Page:Prometheus Bound, and other poems.djvu/34

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That sweet Muse-mother. I was first to yoke

The servile beasts in couples, carrying

An heirdom of man's burdens on their backs!

I joined to chariots, steeds, that love the bit

They champ at—the chief pomp of golden ease!

And no one else but I, achieved, beside,

The seaman's chariots, wandering on the brine

With linen wings! And I—oh, miserable!—

Who did devise for mortals all these arts,

Have no device left now to save myself

From the woe I suffer!

Chorus. Very shameful woe,

Thou sufferest, and dost stagger from the sense,

Bewildered! Like a bad leech falling sick,

Thou'rt faint at heart, and canst not find the drugs

Required to save thyself.

Prometheus. Hearken the rest,

And marvel further—what more arts and means

I did invent,—this, greatest!—if a man

Fell sick, there was no cure, nor esculent,

Nor chrism, nor liquid; but, for lack of drugs,

Men pined and wasted, till I showed to them

Those mixtures of emollient remedies

Whereby they might be rescued from disease.

I fixed the various rules of mantic art,

Discerned the vision from the common dream,

And made them wise in vocal auguries

Hard to interpret; and defined as plain

The wayside omens,—flights of crook-clawed birds,—

Showed which are, by their nature, fortunate,

And which not so, and what the food of each,

And what the hates, affections, social needs,

Of all to one another; and what sign

Of visceral lightness, colored to a shade,