University of Virginia Library

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159

PROMETHEIA.

(FREEDOM OF SPEECH AND PRESS, ET CÆTERA.)

I. PART THE FIRST.

“God of the Gods, and Lord of Heaven! Since now
Repentant Power rejects not Reason's use,
Here on the Path of Progress stay not thou
Thy steps by me well-counsell'd!” (Thus to Zeus
Prometheus spake.) “From Earth's primordial womb
Mute to the birth her progeny are brought.
To death they go, as into life they come,
Condemn'd to suffer all and utter nought.
Read in the language of their longing eyes
The passionate petition of the dumb,

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And grant the long'd-for gift, mere life denies,
A voice to Will, to Feeling, and to Thought!”

But Zeus, mistrustful, murmur'd “To what end?”
“No end of ends,” he answer'd, “and in each
A fresh beginning! for with better fraught
Is every best, as world on world ascend,
In ceaseless self-upliftings, life's immense
Capacities of growth. Voice leads to speech,
Speech to intelligence, intelligence
To liberty, and liberty” .... “To what?”
Zeus interrupted. “Ever out of reach
Thy thoughts run on, and all thy language still
Sounds revolutionary.” “Still! why not?”
Prometheus laugh'd. “We share the imputed crime.
From revolutionary fountains flow
Fresh streams of force; and, tho' enthroned sublime
On spoil'd Olympus, what thyself wert thou
Without the Revolution, Son of Time?”

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“Titan,” the God, with darkening aspect, sigh'd,
“It was to ravish, not retain, a throne
That on the Revolution we relied;
Wherein thy services have every one
Been well requited.” “Ay,” Prometheus cried,
“Witness Mount Caucasus!” “What's done is done,”
Zeus answer'd. “Not till thou hadst turn'd our foe
And filch'd our fire, did we retaliate thus.
But witness also thou, that (long ago
Recall'd with recompense from Caucasus)
Thee hath our later friendship favour'd so,
That thine is now copartnership with us
In all our own Olympian empery,
By thy weird wisdom guided. Why discuss
The unalterable past? Nor thou nor I
Fresh conflict crave. This much concede.” “I do,”
Prometheus mutter'd, “and the reason why
Full well, Fate-driven Thunderer, I know!

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For thy reluctant power perforce obeys
The strict compulsions of Necessity.”
“Her iron yoke,” replied the God, “she lays
On Gods and Titans both, and none can close,
None ope, her hidden hand. Forget the days
That disunited us, nor indispose
A confidence that fain would rest assured
Rather in him sage Themis loves to praise,
Than in the perjured Titan who abjured
The cause of his own kindred.” “And for whose,
Ungrateful God?” “Nay, my Prometheus, mine
The cause, I know, for which thou didst change sides.”
“Not thine,” the indignant Titan cried, “not thine!
Nor thine nor thee, Monarch of Parricides
From Sire to Son, I sought! In god or worm
I care not where the sign of it I see,
But let me find, beneath the poorest germ,
Some promise of improvement, that to free

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A hinder'd progress to a higher term
Needs all the aid a Titan can afford,
And mine shall not be wanting to confirm
The effort that aspires to overcome!”

Zeus, shaking his sheaved thunders at the word,
Exclaim'd, “Inveterately venturesome!
Whom should the upstart overcome? Not me?”
“And why not thee,” Prometheus cried, “new lord
Of a usurpt dominion? Why not thee,
Thee and thy kindred all, whose starry home
To Kronos once belong'd, if its endeavour
Of higher worth than thine and theirs should be?
Kronides, never have I flatter'd, never
Deceived thee, or betray'd! Forget not thou
That in the Race of Uranus for ever
Power hath been lost and won by overthrow.
Unoverthrown, wouldst thou preserve it, dare
To rule without oppression! Fearless now,

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Fling the lone scepter of a world-wide care
Into the lap of Freedom! Safest thus
Shall its supremacy remain, for there
Rebellion breathes not. Had not Kronos pent
Our Giant Brotherhood in Tartarus,
His might have been (thy treason to prevent)
The hundred-handed help he lack'd of us.
Confide in Liberty, the friend of all,
And live by all befriended! With her, grow
From growth to growth, in a perpetual
Increase of growing greatness! So shalt thou,
Still onward borne with all that's onward going,
Be never by-gone, never out of date!
'Tis at the price of ever greater growing
Eternity is granted to the great.”

