Mosaics of Grecian History by Marcius Willson;Robert Pierpont Wilson
page 81 of 667 (12%)
page 81 of 667 (12%)
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THE SUFFERINGS OF PROMETHEUS.
We close this subject with a brief extract from the Prometheus Bound of the English poet SHELLEY, in which the sufferings of the defiant captive are vividly portrayed: "No change, no pause, no hope! yet I endure. I ask the Earth, have not the mountains felt? I ask yon Heaven, the all-beholding Sun, Has it not seen? The Sea, in storm or calm, Heaven's ever-changing shadow, spread below, Have its deaf waves not heard my agony? Ah me! alas, pain, pain ever, forever! The crawling glaciers pierce me with the spears Of their moon-freezing crystals; the bright chains Eat with their burning gold into my bones. Heaven's winged hound, polluting from thy lips His beak in poison not his own, tears up My heart; and shapeless sights come wandering by-- The ghastly people of the realm of dream Mocking me; and the Earthquake fiends are charged To wrench the rivets from my quivering wounds When the rocks split and close again behind; While from their loud abysses howling throng The genii of the storm." Returning now to the poet Ovid, we present the account which he gives of the Deluge, or the destruction of mankind by a flood, called by the Greeks, |
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