We have seen that Æschylus had a fit audience for this fable, and was working upon emotions which are as deep as religion; but now, when we come down 2300 years to a time from which the Æschylean religious beliefs have long exhaled, and when the enormous growth of personality has quite rolled away the old lumpish terror that stood before the cave of the physical and darkened it, in such a time it would, of course, be truly amazing if a man like Shelley should have elaborated this same old Prometheus fable into a lyrical drama in the expectation of shaking the souls of men with this same old machinery of thunder, whirlwind and earthquake. Such a mistake--the mistake of tearing the old fable forcibly away from its old surroundings, and of setting it in modern thoughts before modern men, would be much the same with that which Emerson has noted in his poem _Each and All_: "I thought of the sparrow's note from heaven, Singing at dawn on the alder bough; I brought him home in his nest at even; He sings the song, but it pleases not now, For I did not bring home the river and sky-- He sang to my ear, they sang to my eye. The delicate shells lay on the shore; Bubbles of the latest wave Fresh pearls to their enamel gave; And the bellowing of the savage sea Greeted their safe escape to me. I wiped away the weeds and foam I fetched my sea-born treasures home; But the poor, unsightly, noisome things Had left their beauty on the shore With the sun and the sand and the wild sea-shore."