Accompanied by his faithful Achates, Æneas enters the woods in quest of the golden bough. The search seems in vain, until two white doves, the birds of his goddess-mother Venus, make their appearance, and, leading the way by short successive flights, draw the seekers on to the wondrous tree, on which they at last alight. The hero makes prize of the golden branch, with which he returns to the Sibyl. Under her directions he offers the due sacrifices to the infernal powers--four black bulls, a barren heifer, and a black ewe-lamb--and then, still under the leading of the prophetess, with drawn sword in his hand, he enters the mouth of Hades. “Along the illimitable shade Darkling and lone their way they made, Through the vast kingdom of the dead, An empty void, though tenanted. So travellers in a forest move With but the uncertain moon above, Beneath her niggard light, When Jupiter has hid from view The heaven, and Nature’s every hue Is lost in blinding night. “At Orcus’ portals hold their lair Wild Sorrow and avenging Care; And pale Diseases cluster there, And pleasureless Decay, Foul Penury, and Fears that kill, And Hunger, counsellor of ill, A ghastly presence they: Suffering and Death the threshold keep, And with them Death’s blood-brother Sleep: Ill Joys with their seducing spells And deadly War are at the door; The Furies couch in iron cells, And Discord maddens and rebels; Her snake-locks hiss, her wreaths drip gore. “Full in the midst an aged elm Broods darkly o’er the shadowy realm: There dream-land phantoms rest the wing, Men say, and ’neath its foliage cling. And many monstrous shapes beside Within the infernal gates abide; There Centaurs, Scyllas, fish and maid, There Briareus’ hundred-handed shade, Chimæra armed with flame, Gorgons and Harpies make their den, With the foul pest of Lerna’s fen, And Geryon’s triple frame.” Then they come in sight of the rivers of Hell--Acheron, Cocytus, and Styx. The relative physical geography is somewhat confused by the poet, but it is the Styx on which the Ferryman of the Shades, the surly Charon,-- “Grim, squalid, foul, with aspect dire, His eyeballs each a globe of fire,”--