"Let me see," quoth Epimetheus, "What my touch can do!" And swiftly to his finger's call The box wide open flew. O heaven! O hell! What Pandemonium In the pouncet dwells! How it quakes, and how it quivers; How it seethes and swells! Misty steams from it upwreathing, Wave on wave is spread! Like a charnel-vault, 'tis breathing Vapors of the dead! Fumes on fumes as from a throat Of sooty Vulcan rise, Clouds of red and blue and yellow Blotting the fair skies! And the air, with noisome stenches, As from things that rot, Chokes the breather--exhalation From the infernal pot. And amid the thick-curled vapors Ghastly shapes I see Of dire diseases, Epimetheus, Launched on earth by thee. A horrid crew! Some lean and dwindled, Some with boils and blains Blistered, some with tumors swollen, And water in the veins; Some with purple blotches bloated, Some with humors flowing Putrid, some with creeping tetter Like a lichen growing O'er the dry skin scaly-crusted; Some with twisted spine Dwarfing low with torture slow The human form divine; Limping some, some limbless lying; Fever, with frantic air, And pale consumption veiling death With looks serenely fair. All the troop of cureless evils, Rushing reinless forth From thy damned box, Pandora, Seize the tainted earth! And to lay the marshalled legions Of our fiendish pains, Hope alone, a sorry charmer, In the box remains. Epimetheus knew the dolors, But he knew too late; Jealous Jove himself, now vainly, Would revoke the fate. And he cursed the fair Pandora, But he cursed in vain; Still, to fools, the fleeting pleasure Buys the lasting pain! WHAT PROMETHEUS PERSONIFIED. PROFESSOR BLACKIE says, regarding Prometheus, that the common conception of him is, that he was the representative of freedom in contest with despotism. He thinks, however, that Goethe is nearer the depth of the myth when, in his beautiful lyric, he represents Prometheus as the impersonation of that indefatigable endurance in man which conquers the earth by skilful labor, in opposition to and despite; those terrible influences of the wild, elemental forces of Nature which the Greeks supposed were concentrated in the person of Jove. Accordingly, PROFESSOR BLACKIE, in his Legend of Prometheus; represents him as proclaiming, in the following language, his empire on the earth, in opposition to the powers above: "Jove rules above: Fate willed it so. 'Tis well; Prometheus rules below. Their gusty games let wild winds play, And clouds on clouds in thick array Muster dark armies in the sky: Be mine a harsher trade to ply-- This solid Earth, this rocky frame To mould, to conquer, and to tame-- And to achieve the toilsome plan My workman shall be MAN.