ment my curtains!
How long must I look for the signal 21
And hark for the sound of the trump!
[Yea, fools are My people 22
Nor Me do they fear.(213)
Children besotted are they,
Void of discretion.
Clever they are to do evil,
To do good they know not.

3. The Third of the Scythian Songs is without introduction. Whether the
waste, darkness, earthquake and emptiness described are imminent or have
happened is still left uncertain, as in the previous songs. The Prophet
speaks, but as before the Voice of God peals out at the end.

I looked to the earth, and lo chaos, 23
To the heavens, their light was gone.
I looked to the hills and(214) they quivered, 24
All the heights were a-shuddering.
I looked--and behold not a man! 25
All the birds of heaven were fled.
I looked to the gardens, lo desert, 26
All the townships destroyed,
Before the face of the Lord,
The glow of His wrath.
[For thus hath the Lord said, 27
All the land shall be waste
Yet full end I make not](215)
For this let the Earth lament, 28
And black be Heaven above!
I have spoken and will not relent,
Purposed and turn not from it.(216)

4. The Fourth Scythian Song follows immediately, also without
introduction. The first four couplets vividly describe the flight of the
peasantry, actual or imagined, before the invaders. The rest seems
addressed to the City as though being threatened she sought to reduce her
foes with a woman's wiles, only to find that it was not her love but her
life they were after, and so expired at their hands in despair. All this
is more suitable to the Chaldean than to the Scythian invasion, and may be
one of the Prophet's additions in 604 to his earlier Oracles. However we
take it, the figure is of Jeremiah's boldest and most vivid. The irony is
keen.

From the noise of the horse and the bowmen, IV. 29
All the land(217) is in flight,
They are into the caves, huddle in thickets,(218)
Are up on the crags.
Every town of its folk is forsaken
No habitant in it.
All is up! Thou destined to ruin(?)(219) 30
What doest thou now?
That thou dressest in scarlet,
And deck'st thee in deckings of gold,
With stibium widenest thine eyes.
In vain dost thou prink!
Though satyrs they utterly loathe thee,
Thy life are they after!
Fo