

Where they henceforth will live exempt Those lovely forms imaged as in a sky; from toil So, with my thoughts full of these happy Pasturing flowers of vegetable fire ; changes,

And where my moonlike car will stand We meet again, the happiest change of within all.

A temple, gazed upon by Phidian forms Asia. And never will we part, till Of thee, and Asia, and the Earth, and thy chaste sister

me, Who guides the frozen and inconstant And you fair nymphs looking the love

we feel,Will look on thy more warm and equal In memory of the tidings it has borne,light

Beneath a dome fretted with graven Till her heart thaw like flakes of April flowers,

Poised on twelve columns of resplendent And love thee.

stone, Spirit of the Earth. What; as And open to the bright and liquid sky.

Asia loves Prometheus ? Yoked to it by an amphisbenic snake Asia. Peace, wanton, thou art yet The likeness of those winged steeds will not old enough.

mock Think ye by gazing on each other's eyes The flight from which they find repose. To multiply your lovely selves, and fill Alas, With sphered fires the interlunar air ? Whither has wandered now my partial Spirit of the Earth. Nay, mother, tongue

while my sister trims her lamp When all remains untold which ye would 'Tis hard I should go darkling.

hear? Asia.

Listen ; look ! As I have said I floated to the earth : The Spirit Of The Hour enters. It was, as it is still, the pain of bliss Prometheus. We feel what thou hast To move, to breathe, to be; I wanderheard and seen : yet speak.

ing went Spirit of the Hour. Soon as the Among the haunts and dwellings of mansound had ceased whose thunder

kind, filled

And first was disappointed not to see

moon

snow

Such mighty change as I had felt within Looking emotions once they feared to
Expressed in outward things; but soon feel,
I looked,

And changed to all which once they And behold, thrones were kingless, and dared not be, men walked

Yet being now, made earth like heaven; One with the other even as spirits do,

nor pride, None fawned, none trampled ; hate, Nor jealousy, nor envy, nor ill shame, disdain, or fear,

The bitterest of those drops of treasured Self-love or self-contempt, on human gall, brows,

Spoilt the sweet taste of the nepenthe, No more inscribed, as o'er the gate of love.

hell, “ All hope abandon ye who enter here ;” Thrones, altars, judgment - seats, and None frowned, none trembled, none prisons; wherein, with eager fear

And beside which, by wretched men Gazed on another's eye of cold command,

were borne Until the subject of the tyrant's will

Sceptres, tiaras, swords, and chains, Became, worse sate, the abject of his

and tomes own,

Of reasoned wrong, glozed on by ignorWhich spurred him, like an outspent

ance, horse, to death.

Were like those monstrous and barbaric None wrought his lips in truth-entang

shapes, ling lines

The ghosts of a no more remembered Which smiled the lie his tongue disdained

fame, to speak ;

Which, from their unworn obelisks, None, with firm sneer, trod out in his

look forth own heart

In triumph o'er the palaces and tombs The sparks of love and hope till there of those who were their conquerors : remained

mouldering round Those bitter ashes, a soul self-consumed, Those imaged to the pride of kings and And the wretch crept a vampire among priests, men,

A dark yet mighty faith, a power as Insecting all with his own hideous ill;

wide None talked that common, false, cold, As is the world it wasted, and are now hollow talk

But an astonishment; even so the tools Which makes the heart deny the yes it And emblems of its last captivity, breathes,

Amid the dwellings of the peopled Yet question that unmeant hypocrisy

earth, With such a self-mistrust as has no name. Stand, not o'erthrown, but unregarded And women, too, frank, beautiful, and kind

And those foul shapes, abhorred by god As the free heaven which rains fresh light and dew

Which, under many a name and many a On the wide earth, past; gentle radiant

form forms,

Strange, savage, ghastly, dark and From custom's evil taint exempt and execrable, pure;

Were Jupiter, the tyrant of the world; Speaking the wisdom once they could And which the nations, panic-stricken,

not think,

now.

and man,

served

man

With blood, and hearts broken by long For the sun, their swift shepherd, hope, and love

To their folds them compelling, Dragged to his altars soiled and garland- In the depths of the dawn, less,

