Four Plays of Aeschylus Part 27

Yea, I behold, Prometheus! and would warn Thee, spite of all thy wisdom, for thy weal!

Learn now thyself to know, and to renew A rightful spirit within thee, for, made new With pride of place, sits Zeus among the G.o.ds!

Now, if thou choosest to fling forth on him Words rough with anger thus and edged with scorn, Zeus, though he sit aloof, afar, on high, May hear thine utterance, and make thee deem His present wrath a mere pretence of pain.

Banish, poor wretch! the pa.s.sion of thy soul, And seek, instead, acquittance from thy pangs!

Belike my words seem ancientry to thee- Such, natheless, O Prometheus, is the meed That doth await the overweening tongue!

Meek wert thou never, wilt not crouch to pain, But, set amid misfortunes, cravest more!

Now-if thou let thyself be schooled by me- Thou must not kick against the goad. Thou knowest, A despot rules, harsh, resolute, supreme, Whose law is will. Yet shall I go to him, With all endeavour to relieve thy plight- So thou wilt curb the tempest of thy tongue!

Surely thou knowest, in thy wisdom deep, The saw-Who vaunts amiss, quick pain is his.

PROMETHEUS

O enviable thou, and unaccused- Thou who wast art and part in all I dared!

And now, let be! make this no care of thine, For Zeus is past persuasion-urge him not!

Look to thyself, lest thine emprise thou rue.

OCEa.n.u.s

Thou hast more skill to school thy neighbour's fault Than to amend thine own: 'tis proved and plain, By fact, not hearsay, that I read this well.

Yet am I fixed to go-withhold me not- a.s.sured I am, a.s.sured, that Zeus will grant The boon I crave, the loosening of thy bonds.

PROMETHEUS

In part I praise thee, to the end will praise; Goodwill thou lackest not, but yet forbear Thy further trouble! If thy heart be fain, Bethink thee that thy toil avails me not.

Nay, rest thee well, aloof from danger's brink!

I will not ease my woe by base relief In knowing others too involved therein.

Away the thought! for deeply do I rue My brother Atlas' doom. Far off he stands In sunset land, and on his shoulder bears The pillar'd mountain-ma.s.s whose base is earth, Whose top is heaven, and its ponderous load Too great for any grasp. With pity too I saw Earth's child, the monstrous thing of war, That in Cilicia's hollow places dwelt- Typho; I saw his hundred-headed form Crushed and constrained; yet once his stride was fierce, His jaws gaped horror and their hiss was death, And all heaven's host he challenged to the fray, While, as one vowed to storm the power of Zeus, Forth from his eyes he shot a demon glare.

It skilled not: the unsleeping bolt of Zeus, The downward levin with its rush of flame, Smote on him, and made dumb for evermore The clamour of his vaunting: to the heart Stricken he lay, and all that mould of strength Sank thunder-shattered to a smouldering ash; And helpless now and laid in ruin huge He lieth by the narrow strait of sea, Crushed at the root of Etna's mountain-pile.

High on the pinnacles whereof there sits Hephaestus, sweltering at the forge; and thence On some hereafter day shall burst and stream The lava-floods, that shall with ravening fangs Gnaw thy smooth lowlands, fertile Sicily!

Such ire shall Typho from his living grave Send seething up, such jets of fiery surge, Hot and unslaked, altho' himself be laid In quaking ashes by Zeus' thunderbolt.

But thou dost know hereof, nor needest me To school thy sense: thou knowest safety's road- Walk then thereon! I to the dregs will drain, Till Zeus relent from wrath, my present woe.

OCEa.n.u.s

Nay, but, Prometheus, know'st thou not the saw- Words can appease the angry soul's disease?

PROMETHEUS

Ay-if in season one apply their salve, Not scorching wrath's proud flesh with caustic tongue.

OCEa.n.u.s

But in wise thought and venturous essay Perceivest thou a danger? prithee tell!

PROMETHEUS

I see a fool's good nature, useless toil.

OCEa.n.u.s

Let me be sick of that disease; I know, Loyalty, masked as folly, wins the way.

PROMETHEUS

But of thy blunder I shall bear the blame.

OCEa.n.u.s

Clearly, thy word would send me home again.

PROMETHEUS

Lest thy lament for me should bring thee hate.

OCEa.n.u.s

Hate from the newly-throned Omnipotence?

PROMETHEUS

Be heedful-lest his will be wroth with thee!

OCEa.n.u.s

Thy doom, Prometheus, cries to me Beware!

PROMETHEUS

Mount, make away, discretion at thy side!

