The Complete Poems of Percy Bysshe Shelley

  After a few weeks spent in this retreat, which was interspersed by visits to Venice, we proceeded southward.

  PROMETHEUS UNBOUND

  A LYRICAL DRAMA

  IN FOUR ACTS

  AUDISNE HAEC AMPHIARAE, SUB TERRAM ABDITE?

  PREFACE

  THE Greek tragic writers, in selecting as their subject any portion of their national history or mythology, employed in their treatment of it a certain arbitrary discretion. They by no means conceived themselves bound to adhere to the common interpretation or to imitate in story as in title their rivals and predecessors. Such a system would have amounted to a resignation of those claims to preference over their competitors which incited the composition. The Agamemnonian story was exhibited on the Athenian theatre with as many variations as dramas.

  I have presumed to employ a similar licence. The Prometheus Unbound of Æschylus supposed the reconciliation of Jupiter with his victim as the price of the disclosure of the danger threatened to his empire by the consummation of his marriage with Thetis. Thetis, according to this view of the subject, was given in marriage to Peleus, and Prometheus, by the permission of Jupiter, delivered from his captivity by Hercules. Had I framed my story on this model, I should have done no more than have attempted to restore the lost drama of Æschylus; an ambition which, if my preference to this mode of treating the subject had incited me to cherish, the recollection of the high comparison such an attempt would challenge might well abate. But, in truth, I was averse from a catastrophe so feeble as that of reconciling the Champion with the Oppressor of mankind. The moral interest of the fable, which is so powerfully sustained by the sufferings and endurance of Prometheus, would be annihilated if we could conceive of him as unsaying his high language and quailing before his successful and perfidious adversary. The only imaginary being resembling in any degree Prometheus, is Satan; and Prometheus is, in my judgement, a more poetical character than Satan, because, in addition to courage, and majesty, and firm and patient opposition to omnipotent force, he is susceptible of being described as exempt from the taints of ambition, envy, revenge, and a desire for personal aggrandisement, which, in the Hero of Paradise Lost, interfere with the interest. The character of Satan engenders in the mind a pernicious casuistry which leads us to weigh his faults with his wrongs, and to excuse the former because the latter exceed all measure. In the minds of those who consider that magnificent fiction with a religious feeling it engenders something worse. But Prometheus is, as it were, the type of the highest perfection of moral and intellectual nature, impelled by the purest and the truest motives to the best and noblest ends.

  This Poem was chiefly written upon the mountainous ruins of the Baths of Caracalla, among the flowery glades, and thickets of odoriferous blossoming trees, which are extended in ever winding labyrinths upon its immense platforms and dizzy arches suspended in the air. The bright blue sky of Rome, and the effect of the vigorous awakening spring in that divinest climate, and the new life with which it drenches the spirits even to intoxication, were the inspiration of this drama.

  The imagery which I have employed will be found, in many instances, to have been drawn from the operations of the human mind, or from those external actions by which they are expressed. This is unusual in modern poetry, although Dante and Shakespeare are full of instances of the same kind. Dante indeed more than any other poet, and with greater success. But the Greek poets, as writers to whom no resource of awakening the sympathy of their contemporaries was unknown, were in the habitual use of this power; and it is the study of their works (since a higher merit would probably be denied me) to which I am willing that my readers should impute this singularity.

  One word is due in candour to the degree in which the study of contemporary writings may have tinged my composition, for such has been a topic of censure with regard to poems far more popular, and indeed more deservedly popular, than mine. It is impossible that any one who inhabits the same age with such writers as those who stand in the foremost ranks of our own, can conscientiously assure himself that his language and tone of thought may not have been modified by the study of the productions of those extraordinary intellects. It is true, that, not the spirit of their genius, but the forms in which it has manifested itself, are due less to the peculiarities of their own minds than to the peculiarity of the moral and intellectual condition of the minds among which they have been produced. Thus a number of writers possess the form, whilst they want the spirit of those whom, it is alleged, they imitate; because the former is the endowment of the age in which they live, and the latter must be the uncommunicated lightning of their own mind.

  The peculiar style of intense and comprehensive imagery which distinguishes the modern literature of England, has not been, as a general power, the product of the imitation of any particular writer. The mass of capabilities remains at every period materially the same; the circumstances which awaken it to action perpetually change. If England were divided into forty republics, each equal in population and extent to Athens, there is no reason to suppose but that, under institutions not more perfect than those of Athens, each would produce philosophers and poets equal to those who (if we except Shakespeare) have never been surpassed. We owe the great writers of the golden age of our literature to that fervid awakening of the public mind which shook to dust the oldest and most oppressive form of the Christian religion. We owe Milton to the progress and development of the same spirit: the sacred Milton was, let it ever be remembered, a republican, and a bold inquirer into morals and religion. The great writers of our own age are, we have reason to suppose, the companions and forerunners of some unimagined change in our social condition or the opinions which cement it. The cloud of mind is discharging its collected lightning, and the equilibrium between institutions and opinions is now restoring, or is about to be restored.

