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,
Cocytus' lamentable waters spread:

Where the dark rock o'erhangs the' infernal lake,
And mingling streams eternal murmurs make.
First draw thy falchion, and on every side
Trench the black earth a cubit long and wide;
To all the shades around libations pour,
And o'er the' ingredient strew the hallow'd flour:
New wine and milk, with honey temper'd, bring,
And living water from the crystal spring,
Then the wan shades and feeble ghosts implore,
With promised offerings on thy native shore;
A barren cow, the stateliest of the isle,

And, heap'd with various wealth, a blazing pile:
These to the rest; but to the seer must bleed
A sable ram, the pride of all thy breed.
These solemn vows and holy offerings paid
To all the phantom nations of the dead;
Be next thy care the sable sheep to place
Full o'er the pit, and hellward turn their face:
But from the' infernal rite thine eye withdraw,
And back to ocean glance with reverend awe.
Sudden shall skim along the dusky glades
Thin airy shoals of visionary shades.
Then give command the sacrifice to haste,
Let the flay'd victims in the flame be cast,

And sacred vows, and mystic song applied
To grisly Pluto, and his gloomy bride.
Wide o'er the pool, thy falchion waved around
Shall drive the spectres from forbidden ground;
The sacred draught shall all the dead forbear,
Till awful from the shades arise the seer.
Let him, oraculous, the end, the way,
The turns of all thy future fate display,
Thy pilgrimage to come, and remnant of thy day.
'So speaking, from the ruddy orient shone
The morn conspicuous on her golden throne.
The goddess with a radiant tunic dress'd
My limbs, and o'er me cast a silken vest.
Long flowing robes, of purest white, array
The nymph that added lustre to the day:
A tiar wreath'd her head with many a fold;
Her waist was circled with a zone of gold.
Forth issuing then, from place to place I flew;
Rouse man by man, and animate my crew.

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Rise, rise, my mates! 'tis Circè gives command:

Our journey calls us; haste, and quit the land."
All rise and follow, yet depart not all,
For Fate decreed one wretched man to fall.

A youth there was, Elpenor was he named,
Not much for sense, nor much for courage, famed;
The youngest of our band, a vulgar soul,
Born but to banquet, and to drain the bowl.
He, hot and careless, on a turret's height
With sleep repair'd the long debauch of night:
The sudden tumult stirr'd him where he lay,
And down he hasten'd, but forgot the way;
Full endlong from the roof the sleeper fell,
And snapp'd the spinal joint, and waked in hell.

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,
Climb the tall bark, and launch into the main :
At once the mast we rear, at once unbind
The spacious sheet, and stretch it to the wind:
Then pale and pensive stand, with cares oppress'd,
And solemn horror saddens every breast.
A freshening breeze the magic power supplied,
While the wing'd vessel flew along the tide;
Our oars we shipp'd: all day the swelling sails
Full from the guiding pilot catch'd the gales.

'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
gods,

To speed our course, and waft us o'er the floods:
"So shall a barren heifer from the stall
Beneath the knife upon your altars fall;
So in our palace, at our safe return,
Rich with unnumber'd gifts the pile shall burn;
So shall a ram the largest of the breed,
Black as these regions, to Tiresias bleed."

‹ Thus solemn rites and holy vows we paid
To all the phantom nations of the dead.
Then died the sheep; a purple torrent flow'd,
And all the caverns smoked with streaming blood.