XXVII. "The frightful silence of that altered mood, And said The flood of time is rolling on, XXVIII. "These perish as the good and great of yore When such can die, and he live on and linger here. 66 6 XXIX. Ay, ye may fear not now the Pestilence, All power and faith must pass, since calmly hence Fill this dark night of things with an eternal morning. behold "For me the world is grown too void and cold, XXXI. "Then suddenly I stood a winged Thought Calm dwellings of the free and happy dead, Where I am sent to lead!" These winged words she said, And with the silence of her eloquent smile, On the swift breath of morn, the vessel flew Whose shores receded fast, while we seemed lingering there; XXXIII. Till down that mighty stream dark, calm, and fleet, Chased by the thronging winds, whose viewless feet Borne like a cloud through morn, and noon, and even, Of the vast stream, a long and labyrinthine maze. XXXIV. A scene of joy and wonder to behold That river's shapes and shadows changing ever, Or when the moonlight poured a holier day, Morn, noon, and even, that boat of pearl outran Which flieth forth and cannot make abode; Sometimes through forests, deep like night, we glode, With Cyclopean piles, whose turrets proud, The homes of the departed, dimly frowned O'er the bright waves which girt their dark foundations round. XXXVI. Sometimes between the wide and flowering meadows, To see far off the sunbeams chase the shadows XXXVII. And ever as we sailed, our minds were full XXXVIII. Three days and nights we sailed, as thought and feeling On the fourth day, wild as a wind-wrought sea, ΧΧΧΙΧ. Steadily and swift, where the waves rolled like mountains Within the vast ravine, whose rifts did pour Tumultuous floods from their ten thousand fountains, The thunder of whose earth-uplifting roar Made the air sweep in whirlwinds from the shore, Calm as a shade, the boat of that fair child Securely fled, that rapid stress before, Amid the topmost spray, and sunbows wild, Wreathed in the silver mist: in joy and pride we smiled. XL The torrent of that wide and raging river Is passed, and our aerial speed suspended. Between two heavens, that windless waveless lake; XLL Motionless resting on the lake awhile I saw its marge of snow-bright mountains rear The Temple of the Spirit; on the sound Which issued thence, drawn nearer and more near, The charmed boat approached, and there its haven found. PROMETHEUS UNBOUND; A LYRICAL DRAMA, IN FOUR ACTS. Audisne hæc Amphiarae, sub terram abdite? 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 Eschylus 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 Eschylus; 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 aggrandisement, 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 extending in everwinding 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 of 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 Shakspeare 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 candour 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 produc tions 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. |