No More Learning

_Prometheus. _ Unto me the foreknower, this mandate of power
He cries, to reveal it.
What's strange in my fate, if I suffer from hate
At the hour that I feel it?
Let the locks of the lightning, all bristling and whitening,
Flash, coiling me round,
While the aether 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 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! --add,
If the Fate who hath bound him should loose not the links,
He were utterly mad.
Then depart ye who groan with him,
Leaving to moan with him,--
Go in haste! lest the roar of the thunder anearing
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!
I recoil from the traitor in hate and disdain,
And I know that the curse of the treason is worse
Than the pang of the chain.

_Hermes. _ Then remember, O nymphs, what I tell you before,
Nor, when pierced by the arrows that Ate will throw you,
Cast blame on your fate and declare evermore
That Zeus thrust you on anguish he did not foreshow you.
Nay, verily, nay! for ye perish anon
For your deed--by your choice. By no blindness of doubt,
No abruptness of doom, but by madness alone,
In the great net of Ate, whence none cometh out,
Ye are wound and undone.

_Prometheus. _ Ay! in act now, in word now no more,
Earth is rocking in space.
And the thunders crash up with a roar upon roar,
And the eddying lightnings flash fire in my face,
And the whirlwinds are whirling the dust round and round,
And the blasts of the winds universal leap free
And blow each upon each with a passion of sound,
And aether goes mingling in storm with the sea.
Such a curse on my head, in a manifest dread,
From the hand of your Zeus has been hurtled along.
O my mother's fair glory! O AEther, enringing
All eyes with the sweet common light of thy bringing!