20

Between the suffering and the wili, Which torture where they cannot kill; And the inexorable Heaven, And the deaf tyranny of Fate, The ruling principle of Hate, Which for its pleasure doth create The things it may annihilate, Refused thee even the boon to die: The wretched gift eternity Was thine and thou hast borne it well. 25 All that the Thunderer wrung from thee Was but the menace which flung back On him the torments of thy rack The fate thou didst so well foresee, But would not to appease him tell: And in thy silence was his sentence, And in his soul a vain repentance, And evil dread so ill dissembled, That in his hand the lightnings trembled.

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,

30

35

40

Of the volcanoes, and their mountaintorch;

A fearful hope was all the world contained;

Forests were set on fire but hour by hour They fell and faded

trunks

and the crackling

20

Extinguished with a crash and all was

black.

The brows of men by the despairing light

50

need

Of aid from them - She was the Uni

verse.

Lured their lank jaws; himself sought out no food,

SECOND SPIRIT