Yes, I am still Prometheus, wiser grown By years of solitude,--that holds apart The past and future, giving the soul room To search into itself,--and long commune With this eternal silence;--more a god, In my long-suffering and strength to meet 100 With equal front the direst shafts of fate, Than thou in thy faint-hearted despotism, Girt with thy baby-toys of force and wrath. Yes, I am that Prometheus who brought down The light to man, which thou, in selfish fear, Hadst to thy self usurped,--his by sole right, For Man hath right to all save Tyranny,-- And which shall free him yet from thy frail throne. Tyrants are but the spawn of Ignorance, Begotten by the slaves they trample on, 110 Who, could they win a glimmer of the light, And see that Tyranny is always weakness, Or Fear with its own bosom ill at ease, Would laugh away in scorn the sand-wove chain Which their own blindness feigned for adamant. Wrong ever builds on quicksands, but the Right To the firm centre lays its moveless base. The tyrant trembles, if the air but stir The innocent ringlets of a child's free hair, And crouches, when the thought of some great spirit, 120 With world-wide murmur, like a rising gale. Over men's hearts, as over standing corn, Rushes, and bends them to its own strong will. So shall some thought of mine yet circle earth, And puff away thy crumbling altars, Jove! And, wouldst thou know of my supreme revenge, Poor tyrant, even now dethroned in heart, Realmless in soul, as tyrants ever are, Listen! and tell me if this bitter peak, This never-glutted vulture, and these chains 130 Shrink not before it; for it shall befit A sorrow-taught, unconquered Titan-heart. Men, when their death is on them, seem to stand On a precipitous crag that overhangs The abyss of doom, and in that depth to see, As in a glass, the features dim and vast Of things to come, the shadows, as it seems, Of what have been. Death ever fronts the wise; Not fearfully, but with clear promises Of larger life, on whose broad vans upborne, 140 Their outlook widens, and they see beyond The horizon of the Present and the Past, Even to the very source and end of things. Such am I now: immortal woe hath made My heart a seer, and my soul a judge Between the substance and the shadow of Truth. The sure supremeness of the Beautiful, By all the martyrdoms made doubly sure Of such as I am, this is my revenge, Which of my wrongs builds a triumphal arch, 150 Through which I see a sceptre and a throne. The pipings of glad shepherds on the hills, Tending the flocks no more to bleed for thee; The songs of maidens pressing with white feet The vintage on thine altars poured no more; The murmurous bliss of lovers underneath Dim grapevine bowers whose rosy bunches press Not half so closely their warm cheeks, unpaled By thoughts of thy brute lust; the hive-like hum Of peaceful commonwealths, where sunburnt Toil 160 Reaps for itself the rich earth made its own