Prometheus

by lord byron

in this poem, the speaker commends prometheus for his silent suffering as he endures the cruel punishment inflicted on him by zeus, king of the greek gods. prometheus defied zeus by humankind by gifting them with his knowledge and kindness, as well as the ability to make fire. zeus was willing to pardon prometheus if only he revealed his prophesy about zeus’s fate. but prometheus refused for many years. byron portrays prometheus as a symbol of humankind, part divine and part mortal, destined to suffer in life, but to learn and to triumph from that suffering.

titan! to whose immortal eyes

the sufferings of mortality,

seen in their sad reality,

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 agony they do not show,

the suffocating sense of woe,

which speaks but in its loneliness,

and then is jealous lest the sky

should have a listener, nor will sigh

until its voice is echoless.

titan! to thee the strife was given

between the suffering and the will,

which torture where they cannot kill;

and the inexorable heaven,

and the deaf tyranny of fate,

the ruling principle of hate,

which for its pleasure doth create

the things it may annihilate,

refus'd thee even the boon to die:

the wretched gift eternity

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;

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,

in the endurance, and repulse

of thine impenetrable spirit,

which earth and heaven could not convulse,

a mighty lesson we inherit:

thou art a symbol and a sign

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 own funereal destiny;

his wretchedness, and his resistance,

and his sad unallied existence:

to which his spirit may oppose

itself—and equal to all woes,

and a firm will, and a deep sense,

which even in torture can descry

its own concenter'd recompense,

triumphant where it dares defy,

and making death a victory.

how does byron’s poem show the influence of the myth of prometheus?

1)both texts emphasize the strength of mortals over that of the gods.

2) both texts explain how the reconciliation of zeus and prometheus benefited humankind.

3)both texts develop the idea that prometheus is a martyr.

4)both texts give the idea that there is a limit to the suffering an individual can endure.