And are these tears? Nay, do not triumph, Jove.
They are wrung from me but by the agonies

Of prophecy, like those sparse drops which fall
From clouds in travail of the lightning, when
The great wave of the storm high-curled and black
Rolls steadily onward to its thunderous break.
Why art thou made a god of, thou poor type
Of anger, and revenge, and cunning force?
True Power was never born of brutish Strength.
Are thy thunderbolts

That quell the darkness for a space, so strong
As the prevailing patience of meek Light,
Who, with the invincible tenderness of peace,
Wins it to be a portion of herself?

Why art thou made a god of, thou who hast
The never-sleeping terror at thy heart,
That birthright of all tyrants, worse to bear
Than this thy ravening bird on which I smile?
Thou swear'st to free me, if I will unfold
What kind of doom it is whose omen flits

Across thy heart, as o'er a troop of doves
The fearful shadow of the kite. What need

To know the truth whose knowledge cannot save?
Evil its errand hath as well as good;

When thine is finished, thou art known no more:

There is a higher purity than thou,

And higher purity is greater strength;

Thy nature is thy doom, at which thy heart
Trembles behind the thick wall of thy might.

Let man but hope and thou art straightway chilled With thought of that drear silence and deep night Which like a dream shall swallow thee and thine; Let man but will, and thou art god no more,

More capable of ruin than the gold

And ivory that image thee on earth.

He who hurled down the monstrous Titan brood
Blinded with lightnings, with rough thunders stunned,
Is weaker than a simple human thought.

My slender voice can shake thee, as the breeze,
That seems but apt to stir a maiden's hair,
Sways huge Oceanus from pole to pole:
For I am still Prometheus, and foreknow
In my wise heart the end and doom of all.

Yes, I am still Prometheus, wiser grown By years of solitude, that holds apart The past and future, giving the soul room To search into itself— and long commune With this eternal silence; more a god, In my long-suffering and strength to meet With equal front the direst shafts of fate, Than thou in thy faint-hearted despotism, Girt with thy baby-toys of force and wrath. Yes, I am that Prometheus who brought down The light to man, which thou, in selfish fear, Hadst to thyself usurped, — his by sole right, For Man hath right to all save Tyranny,And which shall free him yet from thy frail throne. Tyrants are but the spawn of Ignorance,

Begotten by the slaves they trample on,
Who, could they win a glimmer of the light,
And see that Tyranny is always weakness,
Or Fear with its own bosom ill at ease,

Would laugh away in scorn the sand-wove chain
Which their own blindness feigned for adamant.
Wrong ever builds on quicksands, but the Right
To the firm centre lays its moveless base.
The tyrant trembles if the air but stirs
The innocent ringlets of a child's free hair,

And crouches, when the thought of some great spirit, With world-wide murmur, like a rising gale,

Over men's hearts, as over standing corn,

Rushes, and bends them to its own strong will.
So shall some thought of mine yet circle earth,
And puff away thy crumbling altars, Jove!

And wouldst thou know of my supreme revenge,
Poor tyrant, even now dethroned in heart,
Realmless in soul, as tyrants ever are,

Listen! and tell me if this bitter peak,
This never-glutted vulture, and these chains
Shrink not before it; for it shall befit

A sorrow-taught, unconquered Titan-heart.
Men, when their death is on them, seem to stand
On a precipitous crag that overhangs

The abyss of doom, and in that depth to see,

As in a glass, the features dim and vast

Of things to come, the shadows, as it seems,

Of what have been. Death ever fronts the wise;
Not fearfully, but with clear promises

Of larger life, on whose broad vans upborne,
Their outlook widens, and they see beyond

The horizon of the Present and the Past,
Even to the very source and end of things.
Such am I now: immortal woe hath made

My heart a seer, and my soul a judge

Between the substance and the shadow of Truth.
The sure supremeness of the Beautiful,
By all the martyrdoms made doubly sure
Of such as I am, this is my revenge,
Which of my wrongs builds a triumphal arch,
Through which I see a sceptre and a throne.
The pipings of glad shepherds on the hills,