Explore "Prometheus Unbound" by Percy Bysshe Shelley on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
SCENE 3.1: / HEAVEN. / JUPITER ON HIS THRONE; THETIS AND THE OTHER DEITIES ASSEMBLED.
JUPITER: / Ye congregated powers of heaven, who share / The glory and the strength of him ye serve, / Rejoice! henceforth I am omnipotent. / All else had been subdued to me; alone / The soul of man, like unextinguished fire, / Yet burns towards heaven with fierce reproach, and doubt, / And lamentation, and reluctant prayer, / Hurling up insurrection, which might make / Our antique empire insecure, though built / On eldest faith, and hell's coeval, fear; / And though my curses through the pendulous air, / Like snow on herbless peaks, fall flake by flake, / And cling to it; though under my wrath's night / It climbs the crags of life, step after step, / Which wound it, as ice wounds unsandalled feet, / It yet remains supreme o'er misery, / Aspiring, unrepressed, yet soon to fall: / Even now have I begotten a strange wonder, / That fatal child, the terror of the earth, / Who waits but till the destined hour arrive, / Bearing from Demogorgon's vacant throne / The dreadful might of ever-living limbs / Which clothed that awful spirit unbeheld, / To redescend, and trample out the spark. / Pour forth heaven's wine, Idaean Ganymede, / And let it fill the Daedal cups like fire, / And from the flower-inwoven soil divine / Ye all-triumphant harmonies arise, / As dew from earth under the twilight stars: / Drink! be the nectar circling through your veins / The soul of joy, ye ever-living Gods, / Till exultation burst in one wide voice / Like music from Elysian winds. / And thou / Ascend beside me, veiled in the light / Of the desire which makes thee one with me, / Thetis, bright image of eternity! / When thou didst cry, ‘Insufferable might! / God! Spare me! I sustain not the quick flames, / The penetrating presence; all my being, / Like him whom the Numidian seps did thaw / Into a dew with poison, is dissolved, / Sinking through its foundations: ' even then / Two mighty spirits, mingling, made a third / Mightier than either, which, unbodied now, / Between us floats, felt, although unbeheld, / Waiting the incarnation, which ascends, / (Hear ye the thunder of the fiery wheels / Griding the winds? ) from Demogorgon's throne. / Victory! victory! Feel'st thou not, O world, / The earthquake of his chariot thundering up / Olympus? / [THE CAR OF THE HOUR ARRIVES. / DEMOGORGON DESCENDS, AND MOVES TOWARDS THE THRONE OF JUPITER.] / Awful shape, what art thou? Speak!