E’en after death? Relent, great shade, relent!

Perish those arms which by the gods’ decree

Accursed our army with the loss of thee!

With thee we fall; Greece wept thy hapless fates,

And shook astonish’d through her hundred states;

Not more, when great Achilles press’d the ground,

And breathed his manly spirit through the wound.

O deem thy fall not owed to man’s decree,

Jove hated Greece, and punish’d Greece in thee!

Turn then; oh peaceful turn, thy wrath control,

And calm the raging tempest of thy soul.’


“While yet I speak, the shade disdains to stay,

In silence turns, and sullen stalks away.


“Touch’d at his sour retreat, through deepest night,

Through hell’s black bounds I had pursued his flight,

And forced the stubborn spectre to reply;

But wondrous visions drew my curious eye.

High on a throne, tremendous to behold,

Stern Minos waves a mace of burnish’d gold;

Around ten thousand thousand spectres stand

Through the wide dome of Dis, a trembling band

Still as they plead, the fatal lots he rolls,

Absolves the just, and dooms the guilty souls.


“The huge Orion, of portentous size,

Swift through the gloom a giant-hunter flies:

A ponderous mace of brass with direful sway

Aloft he whirls, to crush the savage prey!

Stern beasts in trains that by his truncheon fell,

Now grisly forms, shoot o’er the lawns of hell.


“There Tityus large and long, in fetters bound,

O’erspreads nine acres of infernal ground;

Two ravenous vultures, furious for their food,

Scream o’er the fiend, and riot in his blood,

Incessant gore the liver in his breast,

The immortal liver grows, and gives the immortal feast.

For as o’er Panope’s enamell’d plains

Latona journey’d to the Pythian fanes,

With haughty love the audacious monster strove

To force the goddess, and to rival Jove.


“There Tantalus along the Stygian bounds

Pours out deep groans (with groans all hell resounds);