“Prometheus” Summary

“Prometheus” Themes

• 

  Tyranny, Rebellion, and Empowerment

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• 

  Sacrifice and Suffering

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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “Prometheus”

• Lines 1-4

  Titan! to whose immortal eyes 
           The sufferings of mortality, 
           Seen in their sad reality, 
  Were not as things that gods despise; 

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 5-10

  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, 

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 11-14

   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. 

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 15-17

  Titan! to thee the strife was given 
           Between the suffering and the will, 
           Which torture where they cannot kill; 

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 18-23

  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: 

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 23-28

  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; 

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 29-34

  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. 

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 35-38

  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; 

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 39-44

  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: 

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 45-48

  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; 

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 49-54

  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—

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 54-59

  —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. 

  

  

  

  

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“Prometheus” Symbols

• 

  The Vulture

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• 

  Prometheus

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“Prometheus” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language

• Apostrophe

  

  

  

  

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• End-Stopped Line

  

  

  

  

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• Enjambment

  

  

  

  

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• Aporia

  

  

  

  

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• Allusion

  

  

  

  

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• Alliteration

  

  

  

  

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• Sibilance

  

  

  

  

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• Parallelism

  

  

  

  

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• Caesura

  

  

  

  

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“Prometheus” Vocabulary

Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.

• Prometheus
• Titan
• Recompense
• The rock, the vulture, and the chain
• Lest
• inexorable
• Boon
• The Thunderer
• Rack
• Dissembled
• Precepts
• Funereal
• Sense
• Descry
• Concenter'd

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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Prometheus”

• Form

• Meter

• Rhyme Scheme

“Prometheus” Speaker

“Prometheus” Setting

Literary and Historical Context of “Prometheus”

More “Prometheus” Resources

• External Resources

  • Prometheus Bound — The full text of the Greek tragedy which inspired Byron to write "Prometheus."

  • The Prisoner of Chillon and Other Poems — A digitized copy of the first edition of The Prisoner of Chillon and Other Poems, the volume in which "Prometheus" was first published.

  • Romanticism — An overview of the Romantic movement. 

  • The Poem Out Loud — Hear the poem read by Jordan Harling. 

  • Selected Letters — A selection of Byron's correspondence.

  • Byron's Life and Poems — Biographical resources from the Poetry Foundation.

• LitCharts on Other Poems by Lord Byron

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  • She Walks in Beauty

  • So We'll Go No More a Roving

  • The Destruction of Sennacherib

  • When We Two Parted