Breast stormily heaving; heart all but broke In yet untamed resistance to the yoke The God would fix, to break mind—human birth— To bind his messenger from Heav’n to Earth; While She, though pure, adoring, how not repine, Identity lost, e’en to be Divine!
’Twas instinct in her that rebelled; not she, The Prophetess, the Sibyl; for now see Her wrathful for her master’s honour:— “Thou, Trojan at His altar, and not a vow!
Deemest mighty mouth of His awful shrine Will open but to answer prayer from thine?”
Æneas had kept silence, not from fear, Or shame, but reverence; now he drew near, Entreating from the bottom of his heart: “Phœbus, Troy’s champion, when few took our part; Through whom Achilles died—whose kindly hands Led us o’er false seas, past perilous lands— O turn the shores where we have anchor cast, From the mirage they were to homes at last.
And adverse Gods and Goddesses, to all, I pray, if e’er Troy’s glory stirred your gall, Does not down-fallen Pergamus atone— Is Envy not content with heaps of stone— With Priam’s House uprooted? What are we, Mere remnant tossed till now on every sea?
Thee also, holy Prophetess, I ask; Free thy God’s cloudy riddles from their mask; In pity for me, who already know I am to rule Ausonia, unveil how, Where, and when, to found my City, replace Troy’s exiled Gods, Genii of our race; Nor trust thy renderings of what Fate weaves To the chance flutterings of autumn leaves; Chant; and be all transcribed; then, when, in pure Marble fanes, thy God is worshipped, be sure Kings after me shall treasure what is writ, And train up scholars to interpret it.”
God and Prophetess listened no more;— will Was wrestling to be its own mistress still.
A woman with a God! In vain she raves; Subduing lips that foam, breast swollen, waves Of inspiration stamp, rolling along, Apollo’s dictates on the Sibyl’s tongue, Till—again the hundred doors open wide— Phœbus to Æneas by her replied: “Think not thy work is done because at length Ocean’s dangers are escaped. All thy strength Will be tasked on land; though Latium’s lord Prepares to hail the offer of thy sword, Thou’llt wish thyself soon afar! Look! a flood— Tiber foaming to the sea—of men’s blood.
Horrors Simois, Xanthus showed might seem Repeated by thy loath fancy in a dream.
Nor even wanting to this war—fell war— An Achilles, Goddess born; Troy’s ill star, Queen Juno; and, of worse augury yet For Trojans, or, of snares that Fate has set For thy feet a surer than all beside— A foreign hostess, and a foreign bride.
Face trials; turn thy back upon no foe; By paths, however strait, Chance-opened, go.
Where wilt thou not in Italy beg aid?
If to no purpose, be not thou dismayed.
Fortune loves strange means; how but for me have known Thy dawn would break first from forth a Greek town?”
Æneas spoke not; for again the jar, Bellowing, shrieking, roaring—civil war Between Spirit, Divine, and human—This, In last contest to stand by what it is; Planning passages that lead nowhere, in or out, Darkening truths, perversities of doubt; Phœbus, if thundering, resolved and cold, Certain of victory, ne’er quitting hold; The other, a wild mare on a wild plain.
You heard the cold calm trainer shake the rein, Tear mutinous mouth with the cruel bit, Mock at the passion that resented it.
Then quiet; Æneas once more began: “Speak not of risks endurable by man; None daunt me; long since I foresaw the whole, Rehearsed what worst could happen in my soul.
I fear no ordeal; if Hell’s gate be here, As they say, and it front the darksome mere— Acheron’s wash—I crave it of thy grace, Holy One, to meet my sire face to face.
Never had I been parted from his side Till in an evil hour for me he died.
Not in the agony of that dread night, Troy’s ruin, did I lose him from my sight; On these shoulders bore I him ’mid the wreck, Though all Hell’s hounds were barking at my back.
On my voyagings best of comrades he, In mortal terrors, on every sea; Minding nothing how elements might rage— A heart that defied weaknesses of age!
Tell me the foemen that I would not dare To see him once more, pain I would not bear.
In the dead watches of the night he came, And bade me supplicate Thee in his name To unbar Hell’s gates, and to be my Guide.
Oh think that he is kneeling by my side!
Thy will is law; whate’er Thou wilt is done; Mercy we pray; rejoin us, Father, Son.
Others have been to whom was given the right, Living, to travel through the world of night.
