model, we can only say that we hold these two poems distinct as the East is from the West, only between them springs boldly the blue arch of a universal humanity that suffered and enjoyed as now when the earth was young.  But it must not be forgotten that the Greek lived when with men was born a boundless sympathy for, and pride in, their gods; that what are now to us but the wonderful dreams of a primeval poesy, shadowing mighty truths, were to the ancients living influences that molded their lives.  And if it be urged that already faith must have grown dim in so great a mind as that of AEschylus, then indeed we wonder not at the marvels of magnificent despair, the death-in-life of a godlike suffering which reach in his ‘Prometheus Chained’ a height of sublimity we may scarcely hope to see approached in modern times, for the mind that created it stood in a light shallop, drifting away from the old landmarks of a worn-out creed into the dark, unknown night of doubt and speculation.  But the Prometheus of Lowell is not the god-man writhing in an awful conflict with his slavery but begun.  His heart

  ’For ages hath been empty of all joy,
  Except to brood upon its silent hope,
  As o’er its hope of day the sky doth now.’

The defiant pride and scornful dignity that raised him above our sympathy in AEschylus, are tempered by Lowell with a human longing for comfort that, in its mighty woe, might melt adamant, or draw from the watchful heavens

  ’Mild-eyed Astarte, his best comforter,
  With her pale smile of sad benignity.’

Chained to the rock in utter loneliness he lies.  Long since the ’crisped smiles’ of the waves and the ‘swift-winged winds’ had ceased to listen to his call.

  ’Year after year will pass away and seem
  To me, in mine eternal agony,
  But as the shadows of dark summer clouds,
  Which I have watched so often darkening o’er
  The vast Sarmatian plain, league-wide at first,
  But, with still swiftness lessening on and on,
  Till cloud and shadow meet and mingle where
  The gray horizon fades into the sky,
  Far, far to northward.  Yes, for ages yet
  Must I lie here upon my altar huge,
  A sacrifice for man.’

‘A sacrifice for man.’  The theme has won a high significance with time.  One more passage, and we are done—­a passage which rivals Shakspeare in its startling vividness, as it whispers with awful power close to our ears.  All night had the prisoned god heard voices,—­

’Deeper yet
The deep, low breathings of the silence grew

* * * * *

          And then toward me came

A shape as of a woman; very pale
It was, and calm; its cold eyes did not move,
And mine moved not, but only stared on them. 
Their fixed awe went through my brain like ice;
A skeleton hand seemed clutching at my heart,
And a sharp chill, as if a dank night-fog