No More Learning

_Chorus of Sea Nymphs. _




PROMETHEUS BOUND


SCENE. --_STRENGTH and FORCE, HEPHAESTUS and PROMETHEUS, at the
Rocks. _

_Strength. _ We reach the utmost limit of the earth,
The Scythian track, the desert without man.
And now, Hephaestus, thou must needs fulfil
The mandate of our Father, and with links
Indissoluble of adamantine chains
Fasten against this beetling precipice
This guilty god. Because he filched away
Thine own bright flower, the glory of plastic fire,
And gifted mortals with it,--such a sin
It doth behove he expiate to the gods,
Learning to accept the empery of Zeus
And leave off his old trick of loving man.

_Hephaestus. _ O Strength and Force, for you, our Zeus's will
Presents a deed for doing, no more! --but _I_,
I lack your daring, up this storm-rent chasm
To fix with violent hands a kindred god,
Howbeit necessity compels me so
That I must dare it, and our Zeus commands
With a most inevitable word. Ho, thou!
High-thoughted son of Themis who is sage!
Thee loth, I loth must rivet fast in chains
Against this rocky height unclomb by man,
Where never human voice nor face shall find
Out thee who lov'st them, and thy beauty's flower,
Scorched in the sun's clear heat, shall fade away.
Night shall come up with garniture of stars
To comfort thee with shadow, and the sun
Disperse with retrickt beams the morning-frosts,
But through all changes sense of present woe
Shall vex thee sore, because with none of them
There comes a hand to free. Such fruit is plucked
From love of man!
and in that thou, a god,
Didst brave the wrath of gods and give away
Undue respect to mortals, for that crime
Thou art adjudged to guard this joyless rock,
Erect, unslumbering, bending not the knee,
And many a cry and unavailing moan
To utter on the air. For Zeus is stern
And new-made kings are cruel.

_Strength. _ Be it so.
Why loiter in vain pity? Why not hate
A god the gods hate? one too who betrayed
Thy glory unto men?

_Hephaestus. _ An awful thing
Is kinship joined to friendship.

_Strength. _ Grant it be;
Is disobedience to the Father's word
A possible thing? Dost quail not more for that?

_Hephaestus. _ Thou, at least, art a stern one: ever bold.

_Strength. _ Why, if I wept, it were no remedy;
And do not _thou_ spend labour on the air
To bootless uses.