Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE EUMENIDES: THE FURIES' PRAYER, by AESCHYLUS


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE EUMENIDES: THE FURIES' PRAYER, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Come, dance and song, in linked round
Last Line: A withering fire!


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 him, 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!





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