Prometheus Unbound

“PROMETHEUS. From thine unenvied throne, O, Mighty God!

Almighty, had I deigned to share the shame

Of thine ill tyranny, and hung not here

Nailed to this wall of eagle-baffling mountain,

Black, wintry, dead, unmeasured; without herb,

Insect, or beast, or shape or sound of life.

Ah me! alas, pain, pain ever, for ever!”

In these opening lines written in blank verse, Prometheus laments the suffering he has endured. Calling Jupiter, the god of gods, “Almighty” evokes Christian rather than Greek religious tradition. The association of the Christian God with “ill tyranny” is indicative of Shelley’s stance against organized religion. Prometheus here is a Job-like figure, a prophet whose suffering will lead to a greater revelation.

“FOURTH VOICE. And we shrank back: for dreams of ruin

To frozen caves our flight pursuing

Made us keep silence—thus—and thus—

Though silence is a hell to us.”

The rhyming passages in Prometheus Unbound are representative of song. Here, a chorus of voices from the ether sings in AABB rhyme about how the tyrannical Jupiter has forced them to “keep silence.” This is symbolic of Shelley’s political argument that monarchical rulers enforce censorship, repression that he hyperbolizes as “a hell.”

“PHANTASM OF JUPITER. Why have the secret

powers of this strange world

Driven me, a frail and empty phantom, hither

On direst storms?”

The Phantasm of Jupiter, “a frail and empty phantom” contrasts sharply with the presumed strength and power of the deity himself. He is called forth by Prometheus’s “secret powers,” foreshadowing that as representative of knowledge, Prometheus heralds Jupiter’s fall.