Text of the Poem

Titan! to whose immortal eyes
          The sufferings of mortality,
          Seen in their sad reality,
Were not as things that gods despise;
What was thy pity’s recompense?
A silent suffering, and intense;
The rock, the vulture, and the chain,
All that the proud can feel of pain,
The agony they do not show,
The suffocating sense of woe,
          Which speaks but in its loneliness,
And then is jealous lest the sky
Should have a listener, nor will sigh
          Until its voice is echoless.

Titan! to thee the strife was given
          Between the suffering and the will,
          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,
Refus’d thee even the boon to die:
The wretched gift Eternity
Was thine—and thou hast borne it well.
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,
Which Earth and Heaven could not convulse,
          A mighty lesson we inherit:
Thou art a symbol and a sign
          To Mortals of their fate and force;
Like thee, Man is in part divine,
          A troubled stream from a pure source;
And Man in portions can foresee
His own funereal destiny;
His wretchedness, and his resistance,
And his sad unallied existence:
To which his Spirit may oppose
Itself—and equal to all woes,
          And a firm will, and a deep sense,
Which even in torture can descry
          Its own concenter’d recompense,
Triumphant where it dares defy,
And making Death a Victory.

Footnotes

  1. This line is another example of personification.

    — Allegra Keys, Owl Eyes Editor
  2. Despite Prometheus being thwarted by the gods, Byron commends his patient endurance and indomitable spirit, suggesting that his resistance becomes a powerful lesson for humanity

    — Allegra Keys, Owl Eyes Editor
  3. Prometheus is denied the release of death, condemned to endure eternity. Byron explores the irony of eternity being referred to as a "wretched gift," emphasizing the relentless nature of his punishment.

    — Allegra Keys, Owl Eyes Editor
  4. The rock, vulture, and chain serve as metaphors for Prometheus's suffering, representing the physical and emotional weight of his punishment.

    — Allegra Keys, Owl Eyes Editor
  5. Alliteration is the repetition of consonant sounds at the beginning of closely positioned words. Byron uses alliteration to create a rhythmic and musical quality in the poem, emphasizing certain phrases and contributing to the overall flow

    — Allegra Keys, Owl Eyes Editor
  6. Heaven is personified as having a ruling principle of Hate, creating a vivid image of a malicious force.

    — Allegra Keys, Owl Eyes Editor
  7. The poem begins by addressing Prometheus, the Titan from Greek mythology who defied Zeus to benefit humanity. The immortal eyes of Prometheus are contrasted with the sufferings of mortals, suggesting his empathy for human pain

    — Allegra Keys, Owl Eyes Editor