Then thrice before the kindled pile she bowed, And the three Furies thrice invoked aloud:-- Come, come, revenging sisters, come and view A sister paying her dead brothers' due; A crime I punish, and a crime commit; But blood for blood, and death for death, is fit: Great crimes must be with greater crimes repaid, And second funerals on the former laid. Let the whole household in one ruin fall, And may Diana's curse o'ertake us all. Shall fate to happy Œneus still allow } One son, while Thestius stands deprived of two? } Better three lost, than one unpunished go. } Take then, dear ghosts, (while yet, admitted new In hell, you wait my duty,) take your due; A costly offering on your tomb is laid, When with my blood the price of yours is paid. Ah! whither am I hurried? Ah! forgive, Ye shades, and let your sister's issue live: A mother cannot give him death; though he Deserves it, he deserves it not from me. Then shall the unpunished wretch insult the slain, Triumphant live? not only live, but reign? While you, thin shades, the sport of winds, are tost O'er dreary plains, or tread the burning coast! I cannot, cannot bear; 'tis past, 'tis done; Perish this impious, this detested son; Perish his sire, and perish I withal; And let the houses heir, and the hoped kingdom fall. Where is the mother fled, her pious love, And where the pains with which ten months I strove! Ah! hadst thou died, my son, in infant years, Thy little hearse hadst been bedewed with tears. Thou livest by me; to me thy breath resign; Mine is the merit, the demerit thine. Thy life by double title I require; Once given at birth, and once preserved from fire: One murder pay, or add one murder more, And me to them who fell by thee restore. I would, but cannot: my son's image stands Before my sight;--and now their angry hands My brothers hold, and vengeance these exact; This pleads compassion, and repents the fact. He pleads in vain, and I pronounce his doom: My brothers, though unjustly, shall o'ercome; But having paid their injured ghosts their due, My son requires my death, and mine shall his pursue. At this, for the last time, she lifts her hand, Averts her eyes, and half-unwilling drops the brand. The brand, amid the flaming fuel thrown, Or drew, or seemed to draw, a dying groan; The fires themselves but faintly licked their prey, Then loathed their impious food, and would have shrunk away. Just then the hero cast a doleful cry, And in those absent flames began to fry; The blind contagion raged within his veins; But he, with manly patience, bore his pains; He feared not fate, but only grieved to die Without an honest wound, and by a death so dry. Happy Ancæus, thrice aloud he cried,