Classic Poem

" P ROMETHEUS Bound . "

Prometheus . Beseech you, think not I am silent thus
Thro pride or scorn. I only gnaw my heart
With meditation, seeing myself so wronged.
For see — their honours to these new-made gods,
What other gave but I, and dealt them out
With distribution? Ay! but here I am dumb;
For here I should repeat your knowledge to you,
If I spake aught. List rather to the deeds
I did for mortals; how, being fools before,
I made them wise and true in aim of soul.
And let me tell you, — not as taunting men,
But teaching you the intention of my gifts, —
How, first beholding, they beheld in vain,
And, hearing, heard not, but, like shapes in dreams,
Mixt all things wildly down the tedious time,
Nor knew to build a house against the sun
With wicketed sides, nor any woodcraft knew,
But lived, like silly ants, beneath the ground
In hollow caves unsunned. There came to them
No steadfast sign of winter, nor of spring
Flower-perfumed, nor of summer full of fruit,
But blindly and lawlessly they did all things,
Until I taught them how the stars do rise
And set in mystery, and devised for them
Number, the inducer of philosophies,
The synthesis of letters, and, beside,
The artificer of all things, memory,
That sweet muse-mother. I was first to yoke
The servile beasts in couples, carrying
An heirdom of man's burdens on their backs.
I joined to chariots, steeds, that love the bit
They champ at, — the chief pomp of golden ease.
And none but I originated ships,
The seaman's chariots, wandering on the brine
With linen wings. And I — oh, miserable! —
Who did devise for mortals all these arts,
Have no device left now to save myself
From the woe I suffer.
Chorus . Most unseemly woe
Thou sufferest, and dost stagger from the sense
Bewildered! Like a bad leech falling sick,
Thou art faint at soul, and canst not find the drugs
Required to save thyself.
Prometheus . Harken the rest,
And marvel further, what more arts and means
I did invent, — this, greatest: if a man
Fell sick, there was no cure, nor esculent
Nor chrism nor liquid, but for lack of drugs
Men pined and wasted, till I showed them all
Those mixtures of emollient remedies
Whereby they might be rescued from disease.
I fixed the various rules of mantic art,
Discerned the vision from the common dream,
Instructed them in vocal auguries
Hard to interpret, and defined as plain
The wayside omens, — flights of crook-clawed birds, —
Showed which are by their nature fortunate,
And which not so, and what the food of each,
And what the hates, affections, social needs
Of all to one another, — taught what sign
Of visceral lightness, coloured to a shade,
May charm the genial gods, and what fair spots
Commend the lung and liver. Burning so
The limbs incased in fat, and the long chine,
I led my mortals on to an art abstruse,
And cleared their eyes to the image in the fire,
Erst filmed in dark. Enough said now of this.
For the other helps of man hid underground,
The iron and the brass, silver and gold,
Can any dare affirm he found them out
Before me? None, I know! unless he choose
To lie in his vaunt. In one word learn the whole, —
That all arts came to mortals from Prometheus.