Observations placeholder
Wadsworth Longfellow, Henry - Prometheus
Identifier
000200
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
The Greeks recognised what damage could be done by the giving of intellect - reason and memory as well as advanced powers of learning - to man and consequently allowing co-creation - and embedded the dilemma in the myth of Prometheus who steals fire [fire in this case being symbolically representative of all learnt functions] from the gods, but is punished by being sent to the underworld [earth is the underworld - the physical we are in is the underworld] where his liver is daily eaten by a vulture, but each day renews itself [reincarnation]. Shelley's poem/play on Prometheus is perhaps one of the best known covering this story, but long, so I have used Longellow's short but sweet version
A description of the experience
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow – from The Poems of Longfellow [printed about 1875]
from Prometheus
Of Prometheus, how undaunted
On Olympus' shining bastions
His audacious foot he planted
Myths are told and songs are chanted
Full of promptings and suggestions
Beautiful is the tradition
Of that flight through heavenly portals
The old classic superstition
Of the theft and the transmission
Of the Fire of the Immortals
First the deed of noble daring
Born of heavenward aspiration
Then the fire with mortals sharing
Then the vulture – the despairing
Cry of pain on crags Caucasian
…............
All the soul in rapt suspension
All the quivering palpitation
Chords of life in utmost tension
With the fervour of invention
With the rapture of Creation!
…....................
Ah Prometheus, heaven scaling
In such hours of exultation
Even the faintest heart, unquailing
Might behold the vulture sailing
Round the cloudy crags Caucasian
Though to all there is not given
Strength for such sublime endeavour
Thus to scale the walls of heaven,
And to leaven with fiery leaven
All the hearts of men forever