From here, the road turns off to Acheron, River of Hell; here, thick with muddy whirling, Cocytus boils with sand. Charon is here, The guardian of these mingling waters, Charon, Uncouth and filthy, on whose chin the hair Is a tangled mat, whose eyes protrude, are burning, Whose dirty cloak is knotted at the shoulder. He poles a boat, tends to the sail, unaided, Ferrying bodies in his rust-hued vessel. Old, but a god’s senility is awful In its raw greenness. To the bank come thronging Mothers and men, bodies of great-souled heroes, Their life-time over, boys, unwedded maidens, Young men whose fathers saw their pyres burning, Thick as the forest leaves that fall in autumn With early frost, thick as the birds to landfall From over the seas, when the chill of the year compels them To sunlight. There they stand, a host, imploring To be taken over first. Their hands, in longing, Reach out for the farther shore. But the gloomy boatman Makes choice among them, taking some, and keeping Others far back from the stream’s edge. Aeneas, Wondering, asks the Sibyl, “Why the crowding? What are the spirits seeking? What distinction Brings some across the livid stream, while others Stay on the farther bank?” She answers, briefly: “Son of Anchises, this is the awful river, The Styx, by which the gods take oath; the boatman Charon; those he takes with him are the buried, Those he rejects, whose luck is out, the graveless. It is not permitted him to take them over The dreadful banks and hoarse-resounding waters Till earth is cast upon their bones. They haunt These shores a hundred restless years of waiting Before they end postponement of the crossing.” Aeneas paused, in thoughtful mood, with pity Over their lot’s unevenness; and saw there, Wanting the honor given the dead, and grieving, Leucaspis, and Orontes, the Lycian captain, Who had sailed from Troy across the stormy waters, And drowned off Africa, with crew and vessel, And there was Palinurus, once his pilot, Who, not so long ago, had been swept over, Watching the stars on the journey north from Carthage. The murk was thick; Aeneas hardly knew him, Sorrowful in that darkness, but made question: “What god, O Palinurus, took you from us? Who drowned you in the deep? Tell me. Apollo Never before was false, and yet he told me You would be safe across the seas, and come Unharmed to Italy; what kind of promise Was this, to fool me with?” But Palinurus Gave him assurance:--“It was no god who drowned me, No falsehood on Apollo’s part, my captain, But as I clung to the tiller, holding fast To keep the course, as I should do, I felt it Wrenched from the ship, and I fell with it, headlong. By those rough seas I swear, I had less fear On my account than for the ship, with rudder