SONG OF THE FURIES.
“Let us come and join the dance
Which his spirit shall entrance.
Men's destinies are in our hand,
The disposal of our band;
Stern exactors we of right;
Vengeance is our stern delight.
He his hands who keepeth clean—
Him our anger toucheth not,—
He shall have an unharm'd lot.
But where deed of crime hath been,
And the guilty sinner hides
Blood that on his hands abides,
Witnesses true to the dead
Close upon his heels we tread,
Blood-avengers we draw near,
With him to the end appear.
“Mother Night, who gav'st me birth
For the punishment and dread
Of the living and the dead,
Whether on or 'neath the earth;
See how this Latona's son
Takes from me the trembling one;—
Though his hands be fresh-imbrued
With a mother's blood.
O'er our victim not in vain
Sing we this our strain,
Soul-destroying, working-sadness,
And self-despairing madness,
The Furies' ban,
The spirit's chain,
Lyre-less, joy-less, withering man.
“This our office from of old
Fate hath given us firm to hold;—
When deeds of crime on mortal lie
To attend him till he die;
Nor I ken
Shall he be more free e'en then.
O'er our victim not in vain
Sing we this our strain,
Soul-destroying, working sadness,
And self-despairing madness,
The Furies' ban,
The spirit's chain,
Lyre-less, joy-less, withering man.
“Such the offices on earth
Were assign'd us at our birth;—
Ne'er to come nigh the Immortals,
Nor approach within their portals;
None of them with us carouses;
For no part, no lot have we
With the white-robed company.
Ours the ruin is of houses;
Should a home-rear'd Mars appear,
Slaying one that should be dear;
Him pursue we;—be he strong
We shall waste him down ere long.
“By our care and by our zeal
Is One set free,
And Gods enjoy immunity
From the criminal appeal.
But Jove with converse ne'er will grace
Our hate-doom'd and blood-reeking race
Therefore wandering far I go,
And down my heavy foot-fall bring
With a spring
And intolerable woe,
When upon him we prevail
As his slippery footsteps fail.
“Glories that once reach'd the sky, in high renown,
All faded and dishonour'd dwindle down
On our black-robed advances and the footfalls of our tread.
But he that falls this knoweth not, for guilt hath made him blind,
With such a cloud it falls upon the crime-polluted mind.
But others deeply groan, and speak of what a gloom
There hangs upon the house with a heavy weight of doom.
“Yea, I ween, and it shall stand,
For all ways are in our hand,
All we perfect in its time,
Stern remembrancers of crime.
Prayers with us no access find;
Unaveng'd, unhonour'd crew;
Far from Gods our lot assign'd
While we pursue
With a sunless lamp behind,—
Preciptous dark
ways shall flee,
Both the blind and those that see.
“What mortal ear
Heareth these things without fear,
Of our ordinance severe?
Given of Gods, by fate made sure,
To the end it shall endure.
While I bear this rite from of old
None shall me dishonour'd hold,
Though 'neath the earth invisible
In the sunless cloud I dwell.”
[_]
SONG OF THE FURIES EXPLAINED.
“When one has been recollecting the proper proofs of a
future state of rewards and punishments, nothing methinks can
give one so sensible an apprehension of the latter,... as observing
that... after the chief bad consequences, temporal consequences,
have been delayed for a great while; at length they break in
irresistibly, like an armed force: repentance is too late to
relieve, and can serve only to aggravate, their distress: the
effects of their own doings, overwhelm them, beyond possibility
of remedy or escape. This is an account of what is in fact the
general constitution of nature.”
Bp. Butler's Analogy, b. l. ch. ll.
