MERCURY
  Yet pause, and plunge
  Into Eternity, where recorded time,
  Even all that we imagine, age on age,
  Seems but a point, and the reluctant mind
  Flags wearily in its unending flight,
  Till it sink, dizzy, blind, lot, shelterless;
  Perchance it has not numbered the slow years
  Which thou must spend in torture, unreprieved?

PROMETHEUS
  Perchance no thought can count them, yet they pass.

MERCURY
  If thou mightst dwell among the Gods the while,
  Lapped in voluptuous joy?

PROMETHEUS
  I would not quit
  This bleak ravine, these unrepentant pains.

MERCURY
  Alas! I wonder at, yet pity thee.

PROMETHEUS
  Pity the self-despising slaves of Heaven,
  Not me, within whose mind sits peace serene,
  As light in the sun, throned. How vain is talk!
  Call up the fiends.

IONE
  Oh, sister, look! White fire
  Has cloven to the roots yon huge snow-loaded cedar;
  How fearfully God's thunder howls behind!

MERCURY
  I must obey his words and thine. Alas!
  Most heavily remorse hangs at my heart!

PANTHEA