Page:Prometheus Bound, and other poems.djvu/45

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On the Cimmerian isthmus,—leaving which,

Behooves thee swim with ghastly fortitude

That strait Mæotis. Ay! and evermore

That traverse shall be famous on men's lips,

That strait, called Bosphorus, the horned one's road,

So named because of thee! Thou so wilt pass

From Europe's plain to Asia's continent.

How think ye, nymphs? the king of gods appears

Impartial in his violent deeds? For lo!

The god desirous of this mortal's love

Hath cursed her with these wanderings. Ah, fair child,

Thou hast met a bitter groom for bridal troth!

For all thou yet hast heard, can only prove

The incompleted prelude of thy doom.

Io. Ah, ah!

Prometheus. Is't thy turn, now, to shriek and moan?

How wilt thou, when thou hast hearkened what remains?

Chorus. Besides the grief thou hast told, can aught remain?

Prometheus. A sea—of foredoomed evil worked to storm.

Io. What boots my life, then? why not cast myself

Down headlong from this miserable rock,

That, dashed against the flats, I may redeem

My soul from sorrow? Better once to die,

Than day by day to suffer.

Prometheus. Verily,

It would be hard for thee to bare my woe,

For whom it is appointed not to die.

For Death redeems from woe: and now I see