The waves of Ocean cry aloud

Falling, full of sighs the deep,

And Hades stirs with subterranean moan;

Yea and the pure river-fountains are poured

In streams of sad compassion.

PROMETHEUS

Think not my silence is enforced by pride

Or obstinacy —by bitterness of heart

To see myself so savagely outraged.

And yet for these new deities who else

Prescribed their powers and privileges but I?

Of that no more, for the tale that I could tell

Is known to you; but hearken to the plight

Of man, in whom, born witless as a babe,

I planted mind and the gift of understanding.

I speak of men with no intent to blame

But to expound my gracious services:

Who first, with eyes to see, did see in vain,

With ears to hear, did hear not, but as shapes

Figured in dreams throughout their mortal span

Confounded all things, knew not how to raise

Brick-woven walls sun-warmed, nor build in wood,

But had their dwelling, like the restless ant,

In sunless nooks of subterranean caves.

No token sure they had of winter’s cold,

No herald of the flowery spring or season

Of ripening fruit, but laboured without wit

In all their works, till I revealed the obscure

Risings and settings of the stars of heaven.

Yea, and the art of number, arch-device,

I founded, and the craft of written words,

The world’s recorder, mother of the Muse.

I first subdued the wild beasts of the field

To slave in pack and harness and relieve

The mortal labourer of his heaviest toil,

And yoked in chariots, quick to serve the rein,

The horse, prosperity’s proud ornament;

And none but I devised the mariner’s car

On hempen wing roaming the trackless ocean.

Such the resources I have found for man,

Yet for myself, alas, have none to bring

From this my present plight deliverance.

CHORUS

Thy plight is cruel indeed: bereft of wit

And like a bad physician falling sick,

Thou dost despair and for thine own disease

Canst find no physic nor medicament.

PROMETHEUS

Nay, hear the rest and thou wilt marvel more,

What cunning arts and artifices I planned.

Of all the greatest, if a man fell sick,

There was no remedy, nor shredded herb

Nor draught to drink nor ointment, and in default

Of physic their flesh withered, until I

Revealed the blends of gentle medicines

Wherewith they arm themselves against disease.

And many ways of prophecy I ordered,

And first interpreted what must come of dreams

In waking hours, and the obscure import

Of wayside signs and voices I defined,

And taught them to discern the various flight

Of taloned birds, which of them favourable

And which of ill foreboding, and the ways

Of life by each pursued, their mating-seasons,

Their hatreds and their loves one for another;

The entrails too, of what texture and hue

They must appear to please the sight of heaven;

The dappled figure of the gall and liver,

The thigh-bone wrapt in fat and the long chine