University of Virginia Library

Who may rebuke a monarch bent on wrong?
If he be rough and resolute and strong,
And tyrant of the time and fenced with master sway;
If, like a god, to him belong
The Hours to bring him sweetness on his way,
The meek Hours at his will and footstool chained all day;
To waft a little perfume of keen song
To make their lord his joy;
To smooth his brow from fold, and light
The brooding royal eyes an instant with delight;
A king who may forbid?
The man-god in his glory, crowned and calm,
Rises to reach his arm in purple hid
Towards his desire;
While in his face a hunger beams like fire;
His eyes are fate, his lips severe as death,
So that men hold their breath,
As like a whirl-wind on his wish he goes.
Who shall confront him in his deed? And say,
“Lord, thou hast wrought a shameful thing to-day;
The curse of whose misdoing may descend
To vex thy ungrown race;
Because thine iron vengeance would not bend
Or give to mercy place.
Thy lips have curled against the widow's cry,
Have sneered in some dead adversary's face;
Tyrant, assuage thy fury and amend!”
Will he not frown reply?—
“Lover of death and greedy of thy fate,
Prate not of woes to me.
Worse curses on thine intercession wait,
Thine instant, mine shall be
Hereafter ages hence, when earth is grey.
This one worm at my feet,
Let him writhe on and wither into clay;
His agony is sweet.
I will not stay my hand for any fears,
The old gods slumber long;
They are grown childish with their weight of years,
They are blind and love the strong.”
Therefore are all men mute;
He rules and will not care.
No plagues of heaven refute his impious boasting there;
He reigns, and honour clothes his years supremely fair.
So of his crime he sucks the sweet, and dies
With the full savour of it in his mouth,
And keen delightful eyes.
While yet his lips a cunning laughter keep
At fools who fear the gods. So turns he to his sleep.
And all the simple people muse and say,
“His crime is surely done, and clean and passed away.
Can god account with these dry bones for wrong,
Or make them live again?
His vengeance is not wakeful, and this one
Hath made his rest, and done
His full of pleasure, and escaped god's pain.”
Not so, ye fools and vain;
Heap up his grave and listen: from the ground,
From the grey bones, when years have greened his mound,
Within its circuit of sepulchral stones,
An Atè vengeance rises; soft as rain
Her footprint on the plain,
And like the fluttered leaf her lucid robe.
Wan as a dream she goes,
A floating shadow grey,
Pale-eyed, without repose,
Patient to bide the coming of her day;
Nursing her ire, till time across her path,
Fling down the helpless thing, that she may slay
The bleeding lamb delivered to her wrath.
Years are to her the shadows of one night,
Such certainty of her revenge she hath;
That, tho' they roll and roll again
And ruin all things fair,
Blood only can erase the enduring stain;
For which she watches one accursed race:
The seed of him, who ruled,
And prospered his disgrace,
Who made his laughter at the gods befooled;
And ended full of days,
Sleek and secure of fate;
Above whose resting-place
Her phantom outlines wait.
She knows, that vengeance waxes good
For keeping, as old wines;
And, tho' her veins are fire,
And all her being pines
In pain, in pain,
For the good great hunger of blood,
And the scent of the fresh sweet slain;
Yet pale in her wild want she curbs desire;
The sluggard years are slow;
Days long, hours infinite,
She bides her time to strike the blow—
And surely at last, as a flash in the night,
The signals of Nemesis sound;
At a leap, at a bound, red her hand is, and bright
Is the gash of her wound.

Strange is the vengeance of our lords on high,
Who harm the child and pass the guilty sire;
Give him fat lands and let him calmly die
Full of sweet bread and lord of all desire.
And men look sadly as they close his eyes,
And wind him round in purple for his rest;
And, save a little murmur in the land,
They say he sleeps with the eternal blest.
Ay me, for that man's children; and again
A triple wail for those who call him sire;
Cry for the old hereditary stain,
Bemoan the Atè that can never tire.
Hope not, thou blameless son, she will refrain;
Sprinkle with ash thy head and thine attire:
Thou shalt not turn her steps, nor mitigate her ire.