Except to brood upon its silent hope,
As o'er its hope of day the sky doth now.'
The defiant pride and scornful dignity that raised him above our sympathy in Æschylus, are tempered by Lowell with a human longing for comfort that, in its mighty woe, might melt adamant, or draw from the watchful heavens
'Mild-eyed Astarte, his best comforter,
With her pale smile of sad benignity.'
Chained to the rock in utter loneliness he lies. Long since the 'crisped smiles' of the waves and the 'swift-winged winds' had ceased to listen to his call.
'Year after year will pass away and seem
To me, in mine eternal agony,
But as the shadows of dark summer clouds,
Which I have watched so often darkening o'er