When the scourge

Inexorable and the torturing hour

Call us to penance.

John Milton (1608-1674): Paradise Lost. Book ii. Line 90.

You shall not pile, with servile toil,

Your monuments upon my breast,

Nor yet within the common soil

Lay down the wreck of power to rest,

Where man can boast that he has trod

On him that was "the scourge of God."

Edward Everett (1794-1865): Alaric the Visigoth.

Daughter of Jove, relentless power,

Thou tamer of the human breast,

Whose iron scourge and tort'ring hour

The bad affright, afflict the best!

Thomas Gray (1716-1771): Hymn to Adversity.