Needs must I do it, press me not too hard. MIGHT. Press thee I will, and shout into thine ear. Go down and clench the gyves about his legs. HEPHAESTUS. That work with little labour has been done. MIGHT. Now let thy hammer all the bonds make fast; The overseer of this thy work is stern. HEPHAESTUS. Thy speech is ruthless as thy looks are grim. MIGHT. Be thou soft-hearted an thou wilt, but spare To flout my sternness and my strong resolve. HEPHAESTUS. Let us be gone; the gyves are on his legs. MIGHT. There revel in thy insolence, there rob Gods of their attributes to give to man. Can mortal man in aught thy durance ease? Ill chosen was the name that thou hast borne. Foresight it means, but thou dost foresight need To set thy limbs free from his handiwork. PROMETHEUS. O glorious firmament; O swift-winged winds, Ye rivers and ye gleaming ocean waves Innumerable, and thou great Mother Earth, Thou, too, O sun, with thy all-seeing eye, Look how a god is treated by the gods! See the pains that I must bear, Even to the thousandth year! Such the chains that heaven's new king Forges for my torturing. Ah me! Ah me! my present woe Does but the pangs to come foreshow, Pangs that an end will never know. Yet hold! The darkness of futurity Is to my eye not dark, nor can aught come That I do not foresee. Our destiny We all must bear as lightly as we may, Since none may wrestle with necessity. And yet to speak or not to speak alike Is miserable. High service done to man-- For this I bear the adamantine chain. I to its elemental fountain tracked, In fern-pith stored and bore by stealth away, Fire, source and teacher of all arts to men. Such mine offence, whereof the penalty I pay, thus chained in face of earth and heaven. * * * * * _THE SIN OF PROMETHEUS_. LINES 444-533. PROMETHEUS.