Page:The Dramas of Aeschylus (Swanwick).djvu/418

348 For iron's clanging note

Piercing our caves' recesses rang,

And bashful shyness from me smote;—

Forthwith on winged car, unshod, aloft I sprang.

Alas! alas! Woe! woe!

Prolific Tethys' offspring, progeny

Of sire Oceanos, whose sleepless flow

All the wide earth encircles! gaze and see

Bound with what fetters, ignominiously,

I, on the summit of this rock-bound steep,

Shall watch unenvied keep.

I see, Prometheus, and through fear

Doth mist of many tears mine eyes bedew,

As, 'gainst this rock, parched up, in tortures drear

Of adamantine bonds, thy form I view.

For helmsmen new of sway

Olympos hold; by laws new-made

Zeus wieldeth empire, impulse-swayed;

The mighty ones of old he sweeps away.

Neath earth, 'neath Hades' shade-receiving plains,

Sheer down to Tartaros' unmeasured gloom

Would he had hurled me ruthless, bound with chains

That none may loose;—So then at this my doom

Had no one mock'd,—nor god, nor other kind.

But now most wretched, sport of every wind,

Foes triumph o'er my pains.