The Romantics and Classical Greece; Prometheus; Aeschylus

The Romantics and Classical Greece, Stephen Hebron (British Library article)


An excerpt from Prometheus Unbound, by P.B.Shelley


The full text


Prometheus, by Lord Byron

Excerpt:

Thy Godlike crime was to be kind,

         To render with thy precepts less

         The sum of human wretchedness,

And strengthen Man with his own mind;

But baffled as thou wert from high,

Still in thy patient energy,

In the endurance, and repulse

         Of thine impenetrable Spirit,

Which Earth and Heaven could not convulse,

         A mighty lesson we inherit:

Thou art a symbol and a sign

         To Mortals of their fate and force;

Like thee, Man is in part divine,

         A troubled stream from a pure source;

And Man in portions can foresee

His own funereal destiny;

His wretchedness, and his resistance,

And his sad unallied existence:

To which his Spirit may oppose

Itself—and equal to all woes,

         And a firm will, and a deep sense,

Which even in torture can descry

         Its own concenter'd recompense,

Triumphant where it dares defy,

And making Death a Victory.

Pure Stream From a Troubled Source: Byron, Schlegel and Prometheus, Nancy Goslee