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PROMETHEUS UNBOUND
A monologue from the play by Percy Bysshe Shelley
| NOTE: This monologue is in the public domain and may be performed without royalties. |
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- MERCURY: Crouch then in silence. Awful Sufferer!
- To thee unwilling, most unwillingly
- I come, by the great Father's will driven down,
- To execute a doom of new revenge.
- Alas! I pity thee, and hate myself
- That I can do no more: aye from thy sight
- Returning, for a season, Heaven seems Hell,
- So thy worn form pursues me night and day,
- Smiling reproach. Wise art thou, firm and good,
- But vainly wouldst stand forth alone in strife
- Against the Omnipotent; as yon clear lamps
- That measure and divide the weary years
- From which there is no refuge, long have taught
- And long must teach. Even now thy Torturer arms
- With the strange might of unimagined pains
- The powers who scheme slow agonies in Hell,
- And my commission is to lead them here,
- Or what more subtle, foul, or savage fiends
- People the abyss, and leave them to their task.
- Be it not so! there is a secret known
- To thee, and to none else of living things,
- Which may transfer the sceptre of wide Heaven,
- The fear of which perplexes the Supreme:
- Clothe it in words, and bid it clasp his throne
- In intercession; bend thy soul in prayer,
- And like a suppliant in some gorgeous fane,
- Let the will kneel within thy haughty heart:
- For benefits and meek submission tame
- The fiercest and the mightiest.
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