Prometheus Unbound (Shelley)

All spirits are enslaved which serve things evil.

Prometheus Unbound is a four-act lyrical drama by Percy Bysshe Shelley, first published in 1820. It is concerned with the torments of the Greek mythological figure Prometheus, who defies the gods and gives stolen fire to humanity, for which he is subjected to eternal punishment and suffering at the hands of Zeus. It is inspired by the classical Prometheia, a trilogy of plays attributed to Aeschylus. Shelley's play concerns Prometheus' release from captivity, but unlike Aeschylus' version, there is no reconciliation between Prometheus and Jupiter (Zeus). Instead, Jupiter is abandoned by his servants and falls from power, which allows Prometheus to be released.

Quotes

Act I

  • Three thousand years of sleep-unsheltered hours,
    And moments aye divided by keen pangs
    Till they seemed years, torture and solitude,
    Scorn and despair,—these are mine empire.
    • Prometheus, l. 12


  • Nailed to this wall of eagle-baffling mountain,
    Black, wintry, dead, unmeasured; without herb,
    Insect, or beast, or shape or sound of life.
    • Prometheus, l. 20


  • No change, no pause, no hope! Yet I endure.
    • Prometheus, l. 24


  •                                   Ere Babylon was dust,
    The Magus Zoroaster, my dead child,
    Met his own image walking in the garden.
    That apparition, sole of men, he saw.
    • The Earth, l. 191


  • Dreams and the light imaginings of men,
    And all that faith creates or love desires,
    Terrible, strange, sublime, and beauteous shapes.
    • The Earth, l. 200


  • Cruel he looks, but calm and strong,
    Like one who does, not suffers wrong.
    • Panthea, l. 238


  • It doth repent me: words are quick and vain;
       Grief for awhile is blind, and so was mine.
    I wish no living thing to suffer pain.
    • Prometheus, l. 303


  •                                    Evil minds
    Change good to their own nature.
    • Prometheus, l. 381


  • Kingly conclaves stern and cold,
    Where blood with gold is bought and sold.
    • Fourth Fury, l. 531


  • See a disenchanted nation
    Springs like day from desolation;
    To Truth its state is dedicate,
    And Freedom leads it forth, her mate.
    • Semichorus 1, l. 538


  • And the future is dark, and the present is spread
    Like a pillow of thorns for thy slumberless head.
    • Chorus, l. 562


  •               In each human heart terror survives
    The ruin it has gorged: the loftiest fear
    All that they would disdain to think were true:
    Hypocrisy and custom make their minds
    The fanes of many a worship, now outworn.
    They dare not devise good for man's estate,
    And yet they know not that they do not dare.
    • Fury, l. 619


  • The good want power, but to weep barren tears.
    The powerful goodness want: worse need for them.
    The wise want love; and those who love want wisdom;
    And all best things are thus confused to ill.
    Many are strong and rich, and would be just,
    But live among their suffering fellow-men
    As if none felt: they know not what they do.
    • Fury, l. 626


  • Thy words are like a cloud of wingèd snakes;
    And yet I pity those they torture not.
    • Prometheus, l. 633


  •                                    Peace is in the grave.
    The grave hides all things beautiful and good.
    I am a God and cannot find it there    ,
    Nor would I seek it; for, though dread revenge,
    This is defeat, fierce king, not victory.
    • Prometheus, l. 639



  • On a poet's lips I slept
    Dreaming like a love-adept
    In the sound his breathing kept    ;
    Nor seeks nor finds he mortal blisses,
    But feeds on the aërial kisses
    Of shapes that haunt thought's wildernesses.
    He will watch from dawn to gloom
    The lake-reflected sun illume
    The yellow bees in the ivy-bloom,
    Nor heed nor see what things they be;
    But from these create he can
    Forms more real than living man,
    Nurslings of immortality!
    • Fourth Spirit, l. 738


Act II

  • Those eyes which burn thro' smiles that fade in tears,
    Like stars half quenched in mists of silver dew.
    • Asia, sc. i, l. 28


  • Low, sweet, faint sounds, like the farewell of ghosts.
    • Asia, sc. i, l. 158


  • Sounds overflow the listener's brain
    So sweet, that joy is almost pain.
    • Semichorus 2, sc. ii, l. 247


  • Who made that sense which, when the winds of spring
    In rarest visitation, or the voice
    Of one beloved heard in youth alone,
    Fills the faint eyes with falling tears which dim
    The radiant looks of unbewailing flowers,
    And leaves this peopled earth a solitude
    When it returns no more?
    • Asia, sc. iv, l. 415


  • To know nor faith, nor love, nor law, to be
    Omnipotent but friendless, is to reign.
    • Asia, sc. iv, l. 450


  • He gave man speech, and speech created thought,
    Which is the measure of the universe.
    • Asia, sc. iv, l. 475


  • All spirits are enslaved which serve things evil.
    • Demogorgon, sc. iv, l. 513


  • Fate, Time, Occasion, Chance and Change?
    To these All things are subject but eternal Love.
    • Demogorgon, sc. iv, l. 522