Zeus answer'd with an indecisive sigh.
“Prophet,” he said, “who, in the hoary Past

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Where the old Gods and the old Ages lie,
Sole of thy kindred didst the hour forecast
Which thou alone survivest, prophecy
(If still the gift of prophecy thou hast)
What destiny for me, should I deny
The gift thou cravest, is reserved by Fate?”
“The sadness of immense satiety,”
Prometheus murmur'd. “Pause and meditate!”
He added. “I, the Spokesman of the Dumb,
Am also Seer of the Unseen.” “But what,”
Zeus sigh'd again, “will they next crave, to whom
The voice to crave it hath been granted?” “That
Shall they themselves inform thee by and by,”
Exclaim'd the surly Giant, and thereat
His shoulders huge he shrugg'd.

Without reply
Zeus mused awhile; but, spying Eros pass
Full-quiver'd for a chase of sweeter cry

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Than Cynthia leads along the moonlit grass,
When, thro' the rustling grove and glimpsing sky,
Thin shadows, fast pursued by shadows, flee,
The God, impatient, glanced at Earth's mute mass;
Then waved an acquiescent hand, as he
Turn'd from the Titan with a faint “Alas,
Prometheus, thou art compromising me!”

II. PART II.

Leaving in haste the Olympian Council Hall,
The apostate Titan down to Earth convey'd
The grudged concession wrung from Zeus. There, all
In conclave multitudinous array'd,
His clients he together call'd (from man
In fair Apollo's faultless image made,
To man's close copy, made on the same plan,
The flat-faced ape) and all the bars undid

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Which had till then lock'd mercifully fast
The innumerable voices that, unchid,
Now into riotous utterance rush'd at last.

This done, preferring to appreciate
The concert from a distance, he return'd
To the Olympians—in whose looks irate
A relisht indignation he discern'd.
The Gods and Goddesses, the Demigods
And Demigoddesses, all demi-nude,
(As Classic Art's correctest periods
Prescribed to each the appropriate attitude)
Were listening, with more wonder than delight,
To the new noisiness of earthly things.
For quick and thick each animal appetite
Throbb'd into sudden sound from the loud strings
Of throats in thousands loosed; and left and right
Chirrupings, crowings, howlings, bellowings,
And barkings—bass and treble of mingled mirth

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And pain—were now profusely vomited
In vehement hubbub from the vocal Earth.

Meanwhile, as with sloped shoulder, shuffling tread
Evasive, mien morose, and furtive eye,
Thro' Heaven's bright groups the burly Titan sped,
Their comments were not complimentary.
“Please to explain,” resentful Herè said,
“This new caprice, or stop that peacock's cry!
My bird will be a byword and a scoff
If this continues!” “Ah, Fair Majesty,
This new caprice is an old debt paid off,”
Prometheus answer'd. “Fops in pomp array'd
Must now reveal what's in them, to the ear,
Who, to the eye, have heretofore display'd
Only what's on them. But have thou no fear,
Thy favourite makes an admirable show—
From one so beautiful exact no more!”
Eos complain'd of the cock's clamorous crow,

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Superfluously sounded o'er and o'er.
“Prometheus might at least,” she said, “for me
Have managed to contrive a less absurd
And indiscreetly strepitant minstrelsy
Than the loud shriek of that ridiculous bird!”
“Sweet Cousin, thine indulgence,” he replied,
“For the cicala's strains (I grant that these
Have not as yet been duly deified)
Leaves to less plaintive notes small chance to please
An ear compassionately prejudiced.
Sleep sounder, and wake later! What hath drawn
Thy blushing charms, untimely thus enticed,
O rosy-finger'd Daughter of the Dawn,
From that soft couch Love's self were fain to lie on?
Is it the memory of Cephalus,
Or else the expectation of Orion?”

With jests sarcastic curtly answering thus

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The just reproaches of the Gods, that great
Ungainly Titan strode from spot to spot,
Superbly heedless of the scorn and hate
His course provoked. Olympus loved him not,
Despite his ancient birth and lineage high;
And even the new-made Deities, whose past
Was but of yesterday, with sidelong eye
Look'd on him as a god of lower caste.
The restless spirit that from his peers in Heaven
Ever aloof the unquiet Giant held
Had to his strenuous Titanism given
A tone incongruously coarse. Impell'd
By unintelligible vehemence,
His uncouth grandeur grieved the fluent grace
Of the Olympian Quiet with intense
Abrupt explosive ardours; as apace
On its swift course, all rough with rocks and roots,
And fiercely fluttering with volcanic fire,

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Some ravaged morsel of a mountain shoots
Across the cloven crystal of a lake
In whose clear depths stars and still clouds admire
The lucid forms their own reflections take.

