Titan

“ This Titan, in his eagerness to aid mankind, had once displeased the gods by secretly climbing up to heaven, lighting a reed at the fire of the sun, and bringing down the holy flame as a gift to the human race. ”

“ Less of menace with more of sadness is in the landscape and sky on the title-page: a Titan, with one weighty hand lying on a gigantic skull, rests at the edge of a green sloping moor, himself seeming a grey fragment of moorland rock; brown fire of waste grass or rusted flower stains crag and bent all round him; the sky is all night and fire, bitter red and black. On the first page a serpent, splendid with blood-red specks and scales of greenish blue, darts the cloven flame of its tongue against a brilliant swarm of flies ”

“ Amid the roar of escaping steam, and the bee-like buzzing of nearly three thousand human voices, raised in agonized screams and callings from within the enclosing walls, and the whistling of air through hundreds of open dead-lights as the water, entering the holes of the crushed and riven starboard side, expelled it, the Titan moved slowly backward and launched herself into the sea, where she floated low on her side — a dying monster, groaning with her death-wound. ”

“ When shall he appear again, the strong friend of men, the fire-kindler, the Titan still nailed to his crag? A terrible noise from out the mountains makes known that he is lifting his lacerated shoulders from off the iniquitous rock, and we can feel, flaming on us, his distant breath. ”

“ There is standing before him the figure of a woman, a gigantic woman, whose head reaches to the clouds—a Titan. Her beauty is beyond the beauty of earth. Her massive rosy limbs are more delicious than ever Greek sculptor dreamt of, and her long, fair locks blow out all over the heavens, crowning her head with a golden halo. ”

“ I rear my Titan bulk into the teeth of the gale, and I smite and prevail, and swing me out over the sea. There is a strange pale God, a god of pain and deadly wickedness. My own soul bites into itself, like a scorpion ringed with fire. ”

“ Hear me, bright children of Earth and Heaven, that I may say what my heart within me bids. A long while now have we, who are sprung from Cronos and the Titan gods, fought with each other every day to get victory and to prevail. But do you show your great might and unconquerable strength, and face the Titans in bitter strife ”

“ Hyperion loomed ahead, a bead-like dot hovering in the shadow of the Rings.
Beyond it, dim and distant, lay Titan.
Titan, greatest satellite of Saturn, nearly half the size of Earth itself. Titan, that had given Man mekronal, the precious, mysterious catalyst that cut loose the human race from the need for the oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere of its homeland.
Titan, world of lost sphere-ships and phantasmic monsters.
Bleakly, Boone wondered if he'd ever reach it.
Or even if he did, would Eileen Rey live to see it with him? What were the odds against a woman struck down by Titan fever? ”

“ The stars all flee away, and the morning star closes their ranks as, last of all, he departs from his watch-tower in the sky.
When Titan saw him setting and the world grow red, and the slender horns of the waning moon fading from sight, he bade the swift Hours to yoke his steeds. The goddesses quickly did his bidding, and led the horses from the lofty stalls, breathing forth fire and filled with ambrosial food, and they put upon them the clanking bridles. Then the father anointed his son's face with a sacred ointment, and made it proof against the devouring flames ”

“ Near-dead Titan was the present step in mankind's outward march of colonial dominion toward the stars. Titan itself was rich in the radioactive ores that has become the fuel, the moving force, not only of the rockets of Earth's expanding space-commerce, but of the wheels of industry and comfort at home. And richer in those elements were the Rings of Saturn, nearby, those stupendous, whirling bands of dust, wreckage of a broken satellite in which, as in any other planet or moon most of those heaviest, costliest metals had originally sunk to its center, far out of reach of mining operations. ”

“ It is recognized as a primitive and childish notion. With our larger knowledge we see that these vast and fiery suns are after all but the Titan like servants of the little planets which they bear with them in their flight through the abysses of space. ”

“ Then, putting forth his full might, he fairly tore the struggling beast's jaws asunder, and dashed it lifeless against a boulder.
He was a superb figure as he stood there in the full vigor of his aroused powers. It might have been one of the Titan brood defying any force of earth or heavens. Yet instead of being monstrous, he was beautiful—manhood in its perfection though enlarged far beyond common humanity. ”