  • My coursers are fed with the lightning,
       They drink of the whirlwind's stream,
    And when the red morning is bright'ning
       They bathe in the fresh sunbeam.
    • Spirit, sc. v, l. 566


  •                                            All love is sweet,
    Given or returned. Common as light is love,
    And its familiar voice wearies not ever.
    Like the wide heaven, the all-sustaining air,
    It makes the reptile equal to the God;
    They who inspire it most are fortunate,
    As I am now; but those who feel it most
    Are happier still.
    • Asia, sc. v, l. 616


  • Life of Life! thy lips enkindle
       With their love the breath between them;
    And thy smiles before they dwindle
       Make the cold air fire; then screen them
    In those looks, where whoso gazes
    Faints, entangled in their mazes.
    Child of Light! thy lips are burning
       Thro' the vest which seems to hide them;
    As the radiant lines of morning
       Thro' the clouds ere they divide them;
    And this atmosphere divinest
    Shrouds thee wheresoe'er thou shinest.
    • Voice, sc. v, l. 625


  •    My soul is an enchanted boat,
       Which, like a sleeping swan, doth float
    Upon the silver waves of thy sweet singing.
    • Asia, sc. v, l. 649


  •    We have past Age's icy caves,
       And Manhood's dark and tossing waves,
    And Youth's smooth ocean, smiling to betray:
       Beyond the glassy gulphs we flee
       Of shadow-peopled Infancy,
    Through Death and Birth, to a diviner day.
    • Asia, sc. v, l. 675


Act III

  • Thetis, bright image of eternity!
    • Jupiter, sc. i, l. 36


  • We two will sink on the wide waves of ruin,
    Even as a vulture and a snake outspent
    Drop, twisted in inextricable fight,
    Into a shoreless sea.
    • Jupiter, sc. ii, l. 71


  • Weave harmonies divine, yet ever new.
    • Prometheus, sc. iii, l. 171


  • Death is the veil which those who live call life;
    They sleep, and it is lifted.


  • Or the dull sneer of self-loved ignorance.
    • Spirit of the Earth, sc. iv, l. 351


  • The loathsome mask has fallen, the man remains,—
    Sceptreless, free, uncircumscribed, but man:
    Equal, unclassed, tribeless, and nationless    ,
    Exempt from awe, worship, degree, the king
    Over himself; just, gentle, wise: but man.
    Passionless? no:—yet free from guilt or pain,—
    Which were, for his will made or suffered them,
    Nor yet exempt, tho' ruling them like slaves,
    From chance, and death, and mutability,—
    The clogs of that which else might oversoar
    The loftiest star of unascended heaven,
    Pinnacled dim in the intense inane.
    • Spirit of the Hour, sc. iv, l. 501


Act IV

  •      The pale stars are gone!
         For the sun, their swift shepherd,
         To their folds them compelling,
         In the depths of the dawn,
    Hastes, in meteor-eclipsing array, and the flee
         Beyond his blue dwelling,
         As fawns flee the leopard.
    • Voice of Unseen Spirits, l. 1


  • Laugh with a vast and inextinguishable laughter.
    • The Earth, l. 334


  • Familiar acts are beautiful through love.
    • The Earth, l. 403


  • Language is a perpetual Orphic song,
    Which rules with Dædal harmony a throng
    Of thoughts and forms, which else senseless and shapeless were.
    • The Earth, l. 415


  • Ye kings of suns and stars, Dæmons and Gods,
       Ethereal Dominations, who possess
    Elysian, windless, fortunate abodes
       Beyond Heaven's constellated wilderness.
    • Demogorgon, l. 529


Soul meets soul on lovers' lips.
  • Soul meets soul on lovers' lips.
    • The Moon, l. 451


  • Man, who wert once a despot and a slave,
       A dupe and a deceiver! a decay,
    A traveller from the cradle to the grave
       Through the dim night of this immortal day.
    • Demogorgon, l. 549


  • This is the day, which down the void abysm
    At the Earth-born's spell yawns for Heaven's despotism
       And Conquest is dragged captive through the deep:
    Love, from its awful throne of patient power
    In the wise heart, from the last giddy hour
       Of dread endurance, from the slippery, steep,
    And narrow verge of crag-like agony, springs
    And folds over the world its healing wings.
    • Demogorgon, l. 554


  • Gentleness, Virtue, Wisdom, and Endurance,
    These are the seals of that most firm assurance
       Which bars the pit over Destruction's strength;
    And if, with infirm hand, Eternity,
    Mother of many acts and hours, should free
       The serpent that would clasp her with his length;
    These are the spells by which to re-assume
    An empire o'er the disentangled doom.
    • Demogorgon, l. 562


  • To suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite;
    To forgive wrongs darker than Death or Night;
       To defy Power, which seems omnipotent;
    To love, and bear; to hope till Hope creates
    From its own wreck the thing it contemplates;
       Neither to change nor falter nor repent;
    This, like thy glory, Titan, is to be
    Good, great and joyous, beautiful and free;
    This is alone Life, Joy, Empire, and Victory!
    • Demogorgon, l. 570 (closing lines)


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