I have more leisure than I covet, here.
Chorus. If thou canst tell us aught that's left untold
Or loosely told of her most dreary flight,
Declare it straight! but if thou hast uttered all,
Grant us that latter grace for which we prayed,
Remembering how we prayed it.
Prometheus. She has heard
The fullness of the wandering of her woe—
But that she may have knowledge not to have heard
All vainly, I will tell what she endured,
Ere coming hither, and invoke the past
To prove my prescience true. And so—to leave
All crowd of jostling words, and pass at once
To the first step of thy course—when thou hadst gone
To those Molossian plains which sweep around
Dodona shouldering Heaven, whereat the fane
Of Zeus Thesprotian keepeth oracle,—
And, wonder past belief, the oaks do wave
Articulate adjurations—ay, and they
Did so salute thee in no phrase perplexed,
But clear with glory, noble wife of Zeus
Who shouldst be—(Here some sweetness took thy sense!)
Thou didst rush further onward,—stung along
The ocean-shore,—toward Rhea's mighty bay,—
And, tost back from it, wert tost to it again
In stormy evolution!—and, know well,
In coming time that hollow of the sea
Shall bear the name Ionian, and present
A monument of Io's passage through,
