From high Olympus and the ætherial courts, Where mighty Zeus our angry king confirms The Fates' decrees and bends the wills of the gods, I come: and on the earth step with glad foot. This variegated ocean-floor of the air, The changeful circle of fair land, that lies Heaven's dial, sisterly mirror of night and day: The wide o'er-wandered plain, this nether world My truant haunt is, when from jealous eyes I steal, for hither 'tis I steal, and here 10 Unseen repair my joy: yet not unseen Methinks, nor seen unguessed of him I seek. Rather by swath or furrow, or where the path Is walled with corn I am found, by trellised vine Or olive set in banks or orchard trim: I watch all toil and tilth, farm, field and fold, And taste the mortal joy; since not in heaven Among our easeful gods hath facile time A touch so keen, to wake such love of life As stirs the frail and careful being, who here, 20 The king of sorrows, melancholy man, Bows at his labour, but in heart erect A god stands, nor for any gift of god Would barter his immortal-hearted prime. Could I but win this world from Zeus for mine, With not a god to vex my happy rule, I would inhabit here and leave high heaven: So much I love it and its race of men, Even as he hates them, hates both them, and me For loving what he hates, and would destroy me, 30 Outcast in the scorn of all his cringing crew, For daring but to save what he would slay: And me must first destroy. Thus he denieth My heart's wish, thus my counsel sets at naught, Which him saved once, when all at stake he stood Uprisen in rebellion to overthrow The elderseated Titans, for I that day Gave him the counsels which his foes despised. Unhappy they, who had still their blissful seats Preserved and their Olympian majesty, 40 Had they been one with me. Alas, my kin! But he, when he had taken the throne and chained His foes in wasteful Tartarus, said no more Where is Prometheus our wise counsellor? What saith Prometheus? tell us, O Prometheus, What Fate requires! but waxing confident And wanton, as a youth first tasting power, He wrecked the timeless monuments of heaven, The witness of the wisdom of the gods, And making all about him new, beyond 50 Determined to destroy the race of men, And that create afresh or else have none. Then his vain mind imagined a device, And at his bidding all the opposèd winds Blew, and the scattered clouds and furlèd snows, From every part of heaven together flying, He with brute hands in huge disorder heaped: They with the winds' weight and his angry breath Were thawed: in cataracts they fell, and earth