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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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To crush the pillars which the pile sustain. Sublime on these a tow'r of steel is rear'd; And dire Tisiphone there keeps the ward, Girt in her sanguine gown, by night and day, Observant of the souls that pass the downward way. From hence are heard the groans of ghosts, the pains Of sounding lashes and of dragging chains. The Trojan stood astonish'd at their cries, And ask'd his guide from whence those yells arise; And what the crimes, and what the tortures were, And loud laments that rent the liquid air. She thus replied: "The chaste and holy race Are all forbidden this polluted place. But Hecate, when she gave to rule the woods, Then led me trembling thro' these dire abodes, And taught the tortures of th' avenging gods. These are the realms of unrelenting fate; And awful Rhadamanthus rules the state. He hears and judges each committed crime; Enquires into the manner, place, and time. The conscious wretch must all his acts reveal, (Loth to confess, unable to conceal), From the first moment of his vital breath, To his last hour of unrepenting death. Straight, o'er the guilty ghost, the Fury shakes The sounding whip and brandishes her snakes, And the pale sinner, with her sisters, takes. Then, of itself, unfolds th' eternal door; With dreadful sounds the brazen hinges roar. You see, before the gate, what stalking ghost Commands the guard, what sentries keep the post. More formidable Hydra stands within, Whose jaws with iron teeth severely grin. The gaping gulf low to the center lies, And twice as deep as earth is distant from the skies. The rivals of the gods, the Titan race, Here, sing'd with lightning, roll within th' unfathom'd space. Here lie th' Alaean twins, (I saw them both,) Enormous bodies, of gigantic growth, Who dar'd in fight the Thund'rer to defy, Affect his heav'n, and force him from the sky. Salmoneus, suff'ring cruel pains, I found, For emulating Jove; the rattling sound Of mimic thunder, and the glitt'ring blaze |
