@3W.@1 Charon! Thou slave! Thou fool! Thou Cavalier! @3Char.@1 A slave, a fool---what traitor's voice I hear? @3W.@1 Come, bring thy boat. @3Char.@1 No sir. @3W.@1 No, sirrah! why? @3Char.@1 The blest will disagree, and fiends will mutiny At thy, at thy unnumb'red treachery. @3W.@1 Villain, I have a pass, which who disdains, I will sequester the Elysian plains. @3Char.@1 Woe 's me! Ye gentle shades! where shall I dwell? He 's come! It is not safe to be in hell. @3Chorus@1 Thus man, his honour lost, falls on these shelves; Furies and fiends are still true to themselves. @3Char.@1 You must, lost fool, come in. @3W.@1 Oh let me in! But now I fear thy boat will sink with my o'er-weighty sin. Where, courteous Charon, am I now? @3Char.@1 Vile rant! At th' gates of thy supreme judge, Rhadamant. @3Double Chorus of Devils@1 Welcome to rape, to theft, to perjury, To all the ills thou wert, we cannot hope to be. Oh pity us condemn'd! Oh cease to woo, And softly, softly breathe, lest you infect us too. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...IN THE HOLY NATIVITY [OF OUR LORD GOD]; AS SUNG BY SHEPHERDS by RICHARD CRASHAW SHE HEARS THE STORM by THOMAS HARDY LADY CLARA VERE DE VERE by ALFRED TENNYSON STANZAS IN THE MEMORY OF EDWARD QUILLINAN, ESQ. by MATTHEW ARNOLD UNTIMELY LOVE by MATHILDE BLIND |