ECHO. 
Love! love!

EPIMETHEUS. 
Hark! listen!  Hear how sweetly overhead
The feathered flute-players pipe their songs of love,
And echo answers, love and only love.

CHORUS OF BIRDS. 
Every flutter of the wing,
Every note of song we sing,
Every murmur, every tone,
Is of love and love alone.

ECHO. 
Love alone!

EPIMETHEUS. 
Who would not love, if loving she might be
Changed like Callisto to a star in heaven?

PANDORA. 
Ah, who would love, if loving she might be
Like Semele consumed and burnt to ashes?

EPIMETHEUS. 
Whence knowest thou these stories?

PANDORA. 
Hermes taught me;
He told me all the history of the Gods.

CHORUS OF REEDS. 
Evermore a sound shall be
In the reeds of Arcady,
Evermore a low lament
Of unrest and discontent,
As the story is retold
Of the nymph so coy and cold,
Who with frightened feet outran
The pursuing steps of Pan.

EPIMETHEUS. 
The pipe of Pan out of these reeds is made,
And when he plays upon it to the shepherds
They pity him, so mournful is the sound. 
Be thou not coy and cold as Syrinx was.

PANDORA. 
Nor thou as Pan be rude and mannerless.

PROMETHEUS (without). 
Ho!  Epimetheus!

EPIMETHEUS. 
’T is my brother’s voice;
A sound unwelcome and inopportune
As was the braying of Silenus’ ass,
Once heard in Cybele’s garden.

PANDORA. 
Let me go. 
I would not be found here.  I would not see him.

(She escapes among the trees.)

CHORUS OF DRYADES. 
Haste and hide thee,
Ere too late,
In these thickets intricate;
Lest Prometheus
See and chide thee,
Lest some hurt
Or harm betide thee,
Haste and hide thee!

PROMETHEUS (entering.)
Who was it fled from here?  I saw a shape
Flitting among the trees.

EPIMETHEUS. 
It was Pandora.

PROMETHEUS. 
O Epimetheus!  Is it then in vain
That I have warned thee?  Let me now implore. 
Thou harborest in thy house a dangerous guest.

EPIMETHEUS. 
Whom the Gods love they honor with such guests.

PROMETHEUS. 
Whom the Gods would destroy they first make mad.

EPIMETHEUS. 
Shall I refuse the gifts they send to me?

PROMETHEUS. 
Reject all gifts that come from higher powers.

EPIMETHEUS. 
Such gifts as this are not to be rejected.

PROMETHEUS. 
Make not thyself the slave of any woman.

EPIMETHEUS. 
Make not thyself the judge of any man.

PROMETHEUS. 
I judge thee not; for thou art more than man;
Thou art descended from Titanic race,
And hast a Titan’s strength, and faculties
That make thee godlike; and thou sittest here
Like Heracles spinning Omphale’s flax,
And beaten with her sandals.