No More Learning

ah me!
I shudder to see
This wandering maid in her agony.

_Prometheus. _ Grief is too quick in thee and fear too full:
Be patient till thou hast learnt the rest.

_Chorus. _ Speak: teach
To those who are sad already, it seems sweet,
By clear foreknowledge to make perfect, pain.

_Prometheus. _ The boon ye asked me first was lightly won,--
For first ye asked the story of this maid's grief
As her own lips might tell it. Now remains
To list what other sorrows she so young
Must bear from Here. Inachus's child,
O thou! drop down thy soul my weighty words,
And measure out the landmarks which are set
To end thy wandering. Toward the orient sun
First turn thy face from mine and journey on
Along the desert flats till thou shalt come
Where Scythia's shepherd peoples dwell aloft,
Perched in wheeled waggons under woven roofs,
And twang the rapid arrow past the bow--
Approach them not; but siding in thy course
The rugged shore-rocks resonant to the sea,
Depart that country. On the left hand dwell
The iron-workers, called the Chalybes,
Of whom beware, for certes they are uncouth
And nowise bland to strangers. Reaching so
The stream Hybristes (well the _scorner_ called),
Attempt no passage,--it is hard to pass,--
Or ere thou come to Caucasus itself,
That highest of mountains, where the river leaps
The precipice in his strength. Thou must toil up
Those mountain-tops that neighbour with the stars,
And tread the south way, and draw near, at last,
The Amazonian host that hateth man,
Inhabitants of Themiscyra, close
Upon Thermodon, where the sea's rough jaw
Doth gnash at Salmydessa and provide
A cruel host to seamen, and to ships
A stepdame.
They with unreluctant hand
Shall lead thee on and on, till thou arrive
Just where the ocean-gates show narrowest
On the Cimmerian isthmus. Leaving which,
Behoves thee swim with fortitude of soul
The strait Maeotis. 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, who so wilt pass
From Europe's plain to Asia's continent.
How think ye, nymphs? the king of gods appears
Impartial in ferocious deeds? Behold!
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?