PANTHEA: 
These are Jove’s tempest-walking hounds,
Whom he gluts with groans and blood,
When charioted on sulphurous cloud
He bursts Heaven’s bounds.

IONE: 
Are they now led, from the thin dead 335
On new pangs to be fed?

PANTHEA: 
The Titan looks as ever, firm, not proud.

FIRST FURY: 
Ha!  I scent life!

SECOND FURY: 
Let me but look into his eyes!

THIRD FURY: 
The hope of torturing him smells like a heap
Of corpses, to a death-bird after battle. 340

FIRST FURY: 
Darest thou delay, O Herald! take cheer, Hounds
Of Hell:  what if the Son of Maia soon
Should make us food and sport—­who can please long
The Omnipotent?

MERCURY: 
Back to your towers of iron,
And gnash, beside the streams of fire and wail, 345
Your foodless teeth.  Geryon, arise! and Gorgon,
Chimaera, and thou Sphinx, subtlest of fiends
Who ministered to Thebes Heaven’s poisoned wine,
Unnatural love, and more unnatural hate: 
These shall perform your task.

FIRST FURY: 
Oh, mercy! mercy! 350
We die with our desire:  drive us not back!

MERCURY: 
Crouch then in silence. 
Awful Sufferer! 
To thee unwilling, most unwillingly
I come, by the great Father’s will driven down,
To execute a doom of new revenge. 355
Alas!  I pity thee, and hate myself
That I can do no more:  aye from thy sight
Returning, for a season, Heaven seems Hell,
So thy worn form pursues me night and day,
Smiling reproach.  Wise art thou, firm and good, 360
But vainly wouldst stand forth alone in strife
Against the Omnipotent; as yon clear lamps
That measure and divide the weary years
From which there is no refuge, long have taught
And long must teach.  Even now thy Torturer arms 365
With the strange might of unimagined pains
The powers who scheme slow agonies in Hell,
And my commission is to lead them here,
Or what more subtle, foul, or savage fiends
People the abyss, and leave them to their task. 370
Be it not so! there is a secret known
To thee, and to none else of living things,
Which may transfer the sceptre of wide Heaven,
The fear of which perplexes the Supreme: 
Clothe it in words, and bid it clasp his throne 375
In intercession; bend thy soul in prayer,
And like a suppliant in some gorgeous fane,
Let the will kneel within thy haughty heart: 
For benefits and meek submission tame
The fiercest and the mightiest.