Meanwhile Æneas sees in the retired vale a secluded grove with brakes and rustling woods, and the river of 25 Lethe,[226] which floats along by those abodes of peace. Round it were flying races and tribes untold: even as in the meadows when bees in calm summer-tide settle on flower after flower, and stream over the milk-white lilies, the humming fills the plain. Startled at the sudden 30 sight, Æneas wonderingly inquires what it means, what are those waters in the distance, or who the men that are thronging the banks in crowds so vast. To him his father Anchises: “They are spirits to whom Destiny has promised new bodies, there at the side of Lethe’s water, drinking 35 the wave of carelessness, and the long draught of oblivion. In truth I have long wished to tell you of them and show them before you, to recount the long line of my kindred, that you may rejoice with me now that Italy is found.” “Oh, my father! and must we think that there are souls that fly hence aloft into the upper air, and thus return to the sluggish fellowship of the body? can their longing for light be so mad, as this?” “I will tell you, my son, 5 nor hold you longer in doubt.” So replies Anchises, and unfolds the story in order. “Know, first, that heaven and earth, and the watery plains, and the Moon’s lucid ball, and Titan’s starry fires are kept alive by a spirit within: a mind pervading each 10 limb stirs the whole frame and mingles with the mighty mass. Hence spring the races of men and beasts, and living things with wings, and the strange forms that Ocean carries beneath his marble surface. These particles have a fiery glow, a heavenly nature, struggling against 15 the clogs of corrupting flesh, the dulness of limbs of clay and bodies ready to die. Hence come their fears and lusts, their joys and griefs: nor can they discern the heavenly light, prisoned as they are in night and blind dungeon walls. Nay, when life’s last ray has faded from 20 them, not even, then, poor wretches, are they wholly freed from ill, freed from every plague of the flesh: those many taints must needs be ingrained strangely in the being, so long as they have grown with it. So they are schooled with punishment, and pay in suffering for ancient ill: 25 some are hung up and dispread to the piercing winds: others have the stain of wickedness washed out under the whelming gulf, or burnt out with fire: each is chastised in his own spirit: then we are sped through the breadth of Elysium, while some few remain to inhabit these happy 30 plains, till the lapse of ages, when time’s cycle is complete, has cleansed the ingrained blot and left a pure residue of heavenly intelligence, the flame of essential ether. All of these, when they have rounded the circle