Its doors, as Orpheus sounded lute and song, Opened to let the minstrel pass along; Fraternal tenderness has paved a way To and from twilight to radiant day; Alcides—did not friendship bring him down?
Theseus also—if but that!— Me, love’s crown, The noblest, filial piety, draws, Though into Tartarus’s very jaws!
By no bare title holdest thou in fee Avernus by gift from great Hecate; Thine leave to grant, with me the right of love To visit Hell—and I too count from Jove!”
“Easy,” replied the Sibyl, “the descent To Avernus; welcome all thither bent; Dis shuts none out; the task is, when the taste For sunshine revives, measure back the waste Wooded wilderness that Cocytus holds In its innumerable black-slime folds.
What hope for mortals flesh-clogged to retrace Their way! A few by Jupiter’s good grace, Or saints on earth, with blood Divine to aid, Of brief sojourn there stepping-stones have made To the skies.— But enough! Well that the sight Of thy Sire is a passionate delight; That thy fond heart’s self-satisfying sense Of duty done is a full recompense For risking the mad liberty to float Twice across noisome Styx in Charon’s boat; And twice view Tartarus,— Yet first receive The terms on which alone Thou hast thy leave; In a nest of dells retired is a grove, Darkened by shadows of the hills above; And a tree, sun-proof, whose dense branches hold Ever among them one of purest gold; Gold leafage, gold saplings supple, yet tough; Vain for any, though brave, and fond enough, To plunge in the Underworld; unless he Have tracked and plucked the Gold Bough off the Tree.
The Queen of Hades, Proserpine the Fair, Chooses offerings thence for her to wear, Never loses the tree glory; instead Of branch plucked a second straightway is bred, Thou, high and low, explore; and, if Thou find, Lay hold on it; should Fate have Thee designed, It will yield with ease, even joy; if not, Nor strength, nor steel could tear it from the spot.
And ’tis not all; another duty still Rests on thee, and a sadder, to fulfil.
While thou would’st learn the future in my cave, A friend has been lying dead, with no grave— To the entire Fleet a reproach, a shame.
First give his relics tomb, and rites, they claim.
So, may’st thou with clean hands thy way pursue; And realms forbid shall open to thy view.”
A tangled maze! With a past bleak and bare, A future of dim hopes, and certain care;— A corse blurring the foreground! And of whom?
Then, as Æneas paced the shore in gloom, Achates with him, see! a Body there!
Misenus, trumpeter, charioteer!
He drowned, and how? that horseman tried and good, Hard and intrepid spearman, who had stood The brunt of battle, as of rough sea-wave, Of Hector and Æneas comrade brave— There, like worthless seaweed, see! Misenus dead!
In eyes stark staring might almost be read An appeal as if to Heaven, and Fate, Against false friends who left him desolate!
And, true, ’twas pity touching on remorse, Which swept through the armament, when the corse Was drawn to the encampment on the shore.
The first thought, the Prince led, was to deplore A comrade; the next, the pyre, to proceed To raise, as to One who could intercede In Heaven, what an altar might have been.
A primeval forest that had never seen Woodman, or, profaning its silence, heard The horn of huntsman chasing beast or bird, Suddenly awoke to the frequent crash Of pitch-pine, ilex, and the mountain-ash, While heart of oak had to admit a wedge, And giants rolled down many a hill ledge.
In all the toil none bore sturdier part Than Æneas; for he, and with full heart, Grieved for a loyal ally; but his brain, With that central thought, took a wider train: “Forests as this,” he mused, “the whole land through!
How to track to one tree a single bough!
Yet”—as of Misenus—“could the Maid tell Ill news so truly, why not good as well?”
And ah! that instant, in his joyful sight, Alighting from blue sky, in soft, smooth flight, On the green turf a pair of milk-white doves Such as flit where his Mother, Venus, moves.
“After them! Oh! to guess whither they make, And match their speed whatever course they take!”
Fain would he think the rate was, as they flew, Ruled for pursuit to keep them just in view, To the dark arbour where a yellow glow Should flicker on the verdant turf below.
Hope not in vain; the pair, after brief pause For circling Avernus, and its death-jaws, Tower swiftly aloft; next, in straight line Glide to a tree, settle as by design.
The Hero arrives, and with heart aflame Marks, checkering green shadows, a gold gleam.
Upon a foreign stem the mistletoe Will in the woods a cluster of sprays grow, With berries saffron-hued in winter’s cold.
