Kitap 4
tears out his entrails; how shall he invent
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wings for three daughters of King Minyas,
while Juno unavenged, bewails despite?—
Is it the end? the utmost of my power?
His deeds instruct the way; true wisdom heeds
an enemy's device; by the strange death
of Pentheus, all that madness could perform
was well revealed to all; what then denies
a frenzy may unravel Ino's course
to such a fate as wrought her sisters' woe?”
A shelving path in shadows of sad yew
through utter silence to the deep descends,
infernal, where the languid Styx exhales
vapours; and there the shadows of the dead,
descend, after they leave their sacred urns,
and ghostly forms invade: and far and wide,
those dreary regions Horror and bleak Cold
The ghosts, arrived, not know the way,—
which leadeth to the Stygian city-gates,—
not know the melancholy palace where
the swarthy Pluto stays, though streets and ways
a thousand to that city lead, and gates
out-swing from every side: and as the sea
with never-seen increase engulfs the streams
unnumbered of the world, that realm enfolds
the souls of men, nor ever is it filled.
Around the shadowy spirits go; bloodless
boneless and bodiless; they throng the place
of judgment, or they haunt the mansion where
abides the Utmost Tyrant, or they tend
to various callings, as their whilom way; —
appropriate punishment confines to pain
impelled by rage and hate, from habitation
celestial, Juno, of Saturn born, descends,
submissive to its dreadful element.
No sooner had she entered the sad gates,
than groans were uttered by the threshold, pressed