Sole, Aphroditè (she, that Fairest Fair,
Whose sacred sweetness from its rancorous tooth
The Titan's biting wit was pleased to spare,
—She for whose solitary sake, in truth,
The sullen menace of his face at whiles
A fond mysterious fervour unavow'd
Made soft and luminous with hovering smiles,
Like summer lightnings thro' a sleeping cloud)
Sole, Aphroditè found a curious charm
In this grim God-born Mocker of the Gods;
And, waving to Prometheus her white arm,
She beckon'd him with amicable nods.
Submissive to her signal he drew near,
And with a questioning gaze the Goddess eyed.

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“Titan, well done!” she whisper'd in his ear;
“What long on Earth I miss'd thou hast supplied.
I love the lion's roar, the ring-dove's coo:
By both alike love's needs are well express'd:
The amorous bull's deep bellowing charms me too.
But why hast thou withheld the last and best
Of all thy gifts from those who, tho' but few,
Most claim on thy solicitude possess'd?”
Prometheus, by astonishment tongue-tied,
An interrogatory eyebrow raised.
“Those larks and nightingales that yonder hide,”
The Goddess answer'd as on Earth she gazed,
“Inaudible and invisible to all!
Darkling they haunt the shadows round them furl'd,
Silent amidst the universal brawl
And babble of the emancipated world.
Yet heaven is husht to hear their minstrelsy:
For these the moon and stars are not too sweet,

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For those the sun himself is not too high:
And shall they have no listeners? Hearts that beat
With base emotions find ignoble voice,
Wrath, and Unreason, and Vulgarity
Speak loud. Stupidity and Spite rejoice
In utterance unrestricted. Say, then, why
(Where Folly's fife with Envy's clarion vies)
Must these alone, the darlings of the Spring,
Whose souls are fill'd with lyric ecstacies,
Unheard, or even if heard unheeded, sing?”

The Titan's eye, with a soul-searching glare,
Sounded the secret dwelling undescried
In those small bosoms. “And what seest thou there?”
The Goddess ask'd him. Sighing he replied
“What I should have foreseen!” “But what is that?”
Full on the glorious beauty of her face
Prometheus gazed. “O Goddess, ask not what!

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Thou who, supreme in beauty and in grace,
Art by adoring worlds proclaim'd divine,
What kindred could thy confident godhood trace
In a shy loveliness so unlike thine?
A loveliness of its own self afraid,
A Bastard Beauty, fearing to be seen,
Yet fainting to be loved, that seeks the shade!”
The Goddess laugh'd “What doth my Titan mean?
What bastard is he speaking of?” And he,
“Ay, 'tis a Beauty bastard-born, and not
Authentically certified to be,
A Beauty surreptitiously begot
From Heaven's embrace of Earth, and breathing, see,
Between them both in secrecy and shame
An unacknowledged life!” “But what,” said she,
Is this poor Heaven-born Earth-child's luckless name?”
“Its name,” Prometheus sigh'd, “is Poesy.”
“A woman?” “No.” “A man, then?” “Ah, still less!”

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The glorious sexual Goddess blush'd outright,
“Is Hermes, then, a father?” “Nay, my guess
“Divines not Hermes.” “Zeus, then? am I right?”
“I doubt...” “If there's a doubt, 'tis Zeus! Suppress
The father's name, however. Well we know
The mother is the love tale's text, of course,
The father but the pretext. Name the mother!”
“But thou wouldst not believe me...” “Worse and worse!
'Tis Herè, then?” “Not Herè.” “There's no other
Of whom the thing's incredible—unless
Perchance 'tis Pallas?” “No alas, not she!”
“And why alas?” With keen suggestiveness,
For sole reply the Titan glowingly
Gazed on the Goddess, till she blush'd again,
“Matchless impertinent!” But he, unmoved,
“Goddess, I warn'd thee that thou wouldst not deign
To give me credit...” “For such pert unproved

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Assertion? Fie, to say it to my face!”
“But I said nothing.” “And yet all implied.
What next, I wonder!” “Queen of every grace
And all that's beautiful,” Prometheus cried,
“Tell me thy parents!” “Known to all are they,
Zeus and Dione, both of them divine.”
“They!” cried the Titan, “they thy parents? Nay,
Great and dear Goddess, beauty such as thine
Had nobler birth! Those stupid Gods are not
The true begetters of a deity
Above their own. 'Twas otherwise begot.
Slid from the starry bosom of the sky,
A single drop of sacred ichor pure,
The mystic blood of Uranus, contain'd
In one bright bead thy whole progeniture:
Hid in the heart of Ocean it remain'd
Till there it brought thy wondrous self to birth:
And, even so, one glimpse of Heaven unstain'd,

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That fell reflected in a glance from Earth
To Heaven uplifted, this new Beauty bore—
Which hath no sex, no mother, and no sire,
No kin on Earth, no home in Heaven—nay more,
'Tis neither man nor woman, but the soul,
Of the wide world's unsatisfied desire.
And thro' the universe, without a goal,
Its hungering heart must wander high and higher,
Till from the Gods it gain (as I, for those
Poor mortals yonder, snatch'd from Zeus his fire)
The immortality they dread to lose.”

