Place on their heads that crown, distained with gore,
Which these dire hands from my slain father tore;
Go, and a parent's heavy curses bear,

Break all the bonds of nature, and prepare
Their kindred souls to mutual hate and war.
Give them to dare, what I might wish to see,
Blind as I am, some glorious villany!

Soon shalt thou find, if thou but arm their hands,
Their ready guilt preventing thy commands:

Couldst thou some great proportioned mischief frame,
They'd prove the father from whose loins they came.
The fury heard, while on Cocytus' brink

Her snakes untied sulphureous waters drink;
But at the summons rolled her eyes around,

And snatched the starting serpents from the ground:
Not half so swiftly shoots along in air,

The gliding lightning or descending star.

Through crowds of airy shades she winged her flight,
And dark dominions of the silent night;

Swift as she passed the flitting ghosts withdrew,
And the pale spectres trembled at her view;
To the iron gates of Tenarus she flies,

There spreads her dusky pinions to the skies,
The day beheld, and, sickening at the sight,
Veiled her fair glories in the shades of night.
Affrighted Atlas, on the distant shore,

Trembled, and shook the heavens and gods he bore.
Now from beneath Malea's airy height,

Aloft she sprung, and steered to Thebes her flight;
With eager speed the well-known journey took,
Nor here regrets the hell she late forsook.
A hundred snakes her gloomy visage shade,
A hundred serpents guard her horrid head;
In her sunk eyeballs dreadful meteors glow;
Such rays from Phoebe's bloody circles flow,
When lab'ring with strong charms she shoots from high
A fiery gleam, and reddens all the sky.

Blood stained her cheeks, and from her mouth there
Blue streaming poisons, and a length of flame. [came
From ev'ry blast of her contagious breath,

Famine and drought proceed, and plagues and death.
A robe obscene was o'er her shoulders thrown,

A dress by fates and furies worn alone.
She tossed her meagre arms; her better hand
In waving circles whirled a funeral brand:
A serpent from her left was seen to rear
His flaming crest, and lash the yielding air.
But when the fury took her stand on high,
Where vast Citharon's top salutes the sky,

A hiss from all the snaky tire went round,
The dreadful signal all the rocks rebound;
And through the Achaian cities send the sound.
Œte, with high Parnassus, heard the voice,
Eurotus' banks remurmur'd to the noise;
Again Leucothoe shook at these alarms,
And pressed Palæmon closer in her arms.
Headlong from thence the glowing fury springs,
And o er the Theban palace spreads her wings,
Once more invades the guilty dome, and shrouds
Its bright pavilions in a veil of clouds.

Straight with the rage of all their race possessed,
Stung to the soul, the brothers start from rest,
And all their furics wake within their breast.
Their tortured minds repining envy tears,
And hate engendered by suspicious fears;
And sacred thirst of sway, and all the ties
Of nature broke, and royal purjuries;
And impotent desire to reign alone,
That scorns the dull reversion of a throne.
Each would the sweets of sov'reign rule devour,
While discord waits upon divided power.

As stubborn steers, by brawny ploughmen broke, And join reluctant to the galling yoke,

Alike disdain with servile necks to bear

The unwonted weight, or drag the crooked share,
But rend the reins, and bound a different way,
And all the furrows in confusion lay;
Such was the discord of the royal pair
Whom fury drove precipitate to war.
In vain the chiefs contrived a specious way
To govern Thebes by their alternate sway:
Unjust decree! while this enjoys the state,
That mourns in exile his unequal fate,
And the short monarch of a hasty year
Foresees with anguish his returning heir.
Thus did the league their impious arms restrain
But scarce subsisted to the second reign.

Yet then no proud aspiring piles were raised,
No fretted roofs with polished metals blazed:
No laboured columns in long order placed,
No Grecian stone the pompous arches graced;
No nightly bands in glittering armour wait
Before the sleepless tyrant's guarded gate;
No chargers then were wrought in burnished gold,
Nor silver vases took the forming mould;
Nor gems on bowls embossed were seen to shine,
Blaze on the brims, and sparkle in the wine.
Say, wretched rivals! what provokes your rage?
Say to what end your impious arms engage?

Not all bright Phoebus' views in early morn,
Or when his evening beams the west adorn,
When the south glows with his meridian ray,
And the cold north receives a fainter day;
For crimes like these not all those realms suffice,
Were all those realms the guilty victor's prize!
But fortune now (the lots of empire thrown)
Decrees to proud Eteocles the crown.