  As to imitation, poetry is a mimetic art. It creates, but it creates by combination and representation. Poetical abstractions are beautiful and new, not because the portions of which they are composed had no previous existence in the mind of man or in nature, but because the whole produced by their combination has some intelligible and beautiful analogy with those sources of emotion and thought, and with the contemporary condition of them: one great poet is a masterpiece of nature which another not only ought to study but must study. He might as wisely and as easily determine that his mind should no longer be the mirror of all that is lovely in the visible universe, as exclude from his contemplation the beautiful which exists in the writings of a great contemporary. The pretence of doing it would be a presumption in any but the greatest; the effect, even in him, would be strained, unnatural, and ineffectual. A poet is the combined product of such internal powers as modify the nature of others; and of such external influences as excite and sustain these powers; he is not one, but both. Every man’s mind is, in this respect, modified by all the objects of nature and art; by every word and every suggestion which he ever admitted to act upon his consciousness; it is the mirror upon which all forms are reflected, and in which they compose one form. Poets, not otherwise than philosophers, painters, sculptors, and musicians, are, in one sense, the creators, and, in another, the creations, of their age. From this subjection the loftiest do not escape. There is a similarity between Homer and Hesiod, between Æschylus and Euripides, between Virgil and Horace, between Dante and Petrarch, between Shakespeare and Fletcher, between Dryden and Pope; each has a generic resemblance under which their specific distinctions are arranged. If this similarity be the result of imitation, I am willing to confess that I have imitated.

  Let this opportunity be conceded to me of acknowledging that I have, what a Scotch philosopher characteristically terms, ‘a passion for reforming the world:’ what passion incited him to write and publish his book, he omits to explain. For my part I had rather be damned with Plato and Lord Bacon, than go to Heaven with Paley and Malthus. But it is a mistake to suppose that I dedicate my poetical compositions solely to the direct enforcement of re
form, or that I consider them in any degree as containing a reasoned system on the theory of human life. Didactic poetry is my abhorrence; nothing can be equally well expressed in prose that is not tedious and supererogatory in verse. My purpose has hitherto been simply to familiarise the highly refined imagination of the more select classes of poetical readers with beautiful idealisms of moral excellence; aware that until the mind can love, and admire, and trust, and hope, and endure, reasoned principles of moral conduct are seeds cast upon the highway of life which the unconscious passenger tramples into dust, although they would bear the harvest of his happiness. Should I live to accomplish what I purpose, that is, produce a systematical history of what appear to me to be the genuine elements of human society, let not the advocates of injustice and superstition flatter themselves that I should take Æschylus rather than Plato as my model.

  The having spoken of myself with unaffected freedom will need little apology with the candid; and let the uncandid consider that they injure me less than their own hearts and minds by misrepresentation. Whatever talents a person may possess to amuse and instruct others, be they ever so inconsiderable, he is yet bound to exert them: if his attempt be ineffectual, let the punishment of an unaccomplished purpose have been sufficient; let none trouble themselves to heap the dust of oblivion upon his efforts; the pile they raise will betray his grave which might otherwise have been unknown.

  DRAMATIS PERSONÆ

  ACT I

  SCENE.—A Ravine of Icy Rocks in the Indian Caucasus. PROMETHEUS is discovered bound to the Precipice. PANTHEA and IONE are seated at his feet. Time, night. During the Scene, morning slowly breaks.

  Prometheus. Monarch of Gods and Dæmons, and all Spirits

  But One, who throng those bright and rolling worlds

  Which Thou and I alone of living things

  Behold with sleepless eyes! regard this Earth

  5

  Made multitudinous with thy slaves, whom thou

  Requitest for knee-worship, prayer, and praise,

  And toil, and hecatombs of broken hearts,

  With fear and self-contempt and barren hope.

  Whilst me, who am thy foe, eyeless in hate,

  10

  Hast thou made reign and triumph, to thy scorn,

  O’er mine own misery and thy vain revenge.

  Three thousand years of sleep-unsheltered hours,

  And moments aye divided by keen pangs

  Till they seemed years, torture and solitude,

  15

  Scorn and despair,—these are mine empire:—

  More glorious far than that which thou surveyest

  From thine unenvied throne, O Mighty God!

  Almighty, had I deigned to share the shame

  Of thine ill tyranny, and hung not here

  20

  Nailed to this wall of eagle-baffling mountain,

  Black, wintry, dead, unmeasured; without herb,

  Insect, or beast, or shape or sound of life.

  Ah me! alas, pain, pain ever, for ever!

  No change, no pause, no hope! Yet I endure.

  25

  I ask the Earth, have not the mountains felt?

  I ask yon Heaven, the all-beholding Sun,

  Has it not seen? The Sea, in storm or calm,

  Heaven’s ever-changing Shadow, spread below,

  Have its deaf waves not heard my agony?

