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Fire Giver

Achilles

Announced Awakened by tears

Behind

Behold Beyond mankind’s fears

Chaos

Cerberus Chimaera or chance

Darkness

Defied Demeter’s people dance

Evoking Evading Elysium’s fall

Forever

Foreboding Fallow fields from firewall

Gift

Glowing Glitter of flames

Harboring

Harbinger Hallowed yet chained

Images

Illusions Incinerated by fire

Justice

Jaded Jeremiad pyre

Keen

Keeper Kept silent with time

Liminal

Liege Liaison of mind

Material

Manifested Marked by defeat

Nothing

Nowhere Never ending but complete

Observe

Oblivion Ode to the godless mass

Prepare

Prometheus’s Punishment last

Searchers

Smolder Smother at the gates

Thief

Titan Tartarus awaits

Tattered

Taunted Taxing strength with strain

Seer

Severely Stricken with pain

Powerful

Patron Punished like prey

Outcast

Of Olympus tortured each day

Now

Necessity Nearly falls into plan

Measureless

Magnitude Meant not for man

Lamenting

Labyrinth Left deep in the mind

Kindred

Knowledge Keenness once divine

Juncture

Judgement Joined with rebirth

Impish

Ignorance Igniting the earth

Haunted

Hard-eyed Humanity burned

Gods

Glaring Grave faces concerned

From

Fiery Forge death’s instruments made

Envision

Embers Ever burning to fade

Devotion

Disorder Decadent fields

Chasms

Closing Clash of steel against steel

Battlefields

Born Blades drawn in the fog

Armies

Assemble Amid Athens and abroad

This is a Succession Ode designed to do many things. The story of Prometheus` and his gift of fire to mankindis a remarkable story. It is about a selfless act from a Titan who favored humanity over the gods. Prometheus had a gift for knowing the future. His name actually means "foresight". He knew that mankind could use fire wo keep warm, cook food, see at night and many other good things, so he stole fire from Zeus (Jupiter, Jove) to give to mankind. This enraged Zeus so he chained Prometheus to a rock where he was tortured every day, etc.

Though fire can be used in many good ways – out of the flaming forge came weapons of war, plus all the miseries to follow the disruption of a simple way of life.

Achilles = The greatest of Greek warriors. His anger was as legendary as his prowess.

Cerberus = Three headed hound and guardian of the Underworld who stopped anyone from returning to the land of the living.

Chimaera = Fire breathing brother of Cerberus with the forepart of a lion, hindpart of a dragon and it’s middle formed of a goat with the head of all three creatures.

Demeter’s people = Demeter means “mother earth” , the abundant soil as well as the resting place of the dead (which were known by the Athenians as “Demeter’s people”).

Elysium = the abode of the good after death in Classical mythology.

Firewall = a wall for preventing the spread of fire.

Harbinger = one that announces or shows what is coming.

Jeremiad = A literary work or speech expressing a bitter lament or a righteous prophecy of doom.

Keen = a loud wailing lament for the dead.

Liminal = Threshold in between; here nor there; neutral.

Tartarus = the lower portion of Hades where immense torture takes place on it’s residents.

“Prometheus is the Jesus of the old mythology. He is the friend of man; stands between the unjust "justice" of the Eternal Father and the race of mortals, and readily suffers all things on their account. But where it departs from the Calvinistic Christianity, and exhibits him as the defier of Jove, it represents a state of mind which readily appears wherever the doctrine of Theism is taught in a crude, objective form, and which seems the self-defence of man against this untruth, namely, a discontent with the believed fact that a God exists, and a feeling that the obligation of reverence is onerous. It would steal, if it could, the fire of the Creator, and live apart from him, and independent of him.” (1803-1882)

-Ralph Waldo Emerson "Essays"

Tributes

"[Prometheus to Io:] When you have crossed the stream that bounds two continents press on, over the surge of the sea towards the east where the sun stalks in flame, to the Gorgonean land, Kisthene. There live Phorkys' aged virgin daughters [the Graiai] .. beings on whom no ray of sun ever looks down, nor moon at night. And close to them their three winged sisters, loathed enemies of humankind, the snake-haired Gorgones, whom no man can see and live." -Prometheus Bound 791-800

Gorgon

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