And howling dogs in glimmering light advance, Ere Hecat came.--"Far hence be souls prophane!" The Sibyl cryed--"and from the grove abstain! Now, Trojan, take the way thy fates afford; Assume thy courage, and unsheath thy sword." She said, and passed along the gloomy space; The prince pursued her steps with equal pace. Ye realms, yet unrevealed to human sight Ye gods, who rule the regions of the night! Ye gliding ghosts! permit me to relate The mystic wonders of your silent state. Obscure they went through dreary shades, that led Along the waste dominions of the dead. Thus wander travellers in woods by night, By the moon's doubtful and malignant light, When Jove in dusky clouds involves the skies, And the faint crescent shoots by fits before their eyes. Just in the gate, and in the jaws of hell, Revengeful Cares and sullen Sorrows dwell, And pale Diseases, and repining Age, Want, Fear, and Famine's unresisted rage; Here Toils, and Death, and Deaths half-brother, Sleep, (Forms terrible to view) their centry keep; With anxious Pleasures of a guilty mind, Deep Frauds before, and open Force behind; The Furies' iron beds; and Strife, that shakes Her hissing tresses, and unfolds her snakes. Full in the midst of this infernal road, An elm displays her dusky arms abroad: The god of sleep there hides his heavy head, And empty dreams on every leaf are spread. Of various forms unnumbered spectres more, Centaurs, and double shapes, besiege the door. Before the passage, horrid Hydra stands, And Briareus with all his hundred hands; Gorgons, Geryon with his triple frame; And vain Chimæra vomits empty flame. The chief unsheathed his shining steel, prepared, Though seized with sudden fear, to force the guard, Offering his brandished weapon at their face; Had not the Sibyl stopped his eager pace, And told him what those empty phantoms were-- Forms without bodies, and impassive air. Hence to deep Acheron they take their way, Whose troubled eddies, thick with ooze and clay, Are whirled aloft, and in Cocytus lost: There Charon stands, who rules the dreary coast-- A sordid god: down from his hoary chin A length of beard descends, uncombed, unclean: His eyes, like hollow furnaces on fire; A girdle, foul with grease, binds his obscene attire. He spreads his canvas; with his pole he steers; The freights of flitting ghosts in his thin bottom bears. He looked in years; yet, in his years, were seen A youthful vigour, and autumnal green. An airy crowd came rushing where he stood, Which filled the margin of the fatal flood-- Husbands and wives, boys and unmarried maids, And mighty heroes' more majestic shades, And youths, entombed before their father's eyes, With hollow groans, and shrieks, and feeble cries. Thick as the leaves in autumn strow the woods, Or fowls, by winter forced, forsake the floods,