That usurp life’s field, and divert the gaze
From joys that might be his for many days,
To outbursts as self-mocking as the freak
Of pouring water into jars that leak.
Cerberus too, the Furies, and the gloom
Steaming from black Cocytus, and the boom
Of Tartarus, flames and shrieks, horrors seen
By none but bards. They never could have been;
Yet such were, are, will be, at our own hearth,
So long as wrong is rampant on the Earth.