VIRGIL.

THE UNDERWORLD.

(From the "Æneid.”)

FACING the porch itself, in the jaws of the gate of the dead,
Grief, and Remorse the Avenger, have built their terrible bed.
There dwells pale-cheeked Sickness, and Old Age sorrowful-eyed,
Fear, and the temptress Famine, and Hideous Want at her side,
Grim and temendous shapes. There Death with Labor is joined,
Sleep, half-brother of Death, and the Joys unclean of the mind.
Murderous Battle is camped on the threshold. Fronting the door
The iron cells of the Furies, and frenzied Strife, evermore
Wreathing her serpent tresses with garlands dabbled in gore.

Thick with gloom, an enormous elm in the midst of the way Spreads its time-worn branches and limbs: false Dreams, we are told,

Make their abode thereunder, and nestle to every spray.
Many and various monsters, withal, wild things to behold,
Lie in the gateway stabled - the awful Centaurs of old;
Soyllas with forms half-human; and there with his hundred hands
Dwells Briareus; and the shapeless Hydra of Lerna's lands,
Horribly yelling; in flaming mail the Chimæra arrayed;
Gorgons and Harpies, and one three-bodied and terrible Shade.

Clasping his sword, Æneas in sudden panic of fear

Points its blade at the legion; and had not the Heaven-taught seer
Warned him the phantoms are thin apparitions, clothed in a vain
Semblance of form, but in substance a fluttering bodiless train,
Idly his weapon had slashed the advancing shadows in twain.

Here is the path to the river of Acheron, ever by mud
Clouded, forever seething with wild, insatiate flood
Downward, and into Cocytus disgorging its endless sands.
Sentinel over its waters an awful ferryman stands,

Charon, grisly and rugged; a growth of centur
Hoary and rough on his chin; as a flaming
Hung in a loop from his shoulders a fol
Now with his pole impelling the he
Urging his steel-gray bark with i
Aged in years, but a god's old age.

Down to the bank of the river the str
Mothers, and men, and the lifeless bo

Generous heroes, boys that
Youths to the death pile ca

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Voices they heard, and an infinite wailing, as onward they bore,
Spirits of infants sobbing at Death's immediate door,

Whom, at a mother's bosom, and strangers to life's sweet breath,
Fate's dark day took from us, and drowned in untimeliest death.
Near them are those who, falsely accused, died guiltless, although
Not without trial, or verdict given, do they enter below;
Here, with his urn, sits Minos the judge, convenes from within
Silent ghosts to the council, and learns each life and its sin.
Near them inhabit the sorrowing souls, whose innocent hands
Wrought on themselves their ruin, and strewed their lives on the
sands,

Hating the glorious sunlight. Alas! how willingly they

Now would endure keen want, hard toil, in the regions of day!

Fate forbids it; the loveless lake with its waters of woe

Holds them, and nine times round them entwined, Styx bars them below.

THE VISION OF THE FUTURE.

(From the "Æneid.")

[Æneas meets in the Elysian Fields his father, Anchises, who shows him their most illustrious descendants.]

TURNING his eyes, Æneas sees broad battlements placed
Under the cliffs on his left, by a triple rampart incased;
Round them in torrents of ambient fire runs Phlegethon swift,
River of Hell, and the thundering rocks sends ever adrift.
One huge portal in front upon pillars of adamant stands;
Neither can mortal might, nor the heavens' own warrior bands,
Rend it asunder. An iron tower rears over the door,
Where Tisiphone seated in garments dripping with gore
Watches the porch, unsleeping, by day and by night evermore.
Hence come groans on the breezes, the sound of a pitiless flail,
Rattle of iron bands, and the clanking of fetters that trail.

Silent the hero stands, and in terror rivets his eyes.
"What dire shapes of impiety these? Speak, priestess !" he cries.
"What dread torment racks them, and what shrieks yonder arise ?"
She in return: "Great chief of the Teucrian hosts, as is meet,
Over the threshold of sinners may pass no innocent feet.
Hecate's self, who set me to rule the Avernian glade,

Taught me of Heaven's great torments, and all their terror dis played.

Here reigns dread Rhadamanthus, a king no mercy that knows,
Chastens and judges the guilty, compels each soul to disclose