George Gordon, Lord Byron

from, Prometheus

Titan! to whose immortal eyes
        The sufferings of mortality,
        Seen in their sad reality,
Were not as things that gods despise;
What was thy pity's recompense?
A silent suffering, and intense;
The rock, the vulture, and the chain,
All that the proud can feel of pain...

...

Thy godlike crime was to be kind,
        To ren with thy precepts less
        The sum of human wretchedness,
And strengthen man with his own mind;
But bafled as thou wert from high,
Still in thy patient energy,
In the endurance and repulse
        Of thine impenetrable spirit,
Which earth and heaven could not convulse,
        A mighty lesson we inherit:
Thou art a symbol and a sign
        To mortals of their fate and force;
Like thee, man is in part divine,
        A troubled stream from a pure source...