The synthesis of letters, and, beside,
The artificer of all things, Memory,
That sweet Muse-Mother. I was first to yoke
The servile beasts in couples, carrying
An heirdom of man's burdens on their backs.
I joined to chariots steeds that love the bit
They clamp at--the chief pomp of golden ease.
And none but I originated ships,
The seaman's chariots wandering on the brine,
With linen wings. And I--oh miserable!--
Who did devise for mortals all these arts,
Have no device left now to save myself
From the woe I suffer.

_Chorus._ Most unseemly woe
Thou sufferest, and dost stagger from the sense
Bewildered! like a bad leech falling sick,
Thou art faint at soul, and canst not find the drugs
Required to save thyself.

_Prometheus._ Hearken the rest,
And marvel further, what more arts and means
I did invent, this greatest: if a man
Fell sick there was no cure, nor esculent,
Nor chrism, nor liquid, but for lack of drugs
Men pined and wasted, till I showed them all
Those mixtures of emollient remedies,
Whereby they might be rescued from disease,
I fixed the various rules of mantic art,
Discerned the vision from the common dream,
Instructed them in vocal auguries,
Hard to interpret, and defined as plain
The wayside omens--flights of crook-clawed birds--
Showed which are, by their nature, fortunate,
And which not so, and what the food of each,
And what the hates, affections, social needs,
Of all to one another,--taught what sign
Of visceral lightness, colored to a shade,
May charm the genial gods, and what fair spots
Commend the lung and liver. Burning so
The limbs encased in fat, and the long chine,
I led my mortals on to an art abstruse,
And cleared their eyes to the image in the fire,
Erst filmed in dark. Enough said now of this:
F