Primeval Themis, prophesied to me,
But of the ways and means too long it were
To tell thee, and it profits not to know.“[[20]]
To immortal eyes, seeing the end in the beginning, it was a glorious destiny; one to compensate perhaps, if not to justify, all that she had endured. But Io is only a mortal maid. The vision of the future opens before her in one radiant moment, and then all is dark again, and nothing remains but her inexplicable pain. Even before Prometheus has finished speaking the cloud had fallen upon her mind again.
“Alas! Woe worth the day!
Again a thrill, a spasm of frenzy
Shoots through me, soul-distracting:
The unforged goad of the gadfly
Stings me afresh; and my seated heart
Knocks at my ribs for fear,