Part 3

The Prince and men, the Sibyl guiding, went By a rough track until a yawning rent In a grim cliff disclosed a cavern; day Was blocked by a dense grove; and in front lay A dim dark pool; from its black lips a breath Steamed into the arched sky, carrying death. On its banks sounded never a bird’s song; Whence “Avernus,” “birdless” in the Greek tongue. Hard-by the Sibyl hallowed victims, four Steers dusk-coloured; proceeding first to pour Wine on their heads, and on the altar burn Bristles from between the horns she had shorn; Next, by blood calling Hecate, Divine In Heaven as Hell, to further their design. The Prince then to the Furies’ kith and kin— Vain to try their Three vengeful selves to win— Slaughtered a black-fleeced lamb; to Hades’ Queen A cow untaught what mother’s joys had been; And, lastly, after sunset, to the King Of Tartarus, a vast, rich offering— Whole bulls’ entrails upon the altars thrown, With oil to sting the flames to hiss and groan. But the sun rose, and earth began to growl Underfoot, dogs in the grey dawn to howl, And on wooded heights leaves waved in still air, As Nature felt the Goddess coming there. “Away, unsanctified; far from the grove,” Threatens the Sibyl; “as your lives ye love! Alone, Æneas, sword unsheathed, come Thou; Need for stout heart, for all thy courage now!” Prophetess possessed, she dared the dark cave; Step by step followed he, with soul as brave.

Gods, whose the Spirit-empire, and, ye, hosts— Chaos, Phlegethon, Powers too—of ghosts, Dumb in a dumb world, grant I may unfold Things, of which my spirit by yours is told. Cloudy must my story needs be to him Who reads. All to the pilgrims’ selves was dim! Phantom-like, and alone with night, they passed Through Dis’s kingdom, lifeless, joyless, waste, As, pale and ghostly will a forest seem, Between pale clouds and the moon’s grudging beam.

The first stage Orcus, where before the gate, In forecourt, watchful, if with closed eyes, wait— Padlocks on Hell’s jaws—Mourning, vengeful Care, In many aspects; pale Disease and Fear, Age looking back, Hunger counselling ill, With Neediness that numbs the nerve of will:— Forms of terror they all; and, no less dread, Death, and Sleep, his cousin, sharing one bed; Labour with a lash, and ill joys that taste Like honey in the mouth, and lay Mind waste; While in guard-houses opposite lodge War, And Carnage driving a funeral car; The Furies too—each in iron-barred cell— Police-runners on Earth, hangmen in Hell; And mad Discord, wreathing her locks of gore With vipers borrowed from her neighbours’ store. For centre an old elm, immense in girth, Keeps sunless, barren, a wide space of earth. Rumour gives it to idle Dreams, which browze Upon the leaves, and hang from all the boughs. Nor far away in the same region dwells Many a strange freak of whom legend tells; Centaurs in the doorway, Scylla, fish, maid, Briareus hundred-headed, arrayed In flames, Chimæra, and, bellowing beast, The Hydra, Harpies that pollute a feast, Gorgons looking cold death, and the Earth-King, Who grew a fresh third body at each fling. No stain on Æneas if monsters made Him grip and wave at the dour crew his blade, Until warned by the Sibyl that they were Bodiless Shades, invulnerable as air. Passing unharmed, they now approached the shore Where Acheron, Styx, Cocytus meet, and pour, In one vast whirlpool, mingled filth and sand, And saw upon the bank old Charon stand. Squalid ferryman, he keeps watch and ward Over all these waters and streams; a beard Shaggy, dirty-white, from his chin flows down; Frowzy his cloak tied by a knot; a frown Sits on his brow, o’er eyes twin pools of fire. The barge, poled, sails to help, is, like the sire, In iron-rusty age, but crude-green, good To ship Shades numberless across the flood. In truth masses rush pell-mell to the bank, Dead of all sorts, without order, or rank; Heroes that in their country’s cause had bled, Aged wives and husbands, boys, girls unwed, Youths leaving parents to inscribe the stone, And linger through unwelcome years alone:— As many as the leaves Autumn’s first frost Brings down; as winged swarms that have ocean crossed To escape in warm lands harsh winter’s blasts. Pitiful the entreaties to be passed Over. Some Charon takes, rejects the rest— Perhaps with “sad” heart hid inside that rugged breast! Well might Æneas wonder at the haste To reach o’er those waters yon gloomy waste. “Cocytus this,” the Maid, “that Styx, in whose Name Gods dare not swear, and then break their vows; They mark the boundaries of life and death, Between the world above, the world beneath; Spirit cannot claim to pass either flood While it must drag behind it flesh and blood. A way has been appointed and decreed, By funeral rites, for it to be freed From that now mere burden; who lack them pray The Ferryman in vain; driven away, They tread a hundred years the same dull track, Till, less in hope than apathy straying back, They are—disbodied—afloat! It may be, If rarely, that friendship, or charity, Late informed, or remorse for crime, has laid White bones in earth, and thus a debt repaid. Æneas heard, believed; for by him stood, Witnesses to fortune of storm and flood, And Hell’s hard rules, two whom he recognised As of Troy’s remnant, but at sea surprised; By a wild south wind robbed of life and tomb. Leucaspis, Orontes, they; and in doom Alike, though companionless, save for woe, Palinurus!” Exclaimed Æneas: “So Diedst?” but Phœbus promised: “None lost at sea, And all to disembark in Italy?” “The Oracle spoke truth;” the Pilot said: “Clinging to the helm, the fourth morn I made Italy; the while, by the Seas I swear, I feared not for myself; my only care Was for thy ship, its steersman lost, and helm, A prey for waves and gales to overwhelm. But I landed, began to climb the cliff, When brute shore-men taking me, soaked and stiff, And unarmed, for sea-prize, attacked and slew. Then, stripping my body naked, they threw Into the sea, by turns there to abide, And on the beach, at pleasure of the tide. Oh, by the heaven’s cheerful light and airs, By thy Sire’s memory, thy hopes and cares For thy son! to Velia, returning, steer— My body floats hard-by—give it a bier! Or why, my Prince, not take a shorter mode Of lifting my intolerable load? Whate’er thou wilt, thou canst, with, by thy side, A Divine Mother for thy shield and guide. How else could living mortal hope to pass Such rivers, and the Stygian morass? Let me cross with thee; all my griefs will cease; I shall have died at last, and be at peace;”— “Unburied,” cried the Maid: “without command From the Furies, presume to tread their strand! Stop importuning for what Fate denies; Heaven has not forgotten thy death-cries; Thy murderers shall avow their foul crime, And thou be honoured to the end of time; For I can teach thee more, to ease the ache Of waiting:—the Cape o’er thy tomb shall take Thy name; seamen, as, doubling it, they sail, Shall muse upon thy death, and tell the tale.” They parted, he to tramp those marshes drear, Where years are moments, a moment a year. And living spirits to dead bodies bound Pace in a tedious circle round and round; Still, with his pain a joy—“My Cape, my name!” For Death is ne’er so dead as to be dead to Fame!