“ The boundless sea rang terribly and the earth crashed loudly; wide Heaven was shaken and groaned, and high Olympus reeled from its foundation. Holding huge rocks in their hands the giants attacked the Titan gods.
Then Zeus entered the war. He hurled the lightning; the bolts flew thick and fast from his strong hand, with thunder and lightning and flame. The earth crashed around in burning, the forests crackled with fire, the ocean seethed. And hot flames wrapped the earth-born Titans all around. Three hundred rocks, one upon another, did Cottus, Briareus, and Gyes hurl upon the Titans. ”

“ If you can imagine a buried Titan lying along the length of a continent, with one arm stretched out into the midst of the sea, the spot to which I would transport you, reader mine, would be, as it were, in the palm of the giant's hand. ”

“ Milton—a Titan Soul hurled down from heaven, struggling with all chaos and the deep to enunciate—just to proclaim and put on everlasting record— those two profound significant words, Titan and Soul, for a memorial to Man of the real nature of Man. Aeschylus—the barking of an eagle—of Zeus the Thunderer's own eagle out of ominous skies above the mountains: a thing unseen as Karma, mysterious and mighty as Fate, as Disaster, as the final Triumph of the Soul; sublime as death ”

“ In return Stevens and Nadia came gradually to know the story of the humanity of Titan.
"I am glad beyond measure to have known you," Barkovis mused, one night. "Your existence proves that there is truth in mythology, as some of us have always believed. Your visit to Titan will create a furor in scientific circles, for you are impossibility incarnate—personifications of the preposterous. In you, wildest fancy had become commonplace. According to many of our scientists, it is utterly impossible for you to exist. ”

“ On the contrary, we are presented with the spectacle of a Titan, baring his arms and plunging heart and soul into the arena, there to struggle for death or victory with the superb phantoms summoned to the conflict by his own genius. ”

“ When the bright partner of his awful reign, The warlike maid, and monarch of the main, The traitor-gods, by mad ambition driven, Durst threat with chains the omnipotence of Heaven. Then, call’d by thee, the monster Titan came (Whom gods Briareus, men Ægeon name) , Through wondering skies enormous stalk’d along; Not he that shakes the solid earth so strong: With giant-pride at Jove’s high throne he stands, And brandish’d round him all his hundred hands: The affrighted gods confess’d their awful lord, They dropp’d the fetters, trembled, and adored. ”

“ Immortal Titan!
THIRD FURY:
Champion of Heaven's slaves!
PROMETHEUS:
He whom some dreadful voice invokes is here,
Prometheus, the chained Titan. Horrible forms, _445
What and who are ye? Never yet there came
Phantasms so foul through monster-teeming Hell
From the all-miscreative brain of Jove;
Whilst I behold such execrable shapes,
Methinks I grow like what I contemplate, _450
And laugh and stare in loathsome sympathy.
FIRST FURY:
We are the ministers of pain, and fear,
And disappointment, and mistrust, and hate,
And clinging crime ”

“ As the titan in man ponders on this old, old purpose wherefor all its experience was garnered, the lightnings will once more begin to play through him and animate his will. So like the archangel ruined let us arise from despair and weariness with inflexible resolution, pealing once more the old heroic shout to our fallen comrades, until those great powers who enfold us feel the stirring and the renewal, and the murmur runs along the spheres, "The buried Titan moves once again to tear the throne from Him." ”

“ After this many others came, weeping tears of sorrow for the sufferer,--tears of anger at the tyranny of Zeus. And wails of mourning were borne thither on the wings of the wind from all the tribes that dwelt in Asia,--from the warrior maidens on the Colchian coasts, from the savage horsemen of the Scythian plains, and from the dwellers on the farther shores of Araby. But the Titan, chained to the desolate crags, suffered on. Above him the vultures hovered, and the wild eagles shrieked; and sun and storm beat mercilessly upon his head, as the weary days and the lengthening years passed by. ”

“ There is no other goddess of whom we have so many beautiful descriptions in the poets.
CHAPTER III. Terrestrial Gods.
SATURN was the son of Cœlus and Titæa or Terra, and married his sister Vesta. She, with her other sisters, persuaded their mother to join them in a plot, to exclude Titan, their elder brother, from his birthright, and raise Saturn to his father's throne. Their design so far succeeded, that Titan was obliged to resign his claim, though on condition, that Saturn brought up no male children, and thus the succession might revert to the Titans again. ”

