NOTE: 
106 as hell 1839, B; a hell 1820.

PROMETHEUS: 
I hear a sound of voices:  not the voice
Which I gave forth.  Mother, thy sons and thou
Scorn him, without whose all-enduring will
Beneath the fierce omnipotence of Jove, 115
Both they and thou had vanished, like thin mist
Unrolled on the morning wind.  Know ye not me,
The Titan?  He who made his agony
The barrier to your else all-conquering foe? 
Oh, rock-embosomed lawns, and snow-fed streams, 120
Now seen athwart frore vapours, deep below,
Through whose o’ershadowing woods I wandered once
With Asia, drinking life from her loved eyes;
Why scorns the spirit which informs ye, now
To commune with me? me alone, who checked, 125
As one who checks a fiend-drawn charioteer,
The falsehood and the force of him who reigns
Supreme, and with the groans of pining slaves
Fills your dim glens and liquid wildernesses: 
Why answer ye not, still?  Brethren!

THE EARTH: 
They dare not. 130

PROMETHEUS: 
Who dares? for I would hear that curse again. 
Ha, what an awful whisper rises up! 
’Tis scarce like sound:  it tingles through the frame
As lightning tingles, hovering ere it strike. 
Speak, Spirit! from thine inorganic voice 135
I only know that thou art moving near
And love.  How cursed I him?

THE EARTH: 
How canst thou hear
Who knowest not the language of the dead?

PROMETHEUS: 
Thou art a living spirit; speak as they.

THE EARTH: 
I dare not speak like life, lest Heaven’s fell King 140
Should hear, and link me to some wheel of pain
More torturing than the one whereon I roll. 
Subtle thou art and good; and though the Gods
Hear not this voice, yet thou art more than God,
Being wise and kind:  earnestly hearken now. 145

PROMETHEUS: 
Obscurely through my brain, like shadows dim,
Sweep awful thoughts, rapid and thick.  I feel
Faint, like one mingled in entwining love;
Yet ’tis not pleasure.

THE EARTH: 
No, thou canst not hear: 
Thou art immortal, and this tongue is known 150
Only to those who die.

PROMETHEUS: 
And what art thou,
O, melancholy Voice?

THE EARTH: 
I am the Earth,
Thy mother; she within whose stony veins,
To the last fibre of the loftiest tree
Whose thin leaves trembled in the frozen air, 155
Joy ran, as blood within a living frame,
When thou didst from her bosom, like a cloud
Of glory, arise, a spirit of keen joy! 
And at thy voice her pining sons uplifted
Their prostrate brows from the polluting dust,