“But this new Beauty, do those bosoms small
Enshrine it?” ask'd the Goddess. “Ah, subdued,”
Prometheus murmur'd bitterly, “by all
The vulgar voices of the multitude
That loves its own monopoly of noise,
No homage hath the homeless one on Earth!
And vainly its unanswer'd song employs

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The gift I gave. In darkness and in dearth,
By noise and glare engirt, unheard it sings,
Unseen it stirs. For this, from Zeus I craved,
What he denies me still, the gift of wings—
For birds—birds only—that in some sweet bird
Life's sweetest voice, from Earth's loud hubbub saved,
Might soar in song to Heaven, and there be heard.
Never while man breathes mortal breath shall he,
The Earthborn, hand or foot from Earth withdraw:
For there uplifted must his kingdom be
By agelong labour. Language, there, and Law
Hath he to found; create, for social power
And spacious trade, the Senate and the Mart;
Establish Science in her starry tower,
And mint the glowing miracles of Art.
Such is the task by me for man design'd!
But ever, as on Earth his task he plies,
Higher than foot and hand must heart and mind,

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Uplifted o'er the earthly labour, rise.
Let mind and heart, then, heavenward pathways find
Upon the wings of every bird that flies,
While hand and foot stay fast to Earth confined;
Lest Earth should haply lose her fairest prize,
The hand of man: whose fingers five shall bind
Together all that his five wits' rejoice
To wrench from Time's tenacious treasuries,
As, guided onward by a wingèd voice,
Earth's wingless lord to his high future hies!”

III. PART III.

The Titan quiver'd. Strenuous tremours ran
Thro' his huge limbs, rocking their heaviness
Like wind-rack'd oaks; and his deep eyes began
To glow with a prophetic passion. “Yes!
And then,” he murmur'd, “then the Race of Man

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(Taught by that wingèd voice) perchance may guess
The giant purpose, the stupendous plan
That, brooding o'er its cloudy cradle, I
Have for the infant fashion'd. Changeless Gods,
What profits you your immortality?
Thro' endless self-repeating periods
To be the same for ever, is to be
For ever lacking life's divinest gift,
The faculty of growth. No inch can ye
Your future o'er your present selves uplift.
What good in such prolong'd ineptitude?
But to be ever growing young again,
From age to age eternally renew'd
With breath new-born, and ardour to attain
Goals ever new, by courses never done,
—This gift, to gods ungiven, or given in vain,
My forethought hath reserved for man alone!
Death was the blind condition jealous Zeus,

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To balk my purpose, on mankind imposed,
But Death my purpose serves: for Death renews
Man's youth, whose course old age might else have closed.
Unprescient God, 'tis well thou couldst not guess
That to these hands the fetter forged by thee
Gave all required by their inventiveness
To shape the sword that cuts each fetter free!
Mankind must die! The fiat forth is gone.
Die? When I heard that word of doom proclaim'd,
More self-restraint I needed to suppress
A shout of joy, than when my strangled groan
Burst not the bitten lips its anguish shamed,
And not a cry revealed the dumb distress
Of my Caucasian martyrdom. By Death
The Race of Man shall be from age to age
Replenisht with the perdurable breath
Of endless birth, and vigour to engage

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In ventures new. Death's sickle, as it reaps
The old grain, to the young the soil restores,
And still the harvest springs, and the soil keeps
Still fresh for growth its disencumber'd pores.
A man is dead, long live Mankind! From soul
To soul each life's acquest triumphantly
Passes in sure succession. Ages roll,
And in a hundred ages (what care I
How many births as many deaths succeed?)
Man's Race, enrich'd a hundredfold thereby,
Remains as young as ever. Oft with heed
Have I the Ocean watch'd, and watch'd the shore.
The sand, rejected by the wave's wild shock,
Gathers in heaps and, growing more and more,
And high and higher, hardens till at last
The wave returning breaks upon a rock,
And is itself rejected. Tost and cast
By Time's recurrent waves, son after sire,

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From death to death, like that sea-driven sand,
Grains of Humanity, with past on past
Your greatening future pile, and high and higher,
Based on each others' buried shoulders, stand!”

