_ Verily,
It would be hard for thee to bear my woe
For whom it is appointed not to die.
It would be hard for thee to bear my woe
For whom it is appointed not to die.
Elizabeth Browning
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?
_Prometheus. _ A sea--of foredoomed evil worked to storm.
_Io. _ What boots my life, then? why not cast myself
Down headlong from this miserable rock,
That, dashed against the flats, I may redeem
My soul from sorrow? Better once to die
Than day by day to suffer.
_Prometheus.
_ Verily,
It would be hard for thee to bear my woe
For whom it is appointed not to die.
Death frees from woe: but I before me see
In all my far prevision not a bound
To all I suffer, ere that Zeus shall fall
From being a king.
_Io. _ And can it ever be
That Zeus shall fall from empire?
_Prometheus. _ _Thou_, methinks,
Wouldst take some joy to see it.
_Io. _ Could I choose?
_I_ who endure such pangs now, by that god!
_Prometheus. _ Learn from me, therefore, that the event shall be.
_Io. _ By whom shall his imperial sceptred hand
Be emptied so?
_Prometheus. _ Himself shall spoil himself,
Through his idiotic counsels.
_Io.
