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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 door unlatch'd, and, with repeated calls, Invites her former lord within my walls. Thus in her crime her confidence she plac'd, And with new treasons would redeem the past. What need I more? Into the room they ran, And meanly murther'd a defenseless man. Ulysses, basely born, first led the way. Avenging pow'rs! with justice if I pray, That fortune be their own another day! But answer you; and in your turn relate, What brought you, living, to the Stygian state: Driv'n by the winds and errors of the sea, Or did you Heav'n's superior doom obey? Or tell what other chance conducts your way, To view with mortal eyes our dark retreats, Tumults and torments of th' infernal seats." While thus in talk the flying hours they pass, The sun had finish'd more than half his race: And they, perhaps, in words and tears had spent The little time of stay which Heav'n had lent; But thus the Sibyl chides their long delay: "Night rushes down, and headlong drives the day: 'T is here, in different paths, the way divides; The right to Pluto's golden palace guides; The left to that unhappy region tends, Which to the depth of Tartarus descends; The seat of night profound, and punish'd fiends." Then thus Deiphobus: "O sacred maid, Forbear to chide, and be your will obey'd! Lo! to the secret shadows I retire, To pay my penance till my years expire. Proceed, auspicious prince, with glory crown'd, And born to better fates than I have found." He said; and, while he said, his steps he turn'd To secret shadows, and in silence mourn'd. The hero, looking on the left, espied A lofty tow'r, and strong on ev'ry side With treble walls, which Phlegethon surrounds, Whose fiery flood the burning empire bounds; And, press'd betwixt the rocks, the bellowing noise resounds Wide is the fronting gate, and, rais'd on high With adamantine columns, threats the sky. Vain is the force of man, and Heav'n's as vain, |
