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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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The beasts of life, and in full bowls receive The streaming blood: a lamb to Hell and Night (The sable wool without a streak of white) Aeneas offers; and, by fate's decree, A barren heifer, Proserpine, to thee, With holocausts he Pluto's altar fills; Sev'n brawny bulls with his own hand he kills; Then on the broiling entrails oil he pours; Which, ointed thus, the raging flame devours. Late the nocturnal sacrifice begun, Nor ended till the next returning sun. Then earth began to bellow, trees to dance, And howling dogs in glimm'ring light advance, Ere Hecate came. "Far hence be souls profane!" The Sibyl cried, "and from the grove abstain! Now, Trojan, take the way thy fates afford; Assume thy courage, and unsheathe thy sword." She said, and pass'd along the gloomy space; The prince pursued her steps with equal pace. Ye realms, yet unreveal'd to human sight, Ye gods who rule the regions of the night, Ye gliding ghosts, permit me to relate The mystic wonders of your silent state! Obscure they went thro' dreary shades, that led Along the waste dominions of the dead. Thus wander travelers in woods by night, By the moon's doubtful and malignant light, When Jove in dusky clouds involves the skies, And the faint crescent shoots by fits before their eyes. Just in the gate and in the jaws of hell, Revengeful Cares and sullen Sorrows dwell, And pale Diseases, and repining Age, Want, Fear, and Famine's unresisted rage; Here Toils, and Death, and Death's half-brother, Sleep, Forms terrible to view, their sentry keep; With anxious Pleasures of a guilty mind, Deep Frauds before, and open Force behind; The Furies' iron beds; and Strife, that shakes Her hissing tresses and unfolds her snakes. Full in the midst of this infernal road, An elm displays her dusky arms abroad: The God of Sleep there hides his heavy head, |