OCEa.n.u.s

Thy word is said to me in act to go: For lo, my hippogriff with waving wings Fans the smooth course of air, and fain is he To rest his limbs within his ocean stall.

[Exit OCEa.n.u.s. CHORUS For the woe and the wreck and the doom, Prometheus I utter my sighs; O'er my cheek flows the fountain of tears from tender, compa.s.sionate eyes.

For stern and abhorred is the sway of Zeus on his self-sought throne, And ruthless the spear of his scorn, to the G.o.ds of the days that are done.

And over the limitless earth goes up a disconsolate cry: Ye were all so fair, and have fallen; so great and your might has gone by!

So wails with a mighty lament the voice of the mortals, who dwell In the Eastland, the home of the holy, for thee and the fate that befel; And they of the Colchian land, the maidens whose arm is for war; And the Scythian bowmen, who roam by the lake of Maeotis afar; And the blossom of battling hordes, that flowers upon Caucasus' height, With clashing of lances that pierce, and with clamour of swords that smite.

Strange is thy sorrow! one only I know who has suffered thy pain- Atlas the t.i.tan, the G.o.d, in a ruthless, invincible chain!

He beareth for ever and ever the burden and poise of the sky, The vault of the rolling heaven, and earth re-echoes his cry.

The depths of the sea are troubled; they mourn from their caverns profound, And the darkest and innermost h.e.l.l moans deep with a sorrowful sound; And the rivers of waters, that flow from the fountains that spring without stain, Are as one in the great lamentation, and moan for thy piteous pain.

PROMETHEUS

Deem not that I in pride or wilful scorn Restrain my speech; 'tis wistful memory That rends my heart, when I behold myself Abased to wretchedness. To these new G.o.ds I and none other gave their lots of power In full attainment; no more words hereof I speak-the tale ye know. But listen now Unto the rede of mortals and their woes, And how their childish and unreasoning state Was changed by me to consciousness and thought.

Yet not in blame of mortals will I speak, But as in proof of service wrought to them.

For, in the outset, eyes they had and saw not; And ears they had but heard not; age on age, Like unsubstantial shapes in vision seen, They groped at random in the world of sense, Nor knew to link their building, brick with brick, Nor how to turn its aspect to the sun, Nor how to join the beams by carpentry, In hollowed caves they dwelt, as emmets dwell, Weak feathers for each blast, in sunless caves.

Nor had they certain forecast of the cold, Nor of the advent of the flowery spring, Nor of the fruitful summer. All they wrought, Unreasoning they wrought, till I made clear The laws of rising stars, and inference dim, More hard to learn, of what their setting showed.

I taught to them withal that art of arts, The lore of number, and the written word That giveth sense to sound, the tool wherewith The gift of memory was wrought in all, And so came art and song. I too was first To harness 'neath the yoke strong animals, Obedient made to collar and to weight, That they might bear whate'er of heaviest toil Mortals endured before. For chariots too I trained, and docile service of the rein, Steeds, the delight of wealth and pomp and pride.

I too, none other, for seafarers wrought Their ocean-roaming canvas-winged cars.

Such arts of craft did I, unhappy I, Contrive for mortals: now, no feint I have Whereby I may elude my present woe.

CHORUS

A rueful doom is thine! distraught of soul, And all astray, and like some sorry leech Art thou, repining at thine own disease, Unskilled, unknowing of the needful cure.

PROMETHEUS

More wilt thou wonder when the rest thou hearest- What arts for them, what methods I devised.

Foremost was this: if any man fell sick, No aiding art he knew, no saving food, No curing oil nor draught, but all in lack Of remedies they dwindled, till I taught The medicinal blending of soft drugs, Whereby they ward each sickness from their side.

I ranged for them the methods manifold Of the diviner's art; I first discerned Which of night's visions hold a truth for day, I read for them the lore of mystic sounds, Inscrutable before; the omens seen Which bless or ban a journey, and the flight Of crook-clawed birds, did I make clear to man- And how they soar upon the right, for weal, How, on the left, for evil; how they dwell, Each in its kind, and what their loves and hates, And which can flock and roost in harmony.

From me, men learned what deep significance Lay in the smoothness of the entrails set For sacrifice, and which, of various hues, Showed them a gift accepted of the G.o.ds; They learned what streaked and varied comeliness Of gall and liver told; I led them, too, (By pa.s.sing thro' the flame the thigh-bones, wrapt In rolls of fat, and th' undivided chine), Unto the mystic and perplexing lore Of omens; and I cleared unto their eyes The forecasts, dim and indistinct before, Shown in the flickering aspect of a flame.