HERMES.
To thee it brings not yet discretion’s curb.
PROMETHEUS.
No—else I had not wrangled with a slave!
HERMES.
Then thou concealest all that Zeus would learn?
PROMETHEUS.
As though I owed him aught and should repay!
HERMES.
Scornful thy word, as though I were a child—
PROMETHEUS.
Child, ay—or whatsoe’er hath less of brain—
Thou, deeming thou canst wring my secret out!
No mangling torture, no, nor sleight of power
There is, by which he shall compel my speech,
Until these shaming bonds be loosed from me.
So, let him fling his blazing levin-bolt!
Let him with white and winged flakes of snow,
And rumbling earthquakes, whelm and shake the world!
For nought of this shall bend me to reveal
The power ordained to hurl him from his throne.
HERMES.
Bethink thee if such words can mend thy lot.
PROMETHEUS.
All have I long foreseen, and all resolved.
HERMES.
Perverse of will! constrain, constrain thy soul
To think more wisely in the grasp of doom!
PROMETHEUS.
Truce to vain words! as wisely wouldst thou strive
To warn a swelling wave: imagine not
That ever I before thy lord’s resolve
Will shrink in womanish terror, and entreat,
As with soft suppliance of female hands,
The Power I scorn unto the utterance,
To loose me from the chains that bind me here—
A world’s division ’twixt that thought and me!