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.
The poem brings awareness and point of view from those who struggle in times of tyranny and abuses of power. There is the rebellious part which is against the authorities and the higher ups. This is inclusive to the hierarchy of royalty and power. Prometheus is a heroic character who is willing to sacrifice himself for the great or good for others. This shows his selflessness and how yes it is self sacrifice, but in the pace for others and their ability to live fairly and happily. This fights against the abuse of power that caused the rebellious actions. You can be seen as heroic when you sacrifice yourself for others and the better of the world and power. The title is significant because it shows the main character and the one who sacrificed himself for others and is seen as a hero. He is seen as immortal through legacy and we see this actually happening because prometheus is not a motif and allusion in many other pieces of art and writing. It is so significant in the world today and in many poems and writings that it shows the legacy really does live on even when sacrificing your own life for others and to show the humane rebellion against authority. It encourages people to not fall into the path of everyone else and have ambitions. Be who you think you are and do what you think is right, even if that means rebelling and maybe having to sacrifice yourself for others. The repetition of titans at the beginning of the stanzas shows the importance and how the message really wants to be heard and the story of prometheus. The authors use of diction and how he words things in the beginning ad depressing and more saddened compared to how in the end its it more rejoyed and showing a piece of gratitude and victory even though there is death shows that the perspective on the death of prometheus is not as bad as it could be because it was for a reason. The author listed off reasons and everything that was so wrong in the world then ended with the solution that prometheus had to create. Prometheus willing to sacrifice his own life for others and the rebellion against tyranny and the authority shows great respect and willpower from everyone else and is ultimately seen as a victory because of the purpose it serves. The poem is seen to rhyme and I think it is created this way to make it fast and easy to roll off the tongue, but also using very important words that shows what is happening and the pain of the people and the abuse of power from the hierarchy. I can’t really relate to this poem as well as I have to other poetry blogs I’ve written but I do think that there are little sacrifices that I make that make a big difference. For example I will give up what I want sometimes if that means it will make someone else happy, so if someone wants to do one thing and I don’t necessarily want to go or do that thing I will try to enjoy it as much as possible. An example of this would be when I go to sporting events that I may not regularly watch, or doing something with my friends that I don’t normally do. I think that making little sacrifices (not super bigs ones) sometimes make me who i am because i can be a people pleaser, however i do them so others can feel heard and have someone to do things with.I think it is important to not always think about ourselves but also other people in some situations.
