Page:Prometheus Bound, and other poems.djvu/22

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Nay! who of the gods hath a heart so stern,

As to use thy woe for a root of mirth?

Who would not turn more mild to learn

Thy sorrows? who of the heaven and earth,

Save Zeus? But he

Right wrathfully

Bears on his sceptral soul unbent,

And rules thereby the heavenly seed;

Nor will he cease, till he content

His thirsty heart in a finished deed;

Or till Another shall appear,

To win by fraud, to seize by fear

The hardly captured government.

Prometheus. Yet even of me he shall have need,

That monarch of the blessed seed;

Of me, of me, who now am cursed

Beneath his fetters dire!

To wring my secret out withal,

And learn by whom his sceptre shall

Be filched from him—as was, at first,

His heavenly fire!

Yet he never shall enchant me

With his honey-lipped persuasion;

Never, never shall he daunt me

With the oath and threat of passion,

Into speaking as they want me,

Till he loose this savage chain,

And accept the expiation

Of my sorrow, by his pain.