Nay, but the end of my long wandering When shall it be? This too thou must declare.
PROMETHEUS
That it is better for thee not to know.
IO
Oh hide not from me what I have to suffer!
PROMETHEUS
Poor child! Poor child! I do not grudge the gift.
IO
Why then, art thou so slow to tell me all?
PROMETHEUS
It is not from unkindness; but I fear 'Twill break thy heart.
IO
Take thou no thought for me Where thinking thwarteth heart's desire!
PROMETHEUS
So keen To know thy sorrows! List I and thou shalt learn.
CHORUS
Not till thou hast indulged a wish of mine.
First let us hear the story of her grief And she herself shall tell the woeful tale.
After, thy wisdom shall impart to her The conflict yet to come.
PROMETHEUS
So be it, then.
And, Io, thus much courtesy thou owest These maidens being thine own father's kin.
For with a moving story of our woes To win a tear from weeping auditors In nought demeans the teller.
IO
I know not How fitly to refuse; and at your wish All ye desire to know I will in plain, Round terms set forth. And yet the telling of it Harrows my soul; this winter's tale of wrong, Of angry Gods and brute deformity, And how and why on me these horrors swooped.
Always there were dreams visiting by night The woman's chambers where I slept; and they With flattering words admonished and cajoled me, Saying, "O lucky one, so long a maid?
And what a match for thee if thou would'st wed Why, pretty, here is Zeus as hot as hot-Love-sick-to have thee! Such a bolt as thou Hast shot clean through his heart And he won't rest Till Cypris help him win thee! Lift not then, My daughter, a proud foot to spurn the bed Of Zeus: but get thee gone to meadow deep By Lerna's marsh, where are thy father's flocks And cattle-folds, that on the eye of Zeus May fall the balm that shall assuage desire."Such dreams oppressed me, troubling all my nights, Woe's me! till I plucked courage up to tell My father of these fears that walked in darkness.
And many times to Pytho and Dodona He sent his sacred missioners, to inquire How, or by deed or word, he might conform To the high will and pleasure of the Gods.
And they returned with slippery oracles, Nought plain, but all to baffle and perplex-And then at last to Inachus there raught A saying that flashed clear; the drift, that Must be put out from home and country, forced To be a wanderer at the ends of the earth, A thing devote and dedicate; and if I would not, there should fall a thunderbolt From Zeus, with blinding flash, and utterly Destroy my race. So spake the oracle Of Loxias. In sorrow he obeyed, And from beneath his roof drove forth his child Grieving as he grieved, and from house and home Bolted and barred me out. But the high hand Of Zeus bear hardly on the rein of fate.
And, instantly-even in a moment-mind And body suffered strange distortion. Horned Even as ye see me now, and with sharp bite Of gadfly pricked, with high-flung skip, stark-mad, I bounded, galloping headlong on, until I came to the sweet and of the stream Kerchneian, hard by Lerna's spring. And thither Argus, the giant herdsman, fierce and fell As a strong wine unmixed, with hateful cast Of all his cunning eyes upon the trail, Gave chase and tracked me down. And there he perished By violent and sudden doom surprised.
But I with darting sting-the scorpion whip Of angry Gods-am lashed from land to land.
Thou hast my story, and, if thou can'st tell What I have still to suffer, speak; but do not, Moved by compassion, with a lying tale Warm my cold heart; no sickness of the soul Is half so shameful as composed falsehoods.
CHORUS
Off! lost one! off! Horror, I cry!
Horror and misery Was this the traveller's tale I craved to hear?
Oh, that mine eyes should see A sight so ill to look upon! Ah me!
Sorrow, defilement, haunting fear, Fan my blood cold, Stabbed with a two-edged sting!
O Fate, Fate, Fate, tremblingly I behold The plight of Io, thine apportioning!
PROMETHEUS
Thou dost lament too soon, and art as one All fear. Refrain thyself till thou hast heard What's yet to be.
CHORUS
Speak and be our instructor:
There is a kind of balm to the sick soul In certain knowledge of the grief to come.
PROMETHEUS
Your former wish I lightly granted ye:
And ye have heard, even as ye desired, From this maid's lips the story of her sorrow.
Now hear the sequel, the ensuing woes The damsel must endure from Hera's hate.
And thou, O seed of Inachaean loins, Weigh well my words, that thou may'st understand Thy journey's end. First towards the rising sun Turn hence, and traverse fields that ne'er felt plough Until thou reach the country of the Scyths, A race of wanderers handling the long-bow That shoots afar, and having their habitations Under the open sky in wattled cotes That move on wheels. Go not thou nigh to them, But ever within sound of the breaking waver, Pass through their land. And on the left of the The Chalybes, workers in iron, dwell.
Beware of them, for they are savages, Who suffer not a stranger to come near.
And thou shalt reach the river Hybristes, Well named. Cross not, for it is ill to cross, Until thou come even unto Caucasus, Highest of mountains, where the foaming river Blows all its volume from the summit ridge That o'ertops all. And that star-neighboured ridge Thy feet must climb; and, following the road That runneth south, thou presently shall reach The Amazonian hosts that loathe the male, And shall one day remove from thence and found Themiscyra hard by Thermodon's stream, Where on the craggy Salmadessian coast Waves gnash their teeth, the maw of mariners And step-mother of ships. And they shall lead the Upon thy way, and with a right good will.
Then shalt thou come to the Cimmerian Isthmus, Even at the pass and portals of the sea, And leaving it behind thee, stout of heart, Cross o'er the channel of Maeotis' lake.
For ever famous among men shall be The story of thy crossing, and the strait Be called by a new name, the Bosporus, In memory of thee. Then having left Europa's soil behind thee thou shalt come To the main land of Asia. What think ye?