Farewell to him. Æneas, with his Guide, Approached, not unobserved, the black stream’s side Charon was on the watch as they pursued Their way along the sad and silent wood. Scarcely had they emerged when he began To scold, and Æneas first: “Halt, armed man, Whoever thou art! No step further! Why Wouldest thou cross? For ghosts alone I ply Bound for the realms of slumb’rous Night and Sleep. Not for live bodies do I ferry keep! Do I not well remember how I crossed With Hercules on board, much to my cost?— Think! Zeus’s son, incomparably strong, Fastened Cerberus with a leathern thong, And drew trembling from under Pluto’s throne! Who paid for the sacrilege? I alone. When Theseus and Pirithous dared try To carry off our Queen, who culprit? I!” “Waste wrath!” quoth the Sibyl: “Thy hound may save His bark to fright the pale Shades from his cave. Pluto’s honour is safe; feel no alarms; ’Tis Æneas famed for piety and arms! Hither has he descended from above To pay his Sire the homage of his love. Though not moved thou by tenderness like his, See the Branch! Render fealty to This!” At the sight rarely seen the anger sank, Awe followed; straight backed Charon for the bank, Clearing bench and deck of many a Shade To make room for Æneas and the Maid. Starting with its unwonted weight once more, The coracle groaned, leaked at every pore; But lasted out, and at the water’s edge, Landed in clammy mud and grey-green sedge. From where against the landing-place he lay, Cerberus opened his three jaws to bay Strangers, when the Sibyl, seeing the snakes Round the neck arching, threw drugged honey-cakes. The ravening throats licked the whole up; then— While the monstrous limbs grovelled o’er the den— Bidding the rivers none re-cross farewell, The Pair are through the gate, and inside Hell.

