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From "Prometheus Unbound"

Thrones, altars, judgement-seats and prisons; wherein

And beside which, by wretched men were borne

Sceptres, tiaras, swords and chains, and tomes

Of reasoned wrong, glozed on by ignorance,

Were like those monstrous and barbaric shapes,

The ghosts of a no-more-remembered fame,

Which from their unworn obelisks look forth

In triumph o'er the palaces and tombs

Of those who were their conquerors, mouldering round.

These imaged to the pride of kings and priests

A dark yet mighty faith, a power as wide

As is the world it wasted, and are now

But an astonishment; even so the tools

And emblems of its last captivity,

Amid the dwellings of the peopled earth

Stand, not o'erthrown, but unregarded now.

And those foul shapes, abhorred by God and man -

Which under many a name and many a form

Strange, savage, ghastly, dark and execrable,

Were Jupiter, the tyrant of the world;

And which the nations, panic-stricken, served

With blood, and hearts broken by long hope, and love

Dragged to his altars soiled and garlandless,

And slain amid men's unreclaiming tears,

Flattering the thing they feared, which fear was hate-

Frown, mouldering fast, o'er their abandoned shrines.

The painted- veil; by those who were, called life,

Which mimicked, as with colours idly-spread,

All men believed or hoped, is torn aside -

The loathsome mask has fallen, the man remains

Sceptreless,-free, uncircumscribed - but man:

Equal, unclassed,-tribeless and nationless,

Exempt from awe, worship, degree, - the king

Over himself; just, gentle, wise - but man:

Passionless? no - yet free from guilt or pain,

Which were, for his will made or suffered them,

Nor yet exempt, though ruling them like slaves,

From chance, and death and mutability,

The clogs of that which else might oversoar

The loftiest star of unascended heaven,

Pinnacled dim in the intense inane.

1820.