What joys, oh, tyrant! swell'd thy soul that day,
When all were slaves thou couldst around survey,
Pleased to behold unbounded power thy own,
And singly fill a feared and envied throne!
But the vile vulgar, ever discontent,

Their growing fear in secret murmurs vent;
Stiil prone to change, though still the slaves of state,
And sure the monarch whom they have to hate;
New lords they madly make, then tamely bear,
And softly curse the tyrants whom they fear:
And one of those who g. oan beneath the sway
Of kings imposed, and grudgingly obey,
(Whom envy to the great, and vulgar spite,
With scandal armed, the ignoble mind's delight,)
Exclaimed-'O Thebes! for thee what fates remain,
What woes attend this inauspicious reign!
Must we, alas! our doubtful necks prepare
Each haughty master's yoke by turns to bear,

And still to change whom changed we still must fear?
These now control a wretched people's fate,
These can divide and these reverse the state:
E'en fortune rules no more--O servile land,
Where exiled tyrants still by turns command!
Thou sire of gods and men, imperial Jove!
Is this the eternal doom decreed above?
On thy own offspring hast thou fixed this fate
From the first birth of our unhappy state,

When banished Cadmus, wand'ring o'er the main,
For lost Europa searched the world in vain,
And fated in Boeotian fields to found

A rising empire on a foreign ground,

First raised our walls on that ill-omened plain

Where earth-born brothers were by brothers slain?
What lofty looks the unrivalled monarch bears!
How all the tyrant in his face appears!
What sullen fury clouds his scornful brow!

Gods! how his eyes with threatening ardour glow
Can this imperious lord forget to reign,
Quit all his state, descend, and serve again?
Yet who before more popularly bow'd?

Who more propitious to the suppliant crowd?

Patient of right, familiar in the throne,
What wonder then? he was not then alone.
O wretched we! a vile submissive train,
Fortune's tame fools, and slaves in every reign!
As when two winds with rival force contend,
This way and that the wavering sails they bend,
While freezing Boreas and black Eurus blow,
Now here, now there, the reeling vessel throw;
Thus on each side, alas! our tottering state
Feels all the fury of resistless fate,

And doubtful still, and still distracted stands,
While that prince threatens, and while this commands.
And now the almighty father of the gods
Convenes a counsel in the blessed abodes.
Far in the bright recesses of the skies,

High o'er the rolling heavens a mansion lies,
Whence, far below, the gods at once survey
The realms of rising and declining day,

And all the extended space of earth, and air, and sea
Full in the midst, and on a starry throne,

The majesty of heaven superior shone:

Serene he looked, and gave an awful nod,

And all the trembling spheres confessed the god.
At Jove's assent the deities around

In solemn state the consistory crowned.
Next a long order of inferior powers

Ascend from hills, and plains, and shady bowers;
Those from whose urns the rolling rivers flow,
And those that give the wandering winds to blow:
Here all their rage and e'en their murmurs cease,
And sacred silence reigns, and universal peace.
A shining synod of majestic gods

Gilds with new lustre the divine abodes;
Heaven seems improved with a superior ray,
And the bright arch reflects a double day.
The monarch then his solemn silence broke,
The still creation listened while he spoke;
Each sacred accent bears eternal weight,
And each irrevocable word is fate.

'How long shall man the wrath of heaven defy,
And force unwilling vengeance from the sky!
Oh! race confederate into crimes, that prove
Triumphant o'er th' eluded rage of Jove!
This wearied arm can scarce the bolt sustain,
And unregarded thunder rolls in vain:
The o'erlaboured Cyclop from his task retires,
Tl.e Æolian forge exhausted of its fires.
For this I suffered Phoebus' steeds to stray,
And the mad ruler to misguide the day,

When the wide earth to heaps of ashes turned,
And heaven itself the wandering chariot burned
For this my brother of the watery reign
Released th' impetuous sluices of the main ;
But flames consumed, and billows raged in vain.
Two races now, allied to Jove, offend;
To punish these see Jove himself descend.
The Theban kings their line from Cadmus trace,
From godlike Perseus those of Argive race.
Unhappy Cadmus' fate, who does not know,
And the long series of succeeding woe?
How oft the furies from the deeps of night
Arose, and mixed with men in mortal fight;
The exulting mother stained with filial blood,
The savage hunter and the haunted wood?
The direful banquet why should I proclaim,
And crimes that grieve the trembling gods to name?
Ere I recount the sins of these profane,
The sun would sink into the western main,
And, rising, gild the radiant east again.
Have we not seen (the blood of Laius shed)
The murdering son ascend his parent's bed,
Through violated nature force his way,
And stain the sacred womb where once he lay?
Yet now in darkness and despair he groans,
And for the crimes of guilty fate atones;
His sons with scorn their eyeless father view,
Insult his wounds, and make them bleed anew.
Thy curse, oh, Edipus! just Heaven alarms,
And sets th' avenging Thunderer in arms.
I from the root thy guilty race will tear,
And give the nations to the waste of war.
Adrastus soon, with gods averse, shall jom
In dire alliance with the Theban line;
Hence strife shall rise, and mortal war succeed;
The guilty realms of Tantalus shall bleed:
Fixed is their doom. This all-remembering breast
Yet harbours vengeance for the tyrant's feast.'

He said; and thus the queen of Heaven returned;
(With sudden grief her lab'ring bosom burned:)
Must I, whose cares Phoroneus' towers defend,
Must I, oh Jove! in bloody wars contend?
Thou knowest those regions my protection claim,
Glorious in arms, in riches, and in fame:
Though there the fair Egyptian heifer fed,
And there deluded Argus slept and bled;

Though there the brazen tower was stormed of old,
When Jove descended in almighty gold;
Yet I can pardon those obscurer rapes,

Those bashful crimes disguised in borrowed shapes;