The Underworld, an Empire manifold, Is famed within it two main States to hold;— For the Damned, and Fiends to torment them, Dis, The Elysian fields for Saints in bliss.— But Spirits of the Dead, ere they can come Before their Judge to be assigned a home Among the Blest or Sinners, undergo Two stages of probation; first, we know, For it to be on due inspection clear They are qualified as Ghosts; and, next, where To prepare for trial.— From graves men rise Shadows, bodiless, but as Death’s surprise Caught them; and therefore shadows of the whole, Of Body with its accidents, and Soul. Such—Ghosts—they wake on Acheron’s dark shore: Such by grim Charon are they ferried o’er; As such they show when rapping at Hell’s gate; And are sorted in vestibules to wait. A few mortals, and living, there have been Who, by the Gods’ leave, in a day have seen The whole Nether World; but e’en its wide marge, Reserved for Untried, would take men at large Their lives to traverse. Reckon! the huge space Needed to lodge the dead of human race! Expectants of a summons to be tried For the lives they led, and the deaths they died! On probation for abjuring Earth and Sun When their work above was not fully done! For being here before it had begun! Causes peopling this land of Little Ease Myriad! body’s accidents, disease, A wild beast’s claws, a sudden east-wind’s blight; Riches, poverty; daring and affright; Jealousies of nations, brothers; the smart Of love rejected, and a broken heart: Hope become despair, as past, present schemes Melt all into the fairy-land of dreams. The victims—“Legion”—seeming still alive— Wait here, distributed in Circles five; Creatures of strange aspect, Earth’s rust inlaid On spirit bearing it without flesh to aid. Wanted a world to lodge the whole; and still Continual accretions, plain, vale, hill, Forest, are reclaimed from Immensity, To hold this wreckage of humanity.

The first Circle to which were drawing near Æneas and his Guide, might force a tear From hearts of iron; for the entire air Was but a storm of infantile despair; One scream—plaints of robbery of the share In sweet life to which each is born an heir. Only, clasped to their mother’s breasts, of all Promised at birth, they have—a funeral! In the next Circle, less by one degree Adverse their lot who died through perjury; For they can claim revision of their cause By eternal justice, if not man’s laws. Minos holds his high Court; sifts hearts and lives; A mute jury through Urns its verdict gives. Acquittal will not breath of life restore; But the appellant shuns his fellow Shades no more. In the third Circle a sad folk abide, Who go always wondering why they died. Their hands are wet and red with blood they spilt; And yet no neighbour charges them with guilt. Accusers, sternest, themselves keep, within; “Guilty,” they plead; unpardonable sin. If a joy, ’tis but to avow their shame; The story’s essence always is the same: “Fool I! So wholly hateful did it seem— Torture to my eyes—slant of a sun beam; Needs shut it out forthwith—so simply how, As by sending soul, body straight below?”— Next moment! if penury, mean toil were The price for breathing once more Earth’s free air, Gladly would all accept Man’s vilest lot, But Hell’s and Heaven’s laws permit it not. Slow Acheron is their eternal bound, With unamiable Styx coiled ninefold around!

A fourth Circle holds within confines wide “I Campi Dolorosi”; therein hide In secluded alleys, and myrtle grove, Those eaten through with leprosy of love. Death kills it not; for a multitude haunt The bowers, melancholy music chant. With Procris, Laodamia, the rest, The wound, unhealed, still bleeding in her breast, Tyrian Dido roamed in a great wood. Æneas in the leafy twilight stood, Uncertain; as, at the month’s dawn, we doubt If it be moon, or cloud flitting about. Soon recognition, love; and, with them both, Tears, shame, remembrance of his plighted troth: “Then, ’twas truth,” he cried, “floated o’er the sea— Dead—and by thy own hand—and, Queen, for Me! But by the Stars, by all the Gods I know, By what Pow’rs punish perjuries below— Against, I swear, my heart’s will, by commands Divine, I left thy shore for other lands. To please, not myself, but because I must, I pace Shadow-land, mouldy with the rust, Miseries, aches of folly and of crime,— Accumulated hoardings of old Time. An instrument I of the Gods’ fixed plan; Yet even thus would have rebelled as man, Faced the penalties, had I been so vain As to imagine the excess of pain My parting would cause thee! In pity, stay! Whom flyest thou? I have so much to say! And only one poor moment Fate allows! Rob not of this, the last it grants our vows!” As fruitless task to seek by words to slake Fury of a furnace, as to re-make A broken heart, or back to life surprise Killed fondness.—On earth she fixed sullen eyes; Moved by his prayers no more than by a smile Of Venus would be cliff on Paros’ isle. At last, though long his sad remorse pursued, Gathering her strength, she regained the wood.