Thus, on the holm-oak swayed the Branch of Gold, Rustling its slight leafage in the soft wind; Coy—rather than resisting, disinclined— As Æneas plucked, in hot haste to bear His prize, and trust it to the Sibyl’s care.
Meanwhile, the Trojans thronged, the Dead to mourn With rites for which no thanks could it return.
First, they build, a marvel for bulk, the pyre— Pitch-pine for flame, split oak to feed the fire, Cypress, Death’s tribute, armour to remind Of the warrior, twigs the logs to bind.
Vast the heap; but, with oil and incense, soon Fire had done its work; and when it died down, All being gone that of the mass could burn, They closed the ashes, wine-washed, in the urn.
Then Chorinœus sprinkled thrice the ring Of mourners with pure water from the spring, And bade the Shade, leaving the world above, Last farewell words of sorrowing and love.
Yet was the debt the Prince was proud to owe But half-paid to a friend in weal and woe, Till rose a sepulchre, stately and high, For th’ honoured dust enshrined therein to lie.
Topped by oar and horn, sword, and spear, and shield, To proclaim the champion of sea and field, It crowns the airy Cape that boasts the name, And through the ages seals a Trojan’s fame.
So, drowned Misenus need not wander more Between two worlds on Styx’s groaning shore, Dragging soulless flesh—choke in a foul fen, Companionless for Shadows, and for Men.
No more an unburied suppliant this, But Hero, Pilot trumpeting in bliss!
And, their consciences purged, with duties done, All turned to fresh cares, leaving Misenus alone.
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: 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!”
“Far from me, were I able, to express Agonies of the Lost, their hopelessness!
Enough their names who sinned;— here, hurled to Dis By lightning at bottom of the abyss Roll Earth’s sons the Titans; and I saw there The Aloeid Twins, who scaled upper air, Piling mount on mount; by brute strength alone Tried to storm Olympus, and Jove dethrone Salmoneus too, and the price his pride Cost him, for choosing impious to ride Mimicking lightnings’ flash, the thunder’s roar Fool! to ape Jove with his steeds as they bore His car through Elis, torches as they cast Their smoky gleams, trumpets’ quavering blast.
Brief the trickeries of that crazed career, Joy for man on Earth’s stage to act God’s peer; And swift climax when, amid storms, there fell Bolts that drove the pretender down to Hell!
Near him Earth’s nursling, Tityus, I saw, Stretched o’er nine acres, with, to fill its maw, A hook-beaked vulture clawing at his breast For the liver e’er eaten, ne’er at rest; Since growing ever, putting on new flesh; So, the Thing gropes for dainties ever fresh.
Myriad Crime’s forms—Dis for all has room.
Kinship that should nurse kindness, rings its doom; Virtues that have turned strangers into friends, Oft change brothers and sisters into fiends.
Children, instead of vying to maintain Parents, have beaten them, and even slain.
A traitor to human nature and hearth Seduces her who owes to him her birth.
Lawyers, snapping ties sacred as of blood, Have spun about their clients webs of fraud.
Misers have gone on hatching gold from gold— A host of them—refusing to withhold Grains from the hoard, although it were to save Nearest that should be dearest from the grave.
Guests—till schooled here—have thought theft of a wife Well worth the risk of forfeiture of life.
Liegemen, loved, aggrandized, have drawn the sword, Himself had girded on, to stab their Lord.
Statesmen have abused a fond people’s trust, To sell and tread its freedom in the dust.
Others, having dammed law-making at the source, Opened, closed locks as gapes or shuts a purse.
The course of life cannot be ruled so straight, Homes so pure, opportunities so great, Reasons so full and plain for doing well, But that they may be used as roads to Hell.
”Penalties”?— As manifold, various.
The Lapithæ know it, Pirithous, Tantalus, Ixion. I have held my breath At black rock threatening, not, welcome Death, But—for Shadows may feel—mangled, crushed bones, Dragging eternally over jagged stones.— That, in act to fall, ever seemed in air.— And I have seen Hell’s cooks a feast prepare; Spread couches with purple, and on gold-rests.
Then—dainties in view—as the famished guests Seated themselves in hungry haste to sup, The eldest Fury, screaming, started up From where she lay, and, waving torch alight Swept banquet, banqueters, into cold night.
On some the doom to push a mass up hill, And, when it slips, as slip it ever will, Still push; for some, e’en worse, the Wheel; and then— Limbs healed—to be broken again, again.