They are wrung from me but by the agonies.
Of prophecy, like those sparse drops which fall
From clouds in travail of the lightning, when
The great wave of the storm, high-curled and black,
Rolls steadily onward to its thunderous break.
Why art thou made a god of, thou poor type
Of anger, and revenge, and cunning force?
True Power was never born of brutish Strength,
Nor sweet Truth suckled at the shaggy dugs
Of that old she-wolf. Are thy thunderbolts,
That scare the darkness for a space, so strong
As the prevailing patience of meek Light,
Who, with the invincible tenderness of peace,
Wins it to be a portion of herself?

Why art thou made a god of, thou, who hast
The never-sleeping terror at thy heart,
That birthright of all tyrants, worse to bear
Than this thy ravening bird on which I smile?
Thou swear'st to free me, if I will unfold
What kind of doom it is whose omen flits
Across thy heart, as o'er a troop of doves
The fearful shadow of the kite.

What need

To know that truth whose knowledge cannot save? Evil its errand hath, as well as Good;

When thine is finished, thou art known no more:

There is a higher purity than thou,

And higher purity is greater strength;

Thy nature is thy doom, at which thy heart
Trembles behind the thick wall of thy might.
Let man but hope, and thou art straightway chilled
With thought of that drear silence and deep night
Which, like a dream, shall swallow thee and thine:
Let man but will, and thou art god no more;

More capable of ruin than the gold

And ivory that image thee on earth.

He who hurled down the monstrous Titan-brood Blinded with lightnings, with rough thunders stunned,

Is weaker than a simple human thought.

My slender voice can shake thee, as the breeze,
That seems but apt to stir a maiden's hair,
Sways huge Oceanus from pole to pole:
For I am still Prometheus, and foreknow
In my wise heart the end and doom of all.

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
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
Had'st to thyself 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,
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

Lowell.

To the firm cen.re lays its moveless base.
The tyrant trembles if the air but stirs

The innocent ringlets of a child's free hair,

And crouches, when the thought of some great spirit, 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, would'st 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
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 huge
Of things to come, the shadows, as it seems,

Of what have been. Death never fronts the wise,
Not fearfully, but with clear promises

Of larger life, on whose broad vans upborne,
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,