COME, dance and song, in linked round! More deep than blithe Muse can We'll make these groaning chanters sound Our governance over man! No parley! Give us judgement swift! We vex not in our wrath who spread White hands to Heaven uplift. Not unto such; he journeyeth Unharmed, a happy traveller Through life to the last pause of Death: But to the froward soul, that seeks, Like @3him@1, to cloak up, if he could, Plague-spotted hands, with murder red, To such our apparition speaks, The faithful witness for the dead, Plenipotentiary of Blood And Slaughter's sovran minister. Hear me, my mother! Hark, Night, in whose womb I lay, Born to punish dead souls in the dark And the living souls in the day! Lo, Leto's Lion-cub My right denies; He would take my slinking beast of the field, Mine, mine by mother-murder sealed, My lawful sacrifice. But this is the song for the victim slain, To blight his heart and blast his brain, Wilder and wilder and whirl him along; This is the song, the Furies' song, Not sung to harp or lyre, To bind men's souls in links of brass And over their bodies to mutter and pass A withering fire! Long the thread Fate spun And gave us to have and hold For ever, through all Time's texture run, Our portion from of old. Who walks with murder wood, With him walk we On to the grave, the deep-dug pit; And when he's dead, he shall have no whit Too large a liberty! Oh! this is the song for the victim slain, To blight his heart and blast his brain, Wilder and wilder and whirl him along! This is the song, the Furies' song, Not sung to harp or lyre, To bind men's souls in links of brass And over their bodies to mutter and pass A withering fire! | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...FRA LIPPO LIPPI by ROBERT BROWNING FAUST: SCENE 1. PROLOGUE IN HEAVEN by JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE THE BROOK; AN IDYL by ALFRED TENNYSON THE FORSAKEN by C. HAMILTON AIDE ON SICK LEAVE, 1916 by HAMILTON FISH ARMSTRONG |