"O Father, may we think it then, that souls may get them hence To upper air and take once more their bodies' hinderance? 720 How can such mad desire be to win the worldly day?" "Son, I shall tell thee all thereof, nor hold thee on the way." Therewith he takes the tale and all he openeth orderly: "In the beginning: earth and sky and flowing fields of sea, And stars that Titan fashioned erst, and gleaming moony ball, An inward spirit nourisheth, one soul is shed through all, That quickeneth all the mass, and with the mighty thing is blent: Thence are the lives of men and beasts and flying creatures sent, And whatsoe'er the sea-plain bears beneath its marble face; Quick in these seeds is might of fire and birth of heavenly place, 730 Ere earthly bodies' baneful weight upon them comes to lie, Ere limbs of earth bewilder them and members made to die. Hence fear they have, and love, and joy, and grief, and ne'er may find The face of heaven amid the dusk and prison strait and blind: Yea, e'en when out of upper day their life at last is borne, Not all the ill of wretched men is utterly outworn, Not all the bane their bodies bred; and sure in wondrous wise The plenteous ill they bore so long engrained in them it lies: So therefore are they worn by woes and pay for ancient wrong: And some of them are hung aloft the empty winds among; 740 And some, their stain of wickedness amidst the water's heart Is washed away; amidst the fire some leave their worser part; And each his proper death must bear: then through Elysium wide Are we sent forth; a scanty folk in joyful fields we bide, Till in the fulness of the time, the day that long hath been Hath worn away the inner stain and left the spirit clean, A heavenly essence, a fine flame of all unmingled air. All these who now have turned the wheel for many and many a year God calleth unto Lethe's flood in mighty company, That they, remembering nought indeed, the upper air may see 750 Once more, and long to turn aback to worldly life anew." Anchises therewithal his son, and her the Sibyl drew Amid the concourse, the great crowd that such a murmuring sent, And took a mound whence they might see the spirits as they went In long array, and learn each face as 'neath their eyes it came.