No More Learning

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?

_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?