Chapter 11

_Before this act_ MEGAERA _riseth out of hell, with the other furies_, ALECTO _and_ TYSIPHONE _dancing an hellish round; which done, she saith_:

MEGAERA. Sisters, begone, bequeath the rest to me, That yet belongs unto this tragedy. [_The two furies depart down_. Vengeance and death from forth the deepest hell I bring the cursed house, where Gismund dwells. Sent from the grisly god, that holds his reign In Tartar's ugly realm, where Pelops' sire (Who with his own son's flesh, whom he had slain, Did feast the gods) with famine hath his hire; To gape and catch at flying fruits in vain, And yielding waters to his gasping throat; Where stormy Aeol's son with endless pain Rolls up the rock; where Tytius hath his lot To feed the gripe that gnaws his growing heart;[68] Where proud Ixion, whirled on the wheel, Pursues himself; where due deserved smart The damned ghosts in burning flame do feel-- From thence I mount: thither the winged god, Nephew to Atlas that upholds the sky, Of late down from the earth with golden rod To Stygian ferry Salerne souls did guide, And made report how Love, that lordly boy, Highly disdaining his renown's decay, Slipp'd down from heaven, and filled with fickle joy Gismunda's heart, and made her throw away Chasteness of life to her immortal shame: Minding to show, by proof of her foul end, Some terror unto those that scorn his name. Black Pluto (that once found Cupid his friend In winning Ceres' daughter, queen of hells;) And Parthie, moved by the grieved ghost Of her late husband, that in Tartar dwells, Who pray'd due pains for her, that thus hath lost All care of him and of her chastity. The senate then of hell, by grave advice Of Minos, Aeac, and of Radamant, Commands me draw this hateful air, and rise Above the earth, with dole and death to daunt The pride and present joys, wherewith these two Feed their disdained hearts; which now to do, Behold I come with instruments of death. This stinging snake, which is of hate and wrath, I'll fix upon her father's heart full fast, And into hers this other will I cast, Whose rankling venom shall infect them so With envious wrath and with recureless woe, Each shall be other's plague and overthrow. "Furies must aid, when men surcease to know Their gods: and hell sends forth revenging pain On those whom shame from sin cannot restrain."