Proserpine and Midas

by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

ZOPYRION.
Best
Your majesty retire; we may offend.

MIDAS.
Aye, and at the base thought the coward blood
Deserts your trembling lips; but follow me.
Oh Gods! for such your bearing is, & sure
No mortal ever yet possessed the gold
That glitters on your silken robes; may one,
Who, though a king, can boast of no descent
More noble than Deucalion’s stone-formed men[,]
May I demand the cause for which you deign
To print upon this worthless Phrygian earth
The vestige of your gold-inwoven sandals,
Or why that old white-headed man sits there
Upon that grassy throne, & looks as he
Were stationed umpire to some weighty cause[?]

TMOLUS.
God Pan with his blithe pipe which the Fauns love
Has challenged Phœbus of the golden lyre[,]
Saying his Syrinx can give sweeter notes
Than the stringed instrument Apollo boasts.
I judge between the parties. Welcome, King,
I am old Tmolus, God of that bare Hill,
You may remain and hear th’ Immortals sing.

MIDAS.
[aside] My judgement is made up before I hear;
Pan is my guardian God, old-horned Pan,
The Phrygian’s God who watches o’er our flocks;
No harmony can equal his blithe pipe.

(Shelley.)

Apollo (sings).

The sleepless Hours who watch me as I lie,
Curtained with star-enwoven tapestries,
From the broad moonlight of the sky,
Fanning the busy dreams from my dim eyes
Waken me when their Mother, the grey Dawn,
Tells them that dreams & that the moon is gone.

Then I arise, and climbing Heaven’s blue dome,
I walk over the mountains & the waves,
Leaving my robe upon the Ocean foam,—
My footsteps pave the clouds with fire; the caves
Are filled with my bright presence & the air
Leaves the green Earth to my embraces bare.

The sunbeams are my shafts with which I kill
Deceit, that loves the night & fears the day;
All men who do, or even imagine ill
Fly me, and from the glory of my ray
Good minds and open actions take new might
Until diminished by the reign of night.

I feed the clouds, the rainbows & the flowers
With their etherial colours; the moon’s globe
And the pure stars in their eternal bowers
Are cinctured with my power as with a robe;
Whatever lamps on Earth or Heaven may shine
Are portions of one power, which is mine.