Miscellaneous Sonnets: Prometheus Unbound

I, who lie warming here by your good fire,
Was once Prometheus and elsewhere have lain;
Ah, still in dreams they come,--the sudden chain,
The swooping birds, the silence, the desire
Of pitying, powerless eyes, the night, and higher
The keen stars; (if you please I fill again
The bowl, Silenus)--; yet ’twas common pain
Their beaks’ mad rooting; O, but they would tire,
And one go circling o’er the misty vast
On great, free wings, and one sit, head out-bent,
Poised for the plunge; then ’twas I crushed the cry
“Zeus, Zeus, I kiss your feet, and learn at last
The baseness of this crude self-government
Matched with glad impulse and blind liberty.”