Lays and Legends of Ancient Greece Author:John Stuart Blackie Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: PROMETHEUS.' '' Haiaa; r'tyjia; pporofffiv tx Blow blustering winds ; loud thunders roll! Swift lightnings rend the fervid pole With frequent flash ! his h... more »urtling hail Let Jove down-fling ! hoarse Neptune flail The stubborn rock, and give free reins To his dark steeds with foamy manes That paw the strand!—such wrathful fray Touches not me, who, even as they, Immortal tread this lowly sod, Born of the gods a god. Jove rules above ; Fate willed it so. 'Tis well; Prometheus rules below. Their gusty game let wild winds play, And clouds on clouds in thick array Muster dark armies in the sky ; Be mine a harsher trade to ply, This solid Earth, this rocky frame To mould, to conquer, and to tome ; And to achieve the toilsome plan, My workman shall be Max. The Earth is young. Even with these eyes I saw the molten mountains rise From out the seething deep, while Earth Shook at the portent of their birth. I saw from out the primal mud The reptiles crawl of dull cold blood, While winged lizards with broad stare, Peered through the raw and misty air. Where then was Cretan Jove ? where then This king of gods and men ? When naked from his mother Earth Weak and defenceless, man crept forth, And on mis-tempered solitude Of unploughed field, and unclipt wood Gazed rudely; when with brutes he fed On acorns ; and his stony bed In dark unwholesome caverns found ; No skill was then to till the ground, No help came then from him above This tyrannous-blustering Jove. The Earth is young. Her latest birth, This weakling man, my craft shall girth With cunning strength. Him I will take And in stern arts my scholar make. This smoking reed, in which I hold The empyrean spark, shall mould Hock and hard steel to use of man ; He shall be as a god to plan And forge all things to his desire By ...« less