Let this opportunity be conceded to me of acknowledging that I have, what a Scotch philosopher characteristically terms, ’a passion for reforming the world:’  what passion incited him to write and publish his book, he omits to explain.  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 Aeschylus rather than Plato as my model.

The having spoken of myself with unaffected freedom will need little apology with the candid; and let the uncandid consider that they injure me less than their own hearts and minds by misrepresentation.  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.

DRAMATIS PERSONAE.

PROMETHEUS. 
DEMOGORGON. 
JUPITER. 
THE EARTH. 
OCEAN. 
APOLLO. 
MERCURY. 
OCEANIDES:  ASIA, PANTHEA, IONE. 
HERCULES. 
THE PHANTASM OF JUPITER. 
THE SPIRIT OF THE EARTH. 
THE SPIRIT OF THE MOON. 
SPIRITS OF THE HOURS. 
SPIRITS.  ECHOES.  FAUNS.  FURIES.

ACT 1.

SCENE: 
A RAVINE OF ICY ROCKS IN THE INDIAN CAUCASUS. 
PROMETHEUS IS DISCOVERED BOUND TO THE PRECIPICE. 
PANTEA AND IONE ARE SEATED AT HIS FEET. 
TIME, NIGHT. 
DURING, THE SCENE MORNING SLOWLY BREAKS.