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Arthur's avatar

There's a good long poem on the Prometheus by Samuel Porter Putnam you may like!

Metrical Poet's avatar

Thanks — this one was totally unknown to me. I know the well-known Prometheus poems: Aeschylus, Byron, Goethe, Shelley.

Arthur's avatar

Aeschylus is of course the best, but Putnam's is very good though takes a lot of liberties to reflect the 1800s proto-atheist views on the myth.

Donal McKernan's avatar

Only at times, the curtain of the pupils

lifts, quietly—. An image enters in,

rushes down through the tensed, arrested muscles,

plunges into the heart and is gone.

- Rainer Maria Rilke

William  Marsh's avatar

Prometheus is an agent of evolution, but wants to pick the winners, which he can't. And so he grieves. Always the same with new things.

Metrical Poet's avatar

I’m used to the myth with humanist or romantic inflections — Prometheus gives fire/knowledge out of pity or sympathy for humankind.