For hangings and for curtaines, all along
The walls (abominable ornaments!)
Are tooles of wrath, anvills of torments hung;
Fell executioners of foule intents,
Nailes, hammers, hatchets sharpe, and halters strong,
Swords, speares, with all the fatall instruments
Of Sin and Death, twice dipt in the dire staines
Of brothers' mutuall blood, and fathers' braines.
XLII.
The tables furnisht with a cursèd feast
Which Harpyes, with leane Famine feed upon,
Vnfill'd for ever. Here among the rest,
Inhumane Erisicthon too makes one;
Tantalus, Atreus, Progne, here are guests:
Wolvish Lycaon here a place hath won.
The cup they drinke in is Medusa's scull,
Which mixt with gall and blood they quaffe brim-full.
XLIII.
The foule queen's most abhorrèd maids of honour,
Medæa, Jezabell, many a meager witch,
With Circe, Scylla, stand to wait upon her:
But her best huswife's are the Parcæ, which
Still worke for her, and have their wages from her:
They prick a bleeding heart at every stitch.
Her cruell cloathes of costly threds they weave,
Which short-cut lives of murdred infants leave.
XLIV.
hearsedThe house is hers'd about with a black wood,
Which nods with many a heavy-headed tree:
Each flowers a pregnant poyson, try'd and good,
Each herbe a plague. The wind's sighes timèd bee
By a black fount, which weeps into a flood.
Through the thick shades obscurely might you see
Minotaures, Cyclopses, with a darke drove
Of Dragons, Hydraes, Sphinxes, fill the grove.
XLV.
Here Diomed's horses, Phereus' dogs appeare,
With the fierce lyons of Therodamas.
Busiris has his bloody altar here:
Here Sylla his severest prison has:
The Lestrigonians here their table reare:
Here strong Procrustes plants his bed of brasse:
Here cruell Scyron boasts his bloody rockes
And hatefull Schinis his so fearèd oakes.