A soft desire, a breathing thought of love. Say, would thy star like Merope's grow Art the enchantress, and I feel thy dim If thou shouldst wed beneath thee? power Envelop me, and wrap my soul and sense Thou thyself Between my seeing thee and loving thee. EPIMETHEUS. O, what a telltale face thou hast ! Again I know not. "T is a mystery. PANDORA. They do but answer to the love in thine, Yet secretly I wonder thou shouldst Lifted the lid? love me. PANDORA. Hast thou never Let us go forth from this mysterious place. The garden walks are pleasant at this hour; The nightingales among the sheltering boughs Of populous and many-nested trees By what resistless charms or incantations PANDORA. Thou dost not need a teacher. They go out. CHORUS OF THE EUMENIDES. What the Immortals Silence conceals it; With shafts of their splendors With useless endeavor, VI. IN THE GARDEN. EPIMETHEUS. YON Snow-white cloud that sails sublime in ether EPIMETHEUS. Whence knowest thou these stories? PANDORA. Hermes taught me ; Is but the sovereign Zeus, who like a He told me all the history of the Gods. And when he plays upon it to the shepherds PROMETHEUS. They pity him, so mournful is the sound. Whom the Gods would destroy they first Be thou not coy and cold as Syrinx was. make mad. PROMETHEUS, entering. Who was it fled from here? I saw a shape Flitting among the trees. EPIMETHEUS. It was Pandora. PROMETHEUS. O Epimetheus! Is it then in vain Pass and repass by the gates Of their inaccessible fastness; Ever unmoved they stand, Solemn, eternal, and proud. VOICES OF THE WATERS. Flooded by rain and snow In their inexhaustible sources, Swollen by affluent streams Hurrying onward and hurled Headlong over the crags, The impetuous water-courses, Rush and roar and plunge Down to the nethermost world. Say, have the solid rocks VOICES OF THE WINDS. High on their turreted cliffs That bolts of thunder have shattered, Pale with the pallor of death. Onward the hurricane rides, And even the lions and leopards, VOICES OF THE FOREST. Guarding the mountains around Planted firm on the rock, CHORUS OF OREADES. These are the Voices Three Of winds and forests and fountains, These are the Voices Three, VII. THE HOUSE OF EPIMETHEUS. PANDORA. LEFT to myself I wander as I will, And as my fancy leads me, through this house, Nor could I ask a dwelling more complete Were indeed the Goddess that he deems me. No mansion of Olympus, framed to be As if impelled by powers invisible knew Forbids. Ah me! The secret then is safe. So would it be if it were in my keeping. A crowd of shadowy faces from the mir rors That line these walls are watching me. A hundred times the act Would be repeated, and the secret seen By twice a hundred incorporeal eyes. She walks to the other side of the hall. My feet are weary, wandering to and fro, My eyes with seeing and my heart with waiting. I will lie here and rest till he returns, Who is my dawn, my day, my Helios. Throws herself upon a couch, and falls asleep. ZEPHYRUS. Come from thy caverns dark and deep, Set all thy silent sentinels But open wide the Gate of Horn, CHORUS OF DREAMS FROM THE IVORY GATE. Ye sentinels of sleep, Your drowsy watch before the Ivory Ye Though closed the portal seems, The airy feet of dreams cannot thus in walls incarcerate. We phantoms are and dreams What there lies hidden! But the oracle As ministers of the infernal powers; |