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Rh Around the city hovers care;

Not blunted are the oracles;—this deed

Which ye have wrought, oh lamentable pair,

All credence doth transcend.

Dire woes are come, not by mere rumour taught.

Lo, obvious now to sight the herald's tale!

Twofold anxieties, disasters twain

Of pride and mutual slaughter, fraught

With twofold doom.

To their dread issue are these evils brought.

What can I sing? What but the grievous bale

Fixed at the heart of this ill-fated home?

But now, in escort of the dead,

Oh friends! adown grief's sobbing gale,

With measured beat of hands on head,

Ply ye the oar-stroke, ply amain,

Which over Charon's river evermore

Wafteth the galley, black of sail,

Unchartered, to the sunless reign,

Untrodden by the god of light,

Invisible to mortal sight,

The all-receiving shore.