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. 80
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, 90
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 100
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,
Hadst to thy self 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, 110
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
To the firm centre lays its moveless base. 
The tyrant trembles, if the air but stir
The innocent ringlets of a child’s free hair,
And crouches, when the thought of some great spirit, 120
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, wouldst 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 130
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 vast