EPIMETHEUS. 
O my brother! 
Thou drivest me to madness with thy taunts.

PROMETHEUS. 
And me thou drivest to madness with thy follies. 
Come with me to my tower on Caucasus: 
See there my forges in the roaring caverns,
Beneficent to man, and taste the joy
That springs from labor.  Read with me the stars,
And learn the virtues that lie hidden in plants,
And all things that are useful.

EPIMETHEU5. 
O my brother! 
I am not as thou art.  Thou dost inherit
Our father’s strength, and I our mother’s weakness: 
The softness of the Oceanides,
The yielding nature that cannot resist.

PROMETHEUS. 
Because thou wilt not.

EPIMETHEUS. 
Nay; because I cannot.

PROMETHEUS. 
Assert thyself; rise up to thy full height;
Shake from thy soul these dreams effeminate,
These passions born of indolence and ease. 
Resolve, and thou art free.  But breathe the air
Of mountains, and their unapproachable summits
Will lift thee to the level of themselves.

EPIMETHEUS. 
The roar of forests and of waterfalls,
The rushing of a mighty wind, with loud
And undistinguishable voices calling,
Are in my ear!

PROMETHEUS. 
O, listen and obey.

EPIMETHEUS. 
Thou leadest me as a child, I follow thee.

(They go out.)

CHORUS OF OREADES. 
Centuries old are the mountains;
Their foreheads wrinkled and rifted
Helios crowns by day,
Pallid Selene by night;
From their bosoms uptossed
The snows are driven and drifted,
Like Tithonus’ beard
Streaming dishevelled and white.

Thunder and tempest of wind
Their trumpets blow in the vastness;
Phantoms of mist and rain,
Cloud and the shadow of cloud,
Pass and repass by the gates
Of their inaccessible fastness;
Ever unmoved they stand,
Solemn, eternal, and proud,

VOICES OF THE WATERS. 
Flooded by rain and snow
In their inexhaustible sources,
Swollen by affluent streams
Hurrying onward and hurled
Headlong over the crags,
The impetuous water-courses,
Rush and roar and plunge
Down to the nethermost world.

Say, have the solid rocks
Into streams of silver been melted,
Flowing over the plains,
Spreading to lakes in the fields? 
Or have the mountains, the giants,
The ice-helmed, the forest-belted,
Scattered their arms abroad;
Flung in the meadows their shields?

VOICES OF THE WINDS. 
High on their turreted cliffs
That bolts of thunder have shattered,
Storm-winds muster and blow
Trumpets of terrible breath;
Then from the gateways rush,
And before them routed and scattered
Sullen the cloud-rack flies,
Pale with the pallor of death.

Onward the hurricane rides,
And flee for shelter the shepherds;
White are the frightened leaves,
Harvests with terror are white;
Panic seizes the herds,
And even the lions and leopards,
Prowling no longer for prey,
Crouch in their caverns with fright.