Kitap 6
'The unknown affrights me: I can firmly face
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The certain terror. Bid my destiny
Yield to thy power the dark and hidden end,
And let me fall foreknowing. From the gods
Extort the truth, or, if thou spare the gods,
Force it from hell itself. Fling back the gates
That bar th' Elysian fields; let Death confess
'Whom from our ranks he seeks. No humble task
I bring, but worthy of Erichtho's skill
Of such a struggle fought for such a prize
To search and tell the issue.'
Pleased that her impious fame was noised abroad
Thus made her answer : 'If some lesser fates
'Thy wish had been to change, against their wish
'It had been easy to compel the gods
'To its accomplishment. My art has power
When of one man the constellations press
The speedy death, to compass a delay;.
And mine it is, though every star decrees
A ripe old age, by mystic herbs to shear
The life midway. But should some purpose set
From the beginning of the universe,
And all the labouring fortunes of mankind,
'Be brought in question, then Thessalian art
'Bows to the power supreme. But if thou be
Content to know the issue pre-ordained,
'Simple the task and plain; for earth and air
And sea and space and Rhodopaean crags
'Shall speak the future. Yet it easiest seems
Where death in these Thessalian fields abounds The poet fills the plain with dead before the battle is fought.
'To raise a single corpse. From dead men's lips
Scarce cold, in fuller accents falls the voice;
Not from some mummied frame in accents shrill
And through redoubled night, a squalid veil
Swathing her pallid features, stole among
Unburied carcases. Fast fled the wolves,
The carrion birds with maw unsatisfied
