Ixion

God’s silent Law strikes deep as nether hell,
     Blooms in the heavens, and shakes to earth its fruit;
     No rest beneath its shadow for the foot
Of the fierce homicide, the traitor fell,
Low-thoughted ingrate, or right infidel.
     The cool blue sky above him is hot steel,
Green earth but cankered brass beneath his tread,
     Revolving day an ever-burning wheel
Whose grinding felloes are his softest bed.
     Chained on his fiery rack by just recoil
Of the wrung Law, and on forever sped
     By the red pulses of his brain, that boil
Whirling, through ages of avenging pain,
Ixion suffers woe, a sad, immortal Cain!