Slike strani
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She smiled and I essay'd to speak,
But fail'd-and she approach'd, and

made

With lip and finger signs that said, I must not strive as yet to break The silence, till my strength should be Enough to leave my accents free. And then her hand on mine she laid, And smooth'd the pillow for my head, And stole along on tiptoe tread,

And gently oped the door, and spake In whispers ne'er was voice so sweet! Even music follow'd her light feet.

But those she call'd were not awake, And she went forth; but, ere she pass'd, Another look on me she cast,

Another sign she made, to say, That I had nought to fear, that all Were near at my command or call, And she would not delay

Her due return: - while she was gone, Methought I felt too much alone.

XX

She came with mother and with sire What need of more?—I will not tire With long recital of the rest, Since I became the Cossack's guest. They found me senseless on the plain, They bore me to the nearest hut, They brought me into life again, Me-one day o'er their realm to reign! Thus the vain fool who strove to glut His rage, refining on my pain,

Sent me forth to the wilderness, Bound, naked, bleeding, and alone,

820

830

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Το

?

pass the desert to a throne,
What mortal his own doom may guess'
Let none despond, let none despair!
To-morrow the Borysthenes

May see our coursers graze at ease
Upon his Turkish bank, — and never
Had I such welcome for a river

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PROMETHEUS

[Publ. 1816]

TITAN! to whose immortal eyes
The sufferings of mortality,
Seen in their sad reality,
Were not as things that gods despise;
What was thy pity's recompense?
A silent suffering, and intense;
The rock, the vulture, and the chain,
All that the proud can feel of pain,
The agony they do not show,
The suffocating sense of woe,

Which speaks but in its loneliness, And then is jealous lest the sky Should have a listener, nor will sigh Until its voice is echoless.

Titan! to thee the strife was given

Between the suffering and the will,
Which torture where they cannot kill;
And the inexorable Heaven,
And the deaf tyranny of Fate,
The ruling principle of Hate,
Which for its pleasure doth create
The things it may annihilate,
Refused thee even the boon to die:
The wretched gift eternity

Was thine-And thou hast borne it well.
All that the Thunderer wrung from thee
Was but the menace which flung back
On him the torments of thy rack;
The fate thou didst so well foresee,
But would not to appease him tell;
And in thy Silence was his Sentence,
And in his Soul a vain repentance,
And evil dread so ill dissembled,
That in his hand the lightnings trembled.

Thy Godlike crime was to be kind,

To render with thy precepts less The sum of human wretchedness, And strengthen Man with his own mind; But baffled as thou wert from high, Still in thy patient energy,

In the endurance, and repulse

Of thine impenetrable Spirit,

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Which Earth and Heaven could not con

vulse,

A mighty lesson we inherit:

Thou art a symbol and a sign

To Mortals of their fate and force; Like thee, Man is in part divine,

A troubled stream from a pure source;

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