Antistrophe.
For Fate supreme ordains that we
This office hold for evermore:—
Mortals imbrued with kindred gore
We scathe, till under earth they flee;
And when in death
They yield their breath,
In Hades still our thralls they be.
Now o'er the victim lift the dread refrain,
The Furies' death-hymn, madness-fraught;—
Torch of the brain, from Hades brought,—
Soul-binding, lyreless, mortal-blighting strain."
In answering stanzas they acknowledge and exult in the hatefulness of their office, asserting it with a diabolical confidence which reminds one—if human malice can so nearly approach the hate of deities—of Shylock's deliberate atrocity. And if they remind us of the Jew, so the pure bright being who now appears must remind us of the merciful wisdom, gentle yet determined, of Portia. Minerva comes, like Portia, to defend the righteous man from the apparently legal claims of his cruel enemies. She comes in her warlike beauty, and alights from her chariot, and, holding the long spear in her hand, as the sailor sees her from the far point of Sunium shining in the sunlight on the summit of her temple, stands in the front and speaks:—
"A voice I heard from far Scamander's banks
Invoking me."
And now what do I see? Who are ye, whose forms are not like mortals nor yet like goddesses? and who
