_Prometheus._ She has heard The uttermost of her wandering. There it ends. But that she may be certain not to have heard All vainly, I will speak what she endured Ere coming hither, and invoke the past To prove my prescience true. And so--to leave A multitude of words and pass at once To the subject of thy course--when thou hadst gone To those Molossian plains which sweep around Dodona shouldering Heaven, whereby the fane Of Zeus Thesprotian keepeth oracle, And, wonder past belief, where oaks do wave Articulate adjurations--(ay, the same Saluted thee in no perplexèd phrase But clear with glory, noble wife of Zeus That shouldst be,--there some sweetness took thy sense!) Thou didst rush further onward, stung along The ocean-shore, toward Rhea's mighty bay And, tost back from it, wast tost to it again In stormy evolution:--and, know well, In coming time that hollow of the sea Shall bear the name Ionian and present A monument of Io's passage through Unto all mortals. Be these words the signs Of my soul's power to look beyond the veil Of visible things. The rest, to you and her I will declare in common audience, nymphs, Returning thither where my speech brake off. There is a town Canobus, built upon The earth's fair margin at the mouth of Nile And on the mound washed up by it; Io, there Shall Zeus give back to thee thy perfect mind, And only by the pressure and the touch Of a hand not terrible; and thou to Zeus Shalt bear a dusky son who shall be called Thence, Epaphus, _Touched_. That son shall pluck the fruit Of all that land wide-watered by the flow Of Nile; but after him, when counting out As far as the fifth full generation, then Full fifty maidens, a fair woman-race, Shall back to Argos turn reluctantly, To fly the proffered nuptials of their kin, Their father's brothers. These being passion struck, Like falcons bearing hard on flying doves, Shall follow, hunting at a quarry of love They should not hunt; till envious Heaven maintain A curse betwixt that beauty and their desire, And Greece receive them, to be overcome In murtherous woman-war, by fierce red hands Kept savage by the night. For every wife Shall slay a husband, dyeing deep in blood The sword of a double edge--(I wish indeed As fair a marriage-joy to all my foes!) One bride alone shall fail to smite to death The head upon her pillow, touched with love, Made impotent of purpose and impelled To choose the lesser evil,--shame on her cheeks, Than blood-guilt on her hands: which bride shall bear A royal race in Argos. Tedious speech Were needed to relate particulars Of these things; 'tis enough that from her seed Shall spring the strong He, famous with the bow, Whose arm shall break my fetters off. Behold, My mother Themis, that old Titaness, Delivered to me such an oracle,-- But how and when, I should be long to speak,