Aeneid

Stand far away!” the priestess shrieked, “nor dare

Unto this grove come near! Aeneas, on!

Begin thy journey! Draw thy sheathed blade!

Now, all thy courage! now, th' unshaken soul!”

She spoke, and burst into the yawning cave

With frenzied step; he follows where she leads,

And strides with feet unfaltering at her side.

Ye gods! who rule the spirits of the dead!

Ye voiceless shades and silent lands of night!

0 Phlegethon! 0 Chaos! let my song,

If it be lawful, in fit words declare

What I have heard; and by your help divine

Unfold what hidden things enshrouded lie

In that dark underworld of sightless gloom.

They walked exploring the unpeopled night,

Through Pluto's vacuous realms, and regions void,

As when one's path in dreary woodlands winds

Beneath a misty moon's deceiving ray,

When Jove has mantled all his heaven in shade,

And night seals up the beauty of the world.

In the first courts and entrances of Hell

Sorrows and vengeful Cares on couches lie :

There sad Old Age abides, Diseases pale,

And Fear, and Hunger, temptress to all crime;

Want, base and vile, and, two dread shapes to see,

Bondage and Death : then Sleep, Death's next of kin;

And dreams of guilty joy. Death-dealing War

Is ever at the doors, and hard thereby

The Furies' beds of steel, where wild-eyed Strife

Her snaky hair with blood-stained fillet binds.

There in the middle court a shadowy elm

Its ancient branches spreads, and in its leaves

Deluding visions ever haunt and cling.

Then come strange prodigies of bestial kind :

Centaurs are stabled there, and double shapes

Like Scylla, or the dragon Lerna bred,

With hideous scream; Briareus clutching far

His hundred hands, Chimaera girt with flame,

A crowd of Gorgons, Harpies of foul wing,

And giant Geryon's triple-monstered shade.

Aeneas, shuddering with sudden fear,

Drew sword and fronted them with naked steel;

And, save his sage conductress bade him know

These were but shapes and shadows sweeping by,

His stroke had cloven in vain the vacant air.

Hence the way leads to that Tartarean stream

Of Acheron, whose torrent fierce and foul

Disgorges in Cocytus all its sands.

A ferryman of gruesome guise keeps ward

Upon these waters,—Charon, foully garbed,

With unkempt, thick gray beard upon his chin,

And staring eyes of flame; a mantle coarse,

All stained and knotted, from his shoulder falls,

As with a pole he guides his craft, tends sail,

And in the black boat ferries o'er his dead;—

Old, but a god's old age looks fresh and strong.

To those dim shores the multitude streams on—

Husbands and wives, and pale, unbreathing forms

Of high-souled heroes, boys and virgins fair,

And strong youth at whose graves fond parents mourned.

As numberless the throng as leaves that fall

When autumn's early frost is on the grove;

Or like vast flocks of birds by winter's chill

Sent flying o'er wide seas to lands of flowers.

All stood beseeching to begin their voyage

Across that river, and reached out pale hands,

In passionate yearning for its distant shore.

But the grim boatman takes now these, now those,

Or thrusts unpitying from the stream away.

Aeneas, moved to wonder and deep awe,

Beheld the tumult; “Virgin seer!” he cried, .

“Why move the thronging ghosts toward yonder stream?

What seek they there? Or what election holds

That these unwilling linger, while their peers

Sweep forward yonder o'er the leaden waves?”

To him, in few, the aged Sibyl spoke :

“Son of Anchises, offspring of the gods,

Yon are Cocytus and the Stygian stream,

By whose dread power the gods themselves do fear

To take an oath in vain. Here far and wide

Thou seest the hapless throng that hath no grave.

That boatman Charon bears across the deep

Such as be sepulchred with holy care.

But over that loud flood and dreadful shore

No trav'ler may be borne, until in peace

His gathered ashes rest. A hundred years

Round this dark borderland some haunt and roam,

Then win late passage o'er the longed-for wave.”

Aeneas lingered for a little space,

Revolving in his soul with pitying prayer

Fate's partial way. But presently he sees

Leucaspis and the Lycian navy's lord,

Orontes; both of melancholy brow,

Both hapless and unhonored after death,

Whom, while from Troy they crossed the wind-swept seas,

A whirling tempest wrecked with ship and crew.

There, too, the helmsman Palinurus strayed :

Who, as he whilom watched the Libyan stars,

Had fallen, plunging from his lofty seat

Into the billowy deep. Aeneas now