With willing hand take up the funeral torch.
Why dost thou tremble? Does thy timid hand
Shrink from the deed as from an impious crime?
Then give me back my quiver, coward, weak.1720
Is that the hand which fain would bend my bow?
Why does such pallor sit upon thy cheeks?
Come, ply the torch with that same fortitude
That thou dost see in me. Thy pattern take,
Poor soul, from him who faces fiery death.
But lo, my father calls me from the sky