Prometheus monologue — Four Plays of Aeschylus

I will not set myself to thwart your will Withholding aught of what ye crave to know. First to thee, Io, will I tell and trace Thy scared circuitous wandering mark it well, Deep in retentive tablets of the soul. When thou hast overpast the ferry’s flow That sunders continent from continent, Straight to the eastward and the flaming face Of dawn, and highways trodden by the sun, Pass, till thou come unto the windy land Of daughters born to Boreas: beware Lest the strong spirit of the stormy blast Snatch thee aloft, and sweep thee to the void, On wings of raving wintry hurricane! Wend by the noisy tumult of the wave, Until thou reach the Gorgon-haunted plains Beside Cisthene. In that solitude Dwell Phorcys’ daughters, beldames worn with time, Three, each swan-shapen, single-toothed, and all Peering thro’ shared endowment of one eye; Never on them doth the sun shed his rays, Never falls radiance of the midnight moon. But, hard by these, their sisters, clad with wings, Serpentine-curled, dwell, loathed of mortal men,— The Gorgons!—he of men who looks on them Shall gasp away his life. Of such fell guard I bid thee to beware. Now, mark my words When I another sight of terror tell— Beware the Gryphon pack, the hounds of Zeus, As keen of fang as silent of their tongues! Beware the one-eyed Arimaspian band That tramp on horse-hoofs, dwelling by the ford Of Pluto and the stream that flows with gold: Keep thou aloof from these. To the world’s end Thou comest at the last, the dark-faced tribe That dwell beside the sources of the sun, Where springs the river, Aethiopian named. Make thou thy way along his bank, until Thou come unto the mighty downward slope Where from the overland of Bybline hills Nile pours his hallowed earth-refreshing wave. He by his course shall guide thee to the realm Named from himself, three-angled, water-girt; There, Io, at the last, hath Fate ordained, For thee and for thy race, the charge to found, Far from thy native shore, a new abode. Lo, I have said: if aught hereof appear Hard to thy sense and inarticulate, Question me o’er again, and soothly learn— God wot, I have too much of leisure here!