PROMETHEUS: 
Evil minds 380
Change good to their own nature.  I gave all
He has; and in return he chains me here
Years, ages, night and day:  whether the Sun
Split my parched skin, or in the moony night
The crystal-winged snow cling round my hair:  385
Whilst my beloved race is trampled down
By his thought-executing ministers. 
Such is the tyrant’s recompense:  ’tis just: 
He who is evil can receive no good;
And for a world bestowed, or a friend lost, 390
He can feel hate, fear, shame; not gratitude: 
He but requites me for his own misdeed. 
Kindness to such is keen reproach, which breaks
With bitter stings the light sleep of Revenge. 
Submission, thou dost know I cannot try:  395
For what submission but that fatal word,
The death-seal of mankind’s captivity,
Like the Sicilian’s hair-suspended sword,
Which trembles o’er his crown, would he accept,
Or could I yield?  Which yet I will not yield. 400
Let others flatter Crime, where it sits throned
In brief Omnipotence:  secure are they: 
For Justice, when triumphant, will weep down
Pity, not punishment, on her own wrongs,
Too much avenged by those who err.  I wait, 405
Enduring thus, the retributive hour
Which since we spake is even nearer now. 
But hark, the hell-hounds clamour:  fear delay: 
Behold!  Heaven lowers under thy Father’s frown.

MERCURY: 
Oh, that we might be spared; I to inflict 410
And thou to suffer!  Once more answer me: 
Thou knowest not the period of Jove’s power?

PROMETHEUS: 
I know but this, that it must come.

MERCURY: 
Alas! 
Thou canst not count thy years to come of pain?

PROMETHEUS: 
They last while Jove must reign:  nor more, nor less 415
Do I desire or fear.

MERCURY: 
Yet pause, and plunge
Into Eternity, where recorded time,
Even all that we imagine, age on age,
Seems but a point, and the reluctant mind
Flags wearily in its unending flight, 420
Till it sink, dizzy, blind, lost, shelterless;
Perchance it has not numbered the slow years
Which thou must spend in torture, unreprieved?

PROMETHEUS: 
Perchance no thought can count them, yet they pass.

MERCURY: 
If thou might’st dwell among the Gods the while
Lapped in voluptuous joy? 425

PROMETHEUS: 
I would not quit
This bleak ravine, these unrepentant pains.

MERCURY: 
Alas!  I wonder at, yet pity thee.

PROMETHEUS: 
Pity the self-despising slaves of Heaven,
Not me, within whose mind sits peace serene. 430
As light in the sun, throned:  how vain is talk! 
Call up the fiends.