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IV. PART IV.

Pretentious patrons of mankind, what pranks
However monstrous has your pride disdain'd
For pushing forward its own purpose? Thanks
To your activity, what tears have stain'd
The trophies of man's progress! What a sea
Of blood, to float your cockle-boats, been shed!
Your fellow man from prejudice to free,
Your fellow man's incorrigible head
Have you chopp'd off with philanthropic glee,
By basketfuls, benign Philanthropists!
And, promising a better life instead,

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This life have you, evangelising Priests,
With penance fill'd! Your famed philosophies,
By way of throwing light on what men find
Compassionately dark, burn out their eyes,
Vaunting Philosophers! In vain mankind
For refuge from its benefactors sighs.

His purposes humane the Titan's mind
Found less inhuman means to realise.
He merely made a god ridiculous.
When Zeus had, for the sake of Ganymede,
Assumed an eagle's form, succumbing thus
To Aphroditè's influence, thro' that deed
The Son of Asia and Iäpetus
His end attain'd. For how thenceforth could Zeus
(Plagued by the importunate solicitings
Of such a crafty counsellor) refuse
Even to the meanest bird a pair of wings?

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Promiscuous benefits can rarely claim
A better origin. To elevate
One favourite, lest it should incur the blame
Of personal preference in affairs of State,
Some dozen mediocrities as high
The Crown must needs advance. If, still irate,
The Public Voice protests, to brave its cry
There are at least thirteen instead of one:
The wrong, moreover, that is done thereby
To no one in particular is done:
'Tis but a general calamity,
And that is an indignity to none.

Yet vast and irremediable was
The failure of Prometheus. From the day
He universalised the voice, alas,
Whilst every vulgar brute could say his say,
To souls refined and delicate remain'd

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No refuge from the hubbub all around
But their own silence: and such souls refrain'd
(Dumfounded quite by a disgust profound)
From audible utterance. The loquacious zest
Of Earth's coarse crowd had in the finer few
Life's highest note unknowingly suppress'd.
That was the Titan's first mistake. A new
And worse one he fell into, in his quest
Of means to mend it: for he did but brew
A base resentment in the human breast
By giving wings to birds. Man's envy drew
Between the smallest sparrow and himself
Comparisons, from one grudged point of view,
Displeasing to the self-conceited elf.
A third mistake Prometheus might have then
Committed, and from Zeus in some weak mood
The envied gift of wings for envious men
Perchance obtain'd, had Man's Ingratitude

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Not prematurely ended his career.

Mortals, and mortals to a man agreed
In censuring all attempts to interfere
With their mortality, men first decreed
The Abolition of the Gods: and here,
Prometheus held their sacrilegious deed
Was justifiable, altho' severe:
But men no sooner from the Gods were freed,
Than of a Titan's aid so sure they were
Their godless freedom had no further need,
That they forthwith proclaim'd it everywhere
Mankind's Titanic Patron had become
To man no more than an enormous myth;
The monstrous trance of dreaming Heathendom,
Not to be any longer trusted with
Traditional influence on the human mind.
Thus, having fail'd to benefit the few,
And by the ungrateful multitude malign'd,

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A sad self-exile, seeking to eschew
The sight of his own failure in mankind,
Prometheus from man's fatuous world withdrew.

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The formidable place
Of his first martyrdom Prometheus chose
For his last refuge from a thankless race.
There, wandering far and farther out of sight,
Along waste ways indefinite as those
Traced by the shadows travelling in the flight
Of silent clouds o'er solitary snows,
“Rash Race of Suicides!” he mused in scorn,
“You to your own precocious appetite
Have fall'n a prey: your future yet unborn
You have devour'd: and, fumbled ere unfurl'd,
Broken is all its promise in the bud!
No more can I redeem you from a world
Where Genius, bringing fire, found only mud
Wherefrom to make an image of itself.
Ah, what to you is left for which to live,
To toil, to suffer? Perishable pelf,
Lust without love, coarse pleasures that contrive

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Their own defeat, and joy that never stays!
What with those aspirations will you do,
Which should have been as pinions to upraise
Humanity above the Gods? Pursue
The trivial tenour of your thankless days
From things desired to things possest in vain,
But there my gifts can aid you not, I know!
Alas, and what will now be their worse pain,
In whom those gifts their glowing poësies
With aching pangs commingle? Woe to you,
Poor children of my frustrate enterprise!
Poets, can you be silent?”