Prometheus Unbound

Death is the veil which those who live call life; They sleep, and it is lifted.

To suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite; To forgive wrongs darker than death or night; To defy power which seems omnipotent; To love, and bear; to hope till Hope creates From its own wreck the thing it contemplates Life may change, but it may fly not; Hope may vanish, but can die not; Truth be veiled, but still it burneth; Love repulsed -but it returneth.

All spirits are enslaved which serve things evil.

Gentleness, Virtue, Wisdom, and Endurance, These are the seals of that most firm assurance Which bars the pit over Destruction's strength; And if, with infirm hand, Eternity, Mother of many acts and hours, should free The serpent that would clasp her with his length; These are the spells by which to reassume An empire o'er the disentangled doom. To suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite; To forgive wrongs darker than death or night; To defy Power, which seems omnipotent; To love, and bear; to hope till Hope creates From its own wreck the thing it contemplates; Neither to change, nor falter, nor repent; This, like thy glory, Titan, is to be Good, great and joyous, beautiful and free; This is alone Life, Joy, Empire, and Victory.

No change, no pause, no hope! Yet I endure.

Joy, joy, joy! Past ages crowd on thee, but each one remembers, And the future is dark, and the present is spread, Like a pillow of thorns for thy slumberless head.

to hope til Hope creates from its own wreak the thing it contemplates;

And the abyss shouts from her depth laid bare, Heaven, hast thou secrets? Man unveils me; I have none.

To love, and bear; to hope till Hope creates From its own wreck the thing it contemplates

Speaking the wisdom once they could not think, looking emotions once they feared to feel, and changed to all which once they dared not be, yet being now, made earth like heaven.

And death shall be the last embrace of her who takes the life she gave, even as a mother folding her child, says, 'Leave me not again.

[A sound of waves is heard.] "It is the unpastured sea hungering for calm. Peace, monster; I come now.

Asia: Who is the master of the slave? Demogorgon: If the abysm could vomit forth its secrets...But a voice is wanting, the deep truth is imageless; For what would it avail to bid thee gaze on the revolving world? What to bid speak Fate, Time, Occasion, Chance, and Change? To these all things are subject but eternal Love.

Science struck the thrones of earth and heaven, which shook, but fell not.

He gave man speech, and speech created thought, which is the measure of the universe.

For my part I had rather be damned with Plato and Lord Bacon, than go to Heaven with Paley and Malthus. But it is a mistake to suppose that I dedicate my poetical compositions solely to the direct enforcement of reform, or that I consider them in any degree as containing a reasoned system on the theory of human life. Didactic poetry is my abhorrence; nothing can be equally well expressed in prose that is not tedious and supererogatory in verse. My purpose has hitherto been simply to familiarise the highly refined imagination of the more select classes of poetical readers with beautiful idealisms of moral excellence; aware that until the mind can love, and admire, and trust, and hope, and endure, reasoned principles of moral conduct are seeds cast upon the highway of life which the unconscious passenger tramples into dust, although they would bear the harvest of his happiness. Should I live to accomplish what I purpose, that is, produce a systematical history of what appear to me to be the genuine elements of human society, let not the advocates of injustice and superstition flatter themselves that I should take Æschylus rather than Plato as my model.

I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!

Whatever talents a person may possess to amuse and instruct others, be they ever so inconsiderable, he is yet bound to exert them: if his attempt be ineffectual, let the punishment of an unaccomplished purpose have been sufficient; let none trouble themselves to heap the dust of oblivion upon his efforts; the pile they raise will betray his grave which might otherwise have been unknown.

None talked that common, false, cold, hollow talk which makes the heart deny the yes it breathes.

His lips in truth-entangling lines which smiled the lie his tongue disdained to speak.

His lips in truth-entangling lines which smiled he lie his tongue disdained to speak.

Hate, disdain, or fear, self-love or self-contempt, on human brows no more inscribed, as o'er the gate of hell, 'All hope abandon ye who enter here.

Among the haunts of humankind, hard-featured men, or with proud, angry looks, or cold, staid gait, or false and hollow smiles, or the dull sneer of self-loved ignorance, or other such foul masks, with which ill thoughts hide that fair being whom we spirits call man.

Yet if thou wilt, as 'tis destiny of trodden worms to writhe till they are dead, put forth thy might.