Soon shalt thou reach old ocean's utmost ends, Where to the main the shelving shore descends; The barren trees of Proserpine's black woods, Poplars and willows trembling o'er the floods: There fix thy vessel in the lonely bay, And enter there the kingdoms void of day: Where Phlegeton's loud torrents rushing down, Hiss in the flaming gulf of Acheron; And where, slow rolling from the Stygian bed, Where the dark rock o'erhangs the' infernal lake, And, heap'd with various wealth, a blazing pile: And sacred vows, and mystic song applied 66 Rise, rise, my mates! 'tis Circè gives command: Our journey calls us; haste, and quit the land." A youth there was, Elpenor was he named, The rest crowd round me with an eager look; I met them with a sigh, and thus bespokeAlready, friends! ye think your toils are o'er, Your hopes already touch your native shore: Alas! far otherwise the nymph declares, Far other journey first demands our cares; To tread the' uncomfortable paths beneath, The dreary realms of darkness and of death: To seek Tiresias' awful shade below, And thence our fortunes and our fates to know." 6 My sad companions heard in deep despair; Frantic they tore their manly growth of hair; To earth they fell; the tears began to rain; But tears in mortal miseries are vain. Sadly they fared along the seabeat shore; Still heaved their hearts, and still their eyes ran o'er. The ready victims at our bark we found, The sable ewe, and ram, together bound: For swift as thought the goddess had been there, And thence had glided, viewless as the air: The paths of gods what mortal can survey? Who eyes their motion, who shall trace their way? BOOK XI. The Argument. THE DESCENT INTO HELL. Ulysses continues his narration-How he arrived at the land of the Cimmerians, and what ceremonies he performed to invoke the dead. The manner of his descent, and the apparition of the shades: his conversation with Elpenor, and with Tiresias, who informs him in a prophetic manner of his fortunes to come. He meets his mother Anticlea, from whom he learns the state of his family. He sees the shades of the ancient heroines, afterwards of the heroes, and converses in particular with Agamemnon and Achilles. Ajax keeps at a sullen distance, and disdains to answer him. He then beholds Tityus, Tantalus, Sysiphus, Hercules: till he is deterred from further curiosity by the apparition of horrid spectres, and the cries of the wicked in torments. 'Now to the shores we bend, a mournful train, 'Now sunk the sun from his aerial height, And o'er the shaded billows rush'd the night:, When lo! we reach'd old Ocean's utmost bounds, Where rocks control his waves with everduring mounds. There, in a lonely land and gloomy cells, The dusky nation of Cimmeria dwells; The sun ne'er views the' uncomfortable seats, When radiant he advances, or retreats: Unhappy race! whom endless night invades, Clouds the dull air, and wraps them round in shades. 'The ship we moor on these obscure abodes; Disbark the sheep, an offering to the gods; And hellward bending, o'er the beach descry The dolesome passage to the' infernal sky. The victims, vow'd to each Tartarean power, Eurylochus and Perimedes bore. Here open'd hell, all hell I here implored, And from the scabbard drew the shining sword; And trenching the black earth on every side, A cavern form'd, a cubit long and wide. New wine, with honey-temper'd milk, we bring, The living waters from the crystal spring; O'er these was strew'd the consecrated flour, And on the surface shone the holy store. Now the wan shades we hail, the' infernal To speed our course, and waft us o'er the floods: ‹ Thus solemn rites and holy vows we paid |