_Chorus, 1st Antistrophe._ I behold thee, Prometheus; yet now, yet now, A terrible cloud whose rain is tears Sweeps over mine eyes that witness how Thy body appears Hung awaste on the rocks by infrangible chains: For new is the Hand, new the rudder that steers The ship of Olympus through surge and wind-- And of old things passed, no track is behind. _Prometheus._ Under earth, under Hades Where the home of the shade is, All into the deep, deep Tartarus, I would he had hurled me adown. I would he had plunged me, fastened thus In the knotted chain with the savage clang, All into the dark where there should be none, Neither god nor another, to laugh and see. But now the winds sing through and shake The hurtling chains wherein I hang, And I, in my naked sorrows, make Much mirth for my enemy. _Chorus, 2nd Strophe._ Nay! who of the gods hath a heart so stern As to use thy woe for a mock and mirth? Who would not turn more mild to learn Thy sorrows? who of the heaven and earth Save Zeus? But he Right wrathfully Bears on his sceptral soul unbent And rules thereby the heavenly seed, Nor will he pause till he content His thirsty heart in a finished deed; Or till Another shall appear, To win by fraud, to seize by fear The hard-to-be-captured government. _Prometheus._ Yet even of _me_ he shall have need, That monarch of the blessed seed, Of me, of me, who now am cursed By his fetters dire,-- To wring my secret out withal And learn by whom his sceptre shall Be filched from him--as was, at first, His heavenly fire. But he never shall enchant me With his honey-lipped persuasion; Never, never shall he daunt me With the oath and threat of passion Into speaking as they want me, Till he loose this savage chain, And accept the expiation Of my sorrow, in his pain. _Chorus, 2nd Antistrophe._ Thou art, sooth, a brave god, And, for all thou hast borne From the stroke of the rod, Nought relaxest from scorn. But thou speakest unto me Too free and unworn; And a terror strikes through me And festers my soul And I fear, in the roll Of the storm, for thy fate In the ship far from shore: Since the son of Saturnus is hard in his hate And unmoved in his heart evermore. _Prometheus._ I know that Zeus is stern; I know he metes his justice by his will; And yet, his soul shall learn More softness when once broken by this ill: And curbing his unconquerable vaunt He shall rush on in fear to meet with me Who rush to meet with him in agony, To issues of harmonious covenant.