Page:Prometheus Bound, and other poems.djvu/59

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Let the locks of the lightning, all bristling and whitening,

Flash, coiling me round!

While the æther goes surging 'neath thunder and scourging

Of wild winds unbound!

Let the blast of the firmament whirl from its place

The earth rooted below,—

And the brine of the ocean, in rapid emotion,

Be it driven in the face

Of the stars up in heaven, as they walk to and fro!

Let him hurl me anon, into Tartarus—on—

To the blackest degree,

With Necessity's vortices strangling me down!

But he cannot join death to a fate meant for me!

Hermes. Why the words that he speaks and the thoughts that he thinks,

Are maniacal—sad!

And if Fate, who hath bound him, just loosens the links,—

Yet he's nigh to be mad.

Then depart ye who groan with him,

Leaving to moan with him—

Go in haste! lest the roar of the thunder, in nearing,

Should blast you to idiocy, living and hearing.

Chorus. Change thy speech for another, thy thought for a new,

If to move me and teach me, indeed be thy care!

For thy words swerve so far from the loyal and true,

That the thunder of Zeus seems more easy to bear.

How! couldst teach me to venture such vileness? Behold!

I choose, with this victim, this anguish foretold!