What land is this? What people here abid...

What land is this? What people here abide?

And who is he,

The prisoner of this windswept mountain-side?

Speak, speak to me;

Tell me, poor caitiff, how did'st thou transgress,

Thus buffeted?

Whither am I, half-dead with weariness,

For-wandered?

Ha! Ha!

Again the prick, the stab of gadfly-sting!

O earth, earth, hide,

The hollow shape-Argus-that evil thing-

The hundred-eyed-

Earth-born-herdsman! I see him yet; he stalks

With stealthy pace

And crafty watch not all my poor wit baulks!

From the deep place

Of earth that hath his bones he breaketh bound,

And from the pale

Of Death, the Underworld, a hell-sent hound

On the blood-trail,

Fasting and faint he drives me on before,

With spectral hand,

Along the windings of the wasteful shore,

The salt sea-sand!

List! List! the pipe! how drowzily it shrills!

A cricket-cry!

See! See! the wax-webbed reeds! Oh, to these ills

Ye Gods on high,

Ye blessed Gods, what bourne? O wandering feet

When will ye rest?

O Cronian child, wherein by aught unmeet

Have I transgressed

To be yoke-fellow with Calamity?

My mind unstrung,

A crack-brained lack-wit, frantic mad am I,

By gad-fly stung,

Thy scourge, that tarres me on with buzzing wingl

Plunge me in fire,

Hide me in earth, to deep-sea monsters fling,

But my desire-

Kneeling I pray-grudge not to grant, O King!

Too long a race

Stripped for the course have I run to and fro;

And still I chase

The vanishing goal, the end of all my woe;

Enough have I mourned!

Hear'st thou the lowing of the maid cow-horned?

Aeschylus. Prometheus Bound.

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