“ The only pleasurable parts of the poem are its detached passages of great melody or beauty; and the chief value of the work is as a modern example of Titan literature. Many poets have at various times represented mankind in the person of a Titan, that is, a man written large, colossal in his courage or power or suffering: Æschylus in Prometheus, Marlowe in Tamburlaine, Milton in Lucifer, of Paradise Lost, Goethe in Faust, Byron in Manfred, Shelley in Prometheus Unbound. The Greek Titan is resigned, uncomplaining, knowing himself to be a victim of Fate, which may not be opposed ”

“ There were strong men who would take up the challenge, and seize the torch from his dying hand. He remembered Tristan, that youthful Titan, who would preach with the sword what he had preached with the tongue. ”

“ At the opening of the "Prometheus Unbound" the Titan was seen brought once more to light, after the lapse of ages, from the abyss into which he had been hurled at the conclusion of the "Prometheus Bound." He was still chained to the rock, with the additional torment of the eagle. which daily preyed upon his liver. The punishments of the Titans, like the Titanic powers themselves, represent the absence of rule or measure; the restless insatiability of the lower passions and desires when, with self-asserting insolence, they bid defiance to the restraints of law. ”

“ And Briareus, Cottus, and Gyes seized upon the Titan god, and carried him to Caucasus, and fettered him with fetters of bronze to the highest, blackest crag—with fetters of bronze that may not be broken. There they have left the Titan stretched, under the sky, with the cold winds blowing upon him, and with the sun streaming down on him. And that his punishment might exceed all other punishments Zeus had sent [pg 104] a vulture to prey upon him—a vulture that tears at his liver each day. ”

“ The more radiant figures are prophecies to him of his destiny, but the Titan and the Christ are a revelation of his more immediate state; their giant sorrows companion his own, and in contemplating them he awakens what is noblest in his own nature ”

“ Till all that was left of the Titan’s envied hulk
Was a billowy gurgle in the sea.
Alas for man! Alas for vaunting boast!
Which seeks to conquer the fate of the sea,
Essays to raise proud hulks of iron and steel
And laugh to scorn God’s mastery!
Thus from their watery grave he lifts his voice;
“None tempt my power by craft malign.
Lo! all shall cleave unto the common end,
And none shall stand but I, divine!”
[4] INSPIRATION
Proud child of fortune, smile on thy better hope! ”

“ Doubtless Titan received heat from Saturn and the Sun, almost undiminished by any absorbent atmospheric layers. Gravity on a body only a few thousand miles in diameter would be relatively weak, less than half normal Earth gravity.
With understandable pride, for the value of her incredible thoroughness had proved itself again, Gerry finally contacted all the life-boats.
"We're perfectly safe, men. Dress warmly. Carry a bottle of oxygen with a tube, and take a breath of it every minute or so in order to prevent blood bubbles from forming. Hand weapons, of course, just in case. ”

“ The Titans are emblems of the subterranean fires and the volcanic forces of nature, which, hidden deep underground, occasionally emerge, heave up great masses of rock, and hurl them about with an accompaniment of deafening roars, while their ponderous tread causes the very earth beneath them to tremble. ”

“ It seemed that the inhabitants of Titan were few in number and difficult to communicate with, though quite friendly.
The fact that highly evolved life existed on the satellite was not startling. Advanced civilizations had been discovered in at least three other places in the System. If any nomadic tribe, gifted with the ability to work in metals, had wandered in from outer space and decided to locate in the Solar System, it was only natural for them to select Titan and its wealth of ores.
Gerry was not interested in making any social contacts at the moment. ”

“ But it was the fact of life on Titan that motivated her final decision. The Ark needed metals for repair, and they were to be had on Titan. As a last resort, the inhabitants might conceivably be able to help. The girl weighed this possibility carefully against the undeniable fact that if any other rocket ships were to enter the Saturnian system, they would land only on the two outer satellites, never on Titan. Confident in her own self-reliance and the ability of her crew, though, Gerry made her choice. ”