Hastes, in metcor-eclipsing array, and And slain among men's unreclaiming

they fee tears,

Beyond his blue dwelling, Flattering the thing they feared, which As fawns flee the leopard. fear was hate,

But where are ye? Frown, mouldering fast, o'er their abandoned shrines :

A Train of dark Forms and Shadows “The painted veil, by those who were, passes by confusedly, singing. called lise,

Here, oh, here: Which mimicked, as with colours idly

We bear the bier spread,

Of the Father of many a cancelled year! All men believed and hoped, is torn

Spectres we aside;

Of the dead Hours be, The loathsome mask has fallen, the man We bear Time to his tomb in eternity.

remains Sceptreless, free, uncircumscribed, but

Strew, oh, strew

Hair, not yew! Equal, unclassed, tribeless, and nation. Wet the dusty pall with tears, not dew! less,

Be the faded flowers Exempt from awe, worship, degree, the

Or Death's bare bowers king

Spread on the corpse of the King of Over hiinself; just, gentle, wise: but

Ilours !

Haste, oh, haste! Passionless; no, yet free from guilt or

As shades are chased, pain,

Trembling, by day, from heaven's blue Which were, for his will made or suffered

waste. them,

We melt away, Nor yet exempt, tho' ruling them like

Like dissolving spray, slaves,

From the children of a diviner day, From chance, and death, and mutability,

With the lullaby The clogs of that which else might over

Of winds that die

On the bosom of their own harmony! The loftiest star of unascended heaven,

lone. Pinnacled dim in the intense inane.

What dark forms were they?
END OF THE THIRD ACT

Panthea.

The past Hours weak and gray,
ACT IV

With the spoil which their toil

Raked her SCENE, A PART OF THE FOREST NEAR From the conquest but One could soil. THE CAVE oF PROMETHEUS. PAN

Ione. THEA and IONE are sleeping: they

llave they past? awaken gradually during the first

Panthea. Song:

They have past;
Voice of unseen Spirits.

They outspeeded the blast,
The pale stars are gone !

While 'tis said, they are fled :

man

soar

desart year.

lone.

Semichorus 1.
Whither, oh, whither? We have heard the lute of Hope in sleep;
Panthea.

We have known the voice of Love in To the dark, to the past, to the dead.

dreams,

We have felt the wand of Power, and l'oice of unseen Spirits.

leap-
Bright clouds float in heaven,

Semichorus II.
Dew-stars gleam on earth,

As the billows leap in the morning
Waves assemble on ocean,

beams! They are gathered and driven

Chorus. By the storm of delight, by the panic of Weave the dance on the floor of the glee!

breeze, They shake with emotion,

Pierce with song heaven's silent light, They dance in their mirth.

Enchant the day that too swiftly flees, But where are ye?

To check its fight ere the cave of

night.
The pine boughs are singing
Old songs with new gladness,

Once the hungry Hours were hounds
The billows and fountains

Which chased the day like a bleeding Fresh music are flinging,

deer, Like the notes of a spirit from land and And it limped and stumbled with many from sea;

wounds
The storms mock the mountains

Through the nightly dells of the
With the thunder of gladness.
But where are ye?

oh weave the mystic measure Ione. What charioteers are these?

Or music, and dance, and shapes of Panthea. Where are their

light, chariots ?

Let the Hours, and the spirits of might Semichorus of Hours.

and pleasure, The voice of the Spirits of Air and of Like the clouds and sunbeams, unite.

Earth
Have drawn back the figured curtain

A Voice.
of sleep

Unite! Which covered our being and darkened

Panthea. See, where the Spirits of our birth

the human mind In the deep.

Wrapt in sweet sounds, as in bright veils, A Voice.

approach.
In the deep?

Chorus of Spirits.
Semichorus II.
Oh, below the deep.

We join the throng

Of the dance and the song,
Semichorus 1.

By the whirlwind of gladness borne along; An hundred ages we had been kept

As the flying-fish leap Cradled in visions of hate and care,

From the Indian deep, And each one who waked as his brother And mix with the sea-birds, half asleep.

slept,
Found the truth-

Chorus of Hours.
Semichorus II.

Whence come ye, so wild and so flect,
Worse than his visions were! For sandals of lightning are on your feet,

But now,