  30

  Ah me! alas, pain, pain ever, for ever!

  The crawling glaciers pierce me with the spears

  Of their moon-freezing crystals, the bright chains

  Eat with their burning cold into my bones.

  Heaven’s wingèd hound, polluting from thy lips

  35

  His beak in poison not his own, tears up

  My heart; and shapeless sights come wandering by,

  The ghastly people of the realm of dream,

  Mocking me: and the Earthquake-fiends are charged

  To wrench the rivets from my quivering wounds

  40

  When the rocks split and close again behind:

  While from their loud abysses howling throng

  The genii of the storm, urging the rage

  Of whirlwind, and afflict me with keen hail.

  And yet to me welcome is day and night,

  45

  Whether one breaks the hoar frost of the morn,

  Or starry, dim, and slow, the other climbs

  The leaden-coloured east; for then they lead

  The wingless, crawling hours, one among whom

  —As some dark Priest hales the reluctant victim—

  50

  Shall drag thee, cruel King, to kiss the blood

  From these pale feet, which then might trample thee

  If they disdained not such a prostrate slave.

  Disdain! Ah no! I pity thee. What ruin

  Will hunt thee undefended through wide Heaven!

  55

  How will thy soul, cloven to its depth with terror,

  Gape like a hell within! I speak in grief,

  Not exultation, for I hate no more,

  As then ere misery made me wise. The curse

  Once breathed on thee I would recall. Ye Mountains,

  60

  Whose many-voicèd Echoes, through the mist

  Of cataracts, flung the thunder of that spell!

  Ye icy Springs, stagnant with wrinkling frost,

  Which vibrated to hear me, and then crept

  Shuddering through India! Thou serenest Air,

  Through which the Sun walks burning without beams!

  And ye swift Whirlwinds, who on poised wings

  Hung mute and moveless o’er yon hushed abyss,

  As thunder, louder than your own, made rock

  The orbèd world! If then my words had power,

  70

  Though I am changed so that aught evil wish

  Is dead within; although no memory be

  Of what is hate, let them not lose it now!

  What was that curse? for ye all heard me speak.

  First Voice (from the Mountains).

  Thrice three hundred thousand years

  75

  O’er the Earthquake’s couch we stood:

  Oft, as men convulsed with fears,

  We trembled in our multitude.

  Second Voice (from the Springs).

  Thunderbolts had parched our water,

  We had been stained with bitter blood,

  80

  And had run mute, ’mid shrieks of slaughter,

  Thro’ a city and a solitude.

  Third Voice (from the Air).

  I had clothed, since Earth uprose,

  Its wastes in colours not their own,

  And oft had my serene repose

  85

  Been cloven by many a rending groan.

  Fourth Voice (from the Whirlwinds).

  We had soared beneath these mountains

  Unresting ages; nor had thunder,

  Nor yon volcano’s flaming fountains,

  Nor any power above or under

  90

  Ever made us mute with wonder.

  First Voice.

  But never bowed our snowy crest

  As at the voice of thine unrest.

  Second Voice.

  Never such a sound before

  To the Indian waves we bore.

  95

  A pilot asleep on the howling sea

  Leaped up from the deck in agony,

  And heard, and cried, ‘Ah, woe is me!’

  And died as mad as the wild waves be.

  Third Voice.

  By such dread words from Earth to Heaven

  100

  My still realm was never riven:

  When its wound was closed, there stood

  Darkness o’er the day like blood.

  Fourth Voice.

  And we shrank back: for dreams of ruin

  To frozen caves our flight pursuing

 
105

  Made us keep silence—thus—and thus—

  Though silence is as hell to us.

  The Earth. The tongueless Caverns of the craggy hills

  Cried, ‘Misery!’ then; the hollow Heaven replied,

  ‘Misery!’ And the Ocean’s purple waves,

  110

  Climbing the land, howled to the lashing winds,

  And the pale nations heard it, ‘Misery!’

  Prometheus. I heard a sound of voices: not the voice

  Which I gave forth. Mother, thy sons and thou

  Scorn him, without whose all-enduring will

  115

  Beneath the fierce omnipotence of Jove,

  Both they and thou had vanished, like thin mist

  Unrolled on the morning wind. Know ye not me,

  The Titan? He who made his agony

  The barrier to your else all-conquering foe?

  120

  Oh, rock-embosomed lawns, and snow-fed streams,

  Now seen athwart frore vapours, deep below,

  Through whose o’ershadowing woods I wandered once

  With Asia, drinking life from her loved eyes;

  Why scorns the spirit which informs ye, now

  125

  To commune with me? me alone, who checked,

  As one who checks a fiend-drawn charioteer,

  The falsehood and the force of him who reigns

  Supreme, and with the groans of pining slaves

  Fills your dim glens and liquid wildernesses:

  Why answer ye not, still? Brethren!

  130

  The Earth. They dare not.

  Prometheus. Who dares? for I would hear that curse again.

  Ha, what an awful whisper rises up!