(Who are to the shepherd voices, and nothing more):
"Our service hath ceased for you, shepherds!
We fade from your days and your dreams,
With the grace that was lithe as a leopard's,
The joy that was swift as a stream's!
To the musical reeds, and the grasses;
To the forest, the copse, and the dell;
To the mist and the rainbow that passes,
The vine, and the goblet, farewell!
Go, drink from the fountains that flow not!
Our songs and our whispers are dumb:--
But the thing ye are doing ye know not,
Nor dream of the thing that shall come."
In Scene IV., Deukalion, leading Pyrrha, passes into a cavern, the
last mouth of Hades left on the earth. Presently, the two emerge upon
"a shadowy, colorless landscape," and are greeted by a chorus of
ghosts, which very explicitly formulates that dreary impossibility of
growth which I pointed out in the last lecture as incident to the old
conception of personality.
"CHORUS OF GHOSTS.
"Away!
Ashes that once were fires,
Darkness that once was day,
Dead passions, dead desires,
Alone can enter here!
In rest there is no strife,
* * * * *
Like some forgotten star,
What first we were, we are,
The past is adamant:
The future will not grant
That, which in all its range
We pray for--change."
In spite of these warnings, they push on, find Charon at his old place
by the dark river, but are left to row themselves across, Charon
pleading age and long-unused joints; and, after many adventures, find
Prometheus, who very distinctly declares to Prince Deukalion and
Pyrrha their mission.
"Since thou adrift,"
says Prometheus,
"And that immortal woman by thy side
Floated above submerged barbarity
To anchor, weary, on the cloven mount,
Thou wast my representative."
Prince Deukalion--as perhaps many will remember--is the Noah of the
old Promethean cyclus, and the story ran, that the drowned world was
miraculously repeopled by him and Pyrrha. In the same speech
Prometheus introduces to Deukalion as a future helper his brother
Epimetheus--one of the most striking conceptions of the old fable, and
one of the most effective characters in Mr. Taylor's presentation. We
saw in the last lecture that Prometheus was called the Provident,--the
_pro-metheus_ being a looking forward. Precisely opposite is
Epimetheus, that is, he who looks _epi_--upon or backward. Perhaps it
is a fair contrast to regard Prometheus as a symbol of striving onward
or progress; and Epimetheus as a symbol of the historic instinct,--the
instinct which goes back and clears up the past as if it were the
future; which with continual effort reconstructs it; which keeps the
to-be in full view of what has been; which reconciles progress and
conservation. Accordingly, the old story reports Epimetheus as oldest
at his birth, and growing younger with the progress of the ages.
"Take one new comfort"
says Prometheus,
Epimetheus lives.
Though here beneath the shadow of the crags.
He seems to slumber, head on nerveless knees,
His life increases; oldest at his birth,
The ages heaped behind him shake the snow
From hoary locks, and slowly give him youth,
"Tis he shall be thy helper: Brother, rise!