Their route resumed, they reached a land where air Had a stir as of life; hither repair War lords; here the heroes of old fights meet— Adrastus, Parthenopæus; here greet Æneas friends from Ilium, whose doom Himself had witnessed, wept for, at the tomb; And now re-wept, beholding each a Shade, Though, like Idæus, in bright armour clad, And charioteering. On left and right, Not with one look content, they throng; delight To find pretexts to keep him, walk beside; Question why he came, and how long might bide. Not so with the Greeks Agamemnon led; Seeing Æneas’s drawn sword, some fled As once to their Fleet; all quaked; some would shout, Mouths gaped, and the cry, a ghost, quavered out. Shamed at the sight, Æneas, gazing there As they shrank before him, became aware Of a Ghost intent upon their dismay— A Shade continuing the disarray In which life had fled; hands, nostrils and ears Lopped off by vengeful, jealous swords and spears; Lace-work of gashes; the Shade shivered o’er Dishonouring wounds, and bent, striving sore To hide them, and himself.— Hardly, at last Æneas knew; and, with tears flowing fast, Forced him to turn: “Knight, Prince, Deiphobus, Whose the force, will, to have outraged thee thus? I had heard, on the death-night of our Town, On a pile slain thou laid’st thee dying down. Thy body I found not, but I addressed Thrice farewell, consigning thy soul to rest.” “No pious kindness,” answered Priam’s son, “Friendship could require, hast thou left undone. To Fate, and the Greek Murderess I owe Horrors I bore on earth, my shame below; She made my flesh my tomb, epitaph writ Thereon, and on my ghost has graven it! Thou knowest—how forget?—the lying joy Of the last, the funeral night of Troy. The Traitress through the festal city led A chorus of Bacchantes, at its head Waving a flaming torch; and, with the cry Of ‘Evan,’ from the Citadel on high, Summoned her ambushed Argives.— I meanwhile, Worn with the day’s cares, unsuspecting guile— Least of all in my new-made Wife—in sleep, Unbroken as quiet death’s self, sweet, deep, Lay in my baleful chamber, whence my Bride Had stolen all arms, even from my side My trusty sword.— Then she invites within Menelaus—purgation for old sin! Lo! he, and Ulysses, arch fiend, and She, With Me unarmed—Why more?—Dost thou not see? Gods, whom I worshipped, have not I a right To claim like for like? Will Ye not requite? But Thou; say, what mischance on sea or land, Caprice of Fortune, or the Gods’ command, Has sentenced thee in life to wander here, Away from sunlight, and glad household cheer?” A story long to tell; and longer still Had been, were time Below, for good or ill, Not measured for guests from the Upper Air By speed of rosy Dawn’s four horses there. But for Æneas, with half Day’s course run, Not yet had the decisive stage begun. Perforce the Sibyl warned against delay; Nor thought Deiphobus his friend to stay. Though bowed by unimaginable ill, He faded into the Dark, to fulfil His fate, with Adieu; “a high lot enjoy! Be glory thine, and found a greater Troy!”

The fifth Circle left, they desired by haste To pay time lost in grieving for the past. Where the road forked, they took the right, that led To Elysium; but, turning his head, Æneas stood—bewildered, and in awe; For, backed by a huge range of cliffs, he saw, Extending far, behind a triple wall, A city that one might a kingdom call, Girt by waters—Phlegethon their dread name— That whirl echoing rocks, and floods of flame. Then, if that torrent of fire could be crossed, What of the adamantine gates? Where host Of men, nay, Gods of high Heaven, with pow’r To tear those from their storm-defying tow’r? And, as if this were not enough to keep Dis safe, Tisiphone, who needs no sleep, Sits guard in blood-red robe beside the door, Reckoning each pulsation of the roar, Every whizz of the lash, moan of pain, Grating of iron, rattling of the chain. Æneas heard too; his feet in fear clove To the ground as frozen; he could not move From the spot he trod. “What sins punished there, And how? Whose those hoarse wailings of despair?” Repelled—attracted: his unuttered thought She answered: “Ask not of me to be brought Within; none guiltless enter but, like me, They set in charge under Queen Hecate. Herself, installing me, vouchsafed to tell The system on which Heaven peoples Hell. Committals hither are on sentence giv’n By Rhadamanthus, righteous as Heav’n. A sinner joys in craft that has concealed His crime in life; but here it stands revealed Blazing as the Sun; how vain cunning when Tisiphone hauls the convict, grieved then For old triumphs; in her right hand the scourge, In her left snakes. She screams the while to urge Her savage pair of sisters to make haste From banks of dim Cocytus for a feast! The Trials living men may not attend, Or the dire chastisements in which they end, But—for so much is lawful—thou shalt see The Prison’s threshold. At a sign from me, Look! Gates of Adamant have opened wide, Shrieking in loud protest; on either side, The Fury, and a Hydra, grisly sight, That hisses from fifty black jaws its spite; While Tartarus beyond them plunges down Full twice the space from red-hot Phlegethon To the blue vault of Ether.— Mark the twain, And thank thy fate for being spared my pain Of visiting the dungeons they control. Noting unending torturings of soul!”