Nor was it any one but I that found
Sea-crossing, canvas-winged cars of ships:
Such rare designs inventing (wretched me!)
For mortal men, I yet have no resource
By which to free myself from this my woe."
He had taught them, too, the arts of healing and of prophecy, and showed them many ways of augury; disclosed to them the earth's stores of metal, and taught them their use; in short, he says, from Forethought came all arts to mortals.
This speech has been closely imitated by Shelley, who has amplified it with many beautiful thoughts; but it has lost in the change its stern simplicity, and gained instead a wonderful richness and voluptuous splendour. Still it explains our author so well that it will not be out of place to subjoin the greater part of it:
"Prometheus saw, and waked the legioned hopes
Which sleep within folded Elysian flowers,
Nepenthe, Moly, Amaranth, fadeless blooms,
That they might hide with thin and rainbow wings
The shape of Death; and Love he sent to bind
The disunited tendrils of that vine
Which bears the wine of life, the human heart;
And he tamed fire, which, like some beast of prey,
Most terrible but lovely, played beneath
The frown of man; and tortured to his will
Iron and gold, the slaves and signs of power,
And gems and poisons, and all subtlest forms
Hidden beneath the mountains and the waves.
He gave man speech, and speech created thought,
Which is the measure of the universe;
And Science struck the thrones of earth and heaven,
