The Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Are my companions; my designs and labors

And aspirations are my only friends.

HERMES.

Decide not rashly. The decision made Can never be recalled. The Gods implore not,

Plead not, solicit not; they only offer Choice and occasion, which once being passed

Return no more. Dost thou accept the gift?

PROMETHEUS.

No gift of theirs, in whatsoever shape
It comes to me, with whatsoever charm
To fascinate my sense, will I receive.
Leave me.

PANDORA.

Let us go hence.

HERMES.

This new toy and fascination,
This new dalliance and delight!
To the garden where reposes
Epimetheus crowned with roses,
To the door that never closes
Upon pleasure and temptation,
Bring this vision of the night!

IV.

THE AIR.

HERMES, returning to Olympus.
As lonely as the tower that he inhabits,
As firm and cold as are the crags about
him,

Prometheus stands. The thunderbolts
of Zeus

I will not stay. Alone can move him; but the tender

We leave thee to thy vacant dreams, and
all

The silence and the solitude of thought,
The endless bitterness of unbelief,
The loneliness of existence without love.

CHORUS OF THE FATES.

CLOTHO.

How the Titan, the defiant,
The self-centred, self-reliant,
Wrapped in visions and illusions,
Robs himself of life's best gifts!
Till by all the storm-winds shaken,
By the blast of fate o'ertaken,
Hopeless, helpless, and forsaken,
In the mists of his confusions
To the reefs of doom he drifts!

LACHESIS.

Sorely tried and sorely tempted,
From no agonies exempted,
In the penance of his trial,
And the discipline of pain;
Often by illusions cheated,
Often baffled and defeated
In the tasks to be completed,
He, by toil and self-denial,
To the highest shall attain.

ATROPOS.

Tempt no more the noble schemer;
Bear unto some idle dreamer

They do but answer to the love in thine,

PANDORA

O, let me stay.

How beautiful are all things round about

me,

Multiplied by the mirrors on the walls! What treasures hast thou here! Yon oaken chest,

Carven with figures and embossed with

gold,

Is wonderful to look upon! What choice And precious things dost thou keep hidden in it?

I know not.

Yet secretly I wonder thou shouldst Lifted the lid?

love me.

EPIMETHEUS.

"T is a mystery.

PANDORA.

Hast thou never

EPIMETHEUS.

The oracle forbids. Safely concealed there from all mortal Forever sleeps the secret of the Gods. Seek not to know what they have hidden from thee, Till they themselves reveal it.

Let us go forth from this mysterious place.

The garden walks are pleasant at this

hour;

The nightingales among the sheltering boughs

Of populous and many-nested trees Shall teach me how to woo thee, and shall tell me

By what resistless charms or incantations They won their mates.

PANDORA.

Thou dost not need a teacher.

They go out.

CHORUS OF THE EUMENIDES.

What the Immortals
Confide to thy keeping,
Tell unto no man;
Waking or sleeping,
Closed be thy portals
To friend as to foeman.

Silence conceals it;
The word that is spoken
Betrays and reveals it;
By breath or by token
The charm may be broken.

With shafts of their splendors
The Gods unforgiving
Pursue the offenders,
The dead and the living!
Fortune forsakes them,
Nor earth shall abide them,
Nor Tartarus hide them;
Swift wrath overtakes them!

With useless endeavor,
Forever, forever,
Is Sisyphus rolling
His stone up the mountain!
Immersed in the fountain,
Tantalus tastes not
The water that wastes not!
Through ages increasing
The pangs that afflict him,
With motion unceasing
The wheel of Ixion
Shall torture its victim!

VI.

IN THE GARDEN.

EPIMETHEUS.

YON Snow-white cloud that sails sublime

in ether

EPIMETHEUS.

Whence knowest thou these stories?

PANDORA.

Hermes taught me;

Is but the sovereign Zeus, who like a He told me all the history of the Gods.

Pass and repass by the gates Of their inaccessible fastness.; Ever unmoved they stand, Solemn, eternal, and proud.

VOICES OF THE WATERS Flooded by rain and snow In their inexhaustible sources, Swollen by affluent streams Hurrying onward and hurled Headlong over the crags, The impetuous water-courses, Rush and roar and plunge Down to the nethermost world.

Say, have the solid rocks
Into streams of silver been melted,
Flowing over the plains,
Spreading to lakes in the fields?
Or have the mountains, the giants,
The ice-helmed, the forest-belted,
Scattered their arms abroad;
Flung in the meadows their shields?

VOICES OF THE WINDS.

High on their turreted cliffs
That bolts of thunder have shattered,
Storm-winds muster and blow
Trumpets of terrible breath;
Then from the gateways rush,

And before them routed and scattered
Sullen the cloud-rack flies,

Pale with the pallor of death.

Onward the hurricane rides,
And flee for shelter the shepherds;
White are the frightened leaves,
Harvests with terror are white;
Panic seizes the herds,

And even the lions and leopards,
Prowling no longer for prey,
Crouch in their caverns with fright.

VOICES OF THE FOREST.

Guarding the mountains around
Majestic the forests are standing,
Bright are their crested helms,
Dark is their armor of leaves;
Filled with the breath of freedom
Each bosom subsiding, expanding,
Now like the ocean sinks,
Now like the ocean upheaves.

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