PANDORA. 
How beautiful is this house!  The atmosphere
Breathes rest and comfort, and the many chambers
Seem full of welcomes.

EPIMETHEUS. 
They not only seem,
But truly are.  This dwelling and its master
Belong to thee.

PANDORA. 
Here let me stay forever! 
There is a spell upon me.

EPIMETHEUS. 
Thou thyself
Art the enchantress, and I feel thy power
Envelop me, and wrap my soul and sense
In an Elysian dream.

PANDORA,
O, let me stay. 
How beautiful are all things round about me,
Multiplied by the mirrors on the walls! 
What treasures hast thou here!  Yon oaken chest,
Carven with figures and embossed with gold,
Is wonderful to look upon!  What choice
And precious things dost thou keep hidden in it?

EPIMETHEUS. 
I know not.  ’T is a mystery.

PANDORA. 
Hast thou never
Lifted the lid?

EPIMETHEUS. 
The oracle forbids. 
Safely concealed there from all mortal eyes
Forever sleeps the secret of the Gods. 
Seek not to know what they have hidden from thee,
Till they themselves reveal it.

PANDORA. 
As thou wilt.

EPIMETHEUS. 
Let us go forth from this mysterious place. 
The garden walks are pleasant at this hour;
The nightingales among the sheltering boughs
Of populous and many-nested trees
Shall teach me how to woo thee, and shall tell me
By what resistless charms or incantations
They won their mates.

PANDORA. 
Thou dost not need a teacher.

(They go out.)

CHORUS OF THE EUMENIDES. 
What the Immortals
Confide to thy keeping,
Tell unto no man;
Waking or sleeping,
Closed be thy portals
To friend as to foeman.

Silence conceals it;
The word that is spoken
Betrays and reveals it;
By breath or by token
The charm may be broken.

With shafts of their splendors
The Gods unforgiving
Pursue the offenders,
The dead and the living! 
Fortune forsakes them,
Nor earth shall abide them,
Nor Tartarus hide them;
Swift wrath overtakes them!

With useless endeavor,
Forever, forever,
Is Sisyphus rolling
His stone up the mountain! 
Immersed in the fountain,
Tantalus tastes not
The water that wastes not! 
Through ages increasing
The pangs that afflict him,
With motion unceasing
The wheel of Ixion
Shall torture its victim!

VI

IN THE GARDEN

EPIMETHEUS. 
Yon snow-white cloud that sails sublime in ether
Is but the sovereign Zeus, who like a swan
Flies to fair-ankled Leda!

PANDORA. 
Or perchance
Ixion’s cloud, the shadowy shape of Hera,
That bore the Centaurs.

EPIMETHEUS. 
The divine and human.

CHORUS OF BIRDS. 
Gently swaying to and fro,
Rocked by all the winds that blow,
Bright with sunshine from above
Dark with shadow from below,
Beak to beak and breast to breast
In the cradle of their nest,
Lie the fledglings of our love.