拜伦《普罗米修斯》
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 suffocating sense of woe,10
Which speaks but in its loneliness,
And then is jealous lest the sky
Should have a listener, nor will sigh
Titan! to thee the strife was given
Between the suffering and the will,
Which torture where they cannot kill;
The ruling principle of Hate,20
Which for its pleasure doth create
Refused thee even the boon to die:
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;30
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,40
Which Earth and Heaven could not convulse,
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 wretchedness, and his resistance,
And his sad unallied existence:
To which his Spirit may oppose
And a firm will, and a deep sense,
Which even in torture can descry
Its own concentered recompense,
Triumphant where it dares defy,
[First published, Prisoner of Chillon, etc., 1816.]
相关阅读：
拜伦诗选