After Paradise or Legends of Exile :: :: University of Virginia Library

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.

But first to his lame brother he resign'd
His slighted scepter. Epimetheus sought
To avenge Prometheus, and rebuke men's blind
Ingratitude for gifts that cost them nought.
Strict penalties to granted prayers he join'd,
And punish'd with a knowledge dearly bought
The pride that had disdainfully declined
Gratuitous instruction. Afterthought
Succeeded Forethought as the Ruling Power
Of Progress, and the Race of Man was taught
A painful prudence by Pandora's dower
Of ever unanticipated woes
From wishes born.

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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?”

That austere
And somber martyr's reminiscent eye
Survey'd the snow-ribb'd crags around him there,
And the lost Titan murmur'd, with a sigh
Soon frozen in their freezing atmosphere,
“If not .... well, learn to suffer, even as I!”