PANTHEA: 
Alas! what sawest thou more?

NOTE: 
646 thou more?  B; thou? 1820.

PROMETHEUS: 
There are two woes: 
To speak, and to behold; thou spare me one. 
Names are there, Nature’s sacred watchwords, they
Were borne aloft in bright emblazonry;
The nations thronged around, and cried aloud, 650
As with one voice, Truth, liberty, and love! 
Suddenly fierce confusion fell from heaven
Among them:  there was strife, deceit, and fear: 
Tyrants rushed in, and did divide the spoil. 
This was the shadow of the truth I saw. 655

THE EARTH: 
I felt thy torture, son; with such mixed joy
As pain and virtue give.  To cheer thy state
I bid ascend those subtle and fair spirits,
Whose homes are the dim caves of human thought,
And who inhabit, as birds wing the wind, 660
Its world-surrounding aether:  they behold
Beyond that twilight realm, as in a glass,
The future:  may they speak comfort to thee!

PANTHEA: 
Look, sister, where a troop of spirits gather,
Like flocks of clouds in spring’s delightful weather, 665
Thronging in the blue air!

IONE: 
And see! more come,
Like fountain-vapours when the winds are dumb,
That climb up the ravine in scattered lines. 
And, hark! is it the music of the pines? 
Is it the lake?  Is it the waterfall? 670

PANTHEA: 
’Tis something sadder, sweeter far than all.

CHORUS OF SPIRITS: 
From unremembered ages we
Gentle guides and guardians be
Of heaven-oppressed mortality;
And we breathe, and sicken not, 675
The atmosphere of human thought: 
Be it dim, and dank, and gray,
Like a storm-extinguished day,
Travelled o’er by dying gleams;
Be it bright as all between 680
Cloudless skies and windless streams,
Silent, liquid, and serene;
As the birds within the wind,
As the fish within the wave,
As the thoughts of man’s own mind 685
Float through all above the grave;
We make there our liquid lair,
Voyaging cloudlike and unpent
Through the boundless element: 
Thence we bear the prophecy 690
Which begins and ends in thee!

NOTE: 
687 there B, edition 1839; these 1820.

IONE: 
More yet come, one by one:  the air around them
Looks radiant as the air around a star.