HKB
utterance clear, Have done with words inscrutable, nor cause To me, Prometheus! any further toil Or twofold journeying. Go to—thou seest Zeus doth not soften at such words as thine!
PROMETHEUS. Pompous, in sooth, thy word, and swoln with pride, As doth befit the lacquey of thy lords! O ye young gods! how, in your youthful sway, Ye deem secure your citadels of sky, Beyond the reach of sorrow or of fall! Have I not seen two dynasties of gods Already flung therefrom? and soon shall see A third, that now in tyranny exults, Shamed, ruined, in an hour! What sayest thou? Crouch I and tremble at these stripling powers? Small homage unto such from me, or none! Betake thee hence, sweat back along thy road— Look for no answer from me, get thee gone!
HERMES. Think—it was such audacities of will That drove thee erst to anchorage in woe!
PROMETHEUS. Ay—but mark this: mine heritage of pain I would not barter for thy servitude.
HERMES. Better, forsooth, be bond-slave to a crag, Than true-born herald unto Zeus the Sire!
PROMETHEUS. Take thine own coin—taunts for a taunting slave!
HERMES. Proud art thou in thy circumstance, methinks!
PROMETHEUS. Proud? in such pride then be my foemen set, And I to see—and of such foes art thou!
HERMES. What, blam’st thou me too for thy sufferings?
PROMETHEUS. Mark a plain word—I loathe all gods that are, Who reaped my kindness and repay with wrong.
HERMES. I hear no little madness in thy words.
PROMETHEUS. Madness be mine, if scorn of foes be mad.
HERMES. Past bearing were thy pride, in happiness.
PROMETHEUS. Ah me!
HERMES. Zeus knoweth nought of sorrow’s cry!
PROMETHEUS. He shall! Time’s lapse bringeth all lessons home.
HERMES. To thee it brings not yet discretion’s curb.
PROMETHEUS. No—else I had not wrangled with a slave!
HERMES. Then thou concealest all that Zeus would learn?
PROMETHEUS. As though I owed him aught and should repay!
HERMES. Scornful thy word, as though I were a child—
PROMETHEUS. Child, ay—or whatsoe’er hath less of brain— Thou, deeming thou canst wring my secret out! No mangling torture, no, nor sleight of power There is, by which he shall compel my speech, Until these shaming bonds be loosed from me. So, let him fling his blazing levin-bolt! Let him with white and winged flakes of snow, And rumbling earthquakes, whelm and shake the world! For nought of this shall bend me to reveal The power ordained to hurl him from his throne.
HERMES. Bethink thee if such words can mend thy lot.
PROMETHEUS. All have I long foreseen, and all resolved.
HERMES. Perverse of will! constrain, constrain thy soul To think more wisely in the grasp of doom!
PROMETHEUS. Truce to vain words! as wisely wouldst thou strive To warn a swelling wave: imagine not That ever I before thy lord’s resolve Will shrink in womanish terror, and entreat, As with soft suppliance of female hands, The Power I scorn unto the utterance, To loose me from the chains that bind me here— A world’s division ’twixt that thought and me!