The first stage Orcus, where before the gate, In forecourt, watchful, if with closed eyes, wait— Padlocks on Hell’s jaws—Mourning, vengeful Care, In many aspects; pale Disease and Fear, Age looking back, Hunger counselling ill, With Neediness that numbs the nerve of will:— Forms of terror they all; and, no less dread, Death, and Sleep, his cousin, sharing one bed; Labour with a lash, and ill joys that taste Like honey in the mouth, and lay Mind waste; While in guard-houses opposite lodge War, And Carnage driving a funeral car; The Furies too—each in iron-barred cell— Police-runners on Earth, hangmen in Hell; And mad Discord, wreathing her locks of gore With vipers borrowed from her neighbours’ store. For centre an old elm, immense in girth, Keeps sunless, barren, a wide space of earth. Rumour gives it to idle Dreams, which browze Upon the leaves, and hang from all the boughs. Nor far away in the same region dwells Many a strange freak of whom legend tells; Centaurs in the doorway, Scylla, fish, maid, Briareus hundred-headed, arrayed In flames, Chimæra, and, bellowing beast, The Hydra, Harpies that pollute a feast, Gorgons looking cold death, and the Earth-King, Who grew a fresh third body at each fling. No stain on Æneas if monsters made Him grip and wave at the dour crew his blade, Until warned by the Sibyl that they were Bodiless Shades, invulnerable as air. Passing unharmed, they now approached the shore Where Acheron, Styx, Cocytus meet, and pour, In one vast whirlpool, mingled filth and sand, And saw upon the bank old Charon stand. Squalid ferryman, he keeps watch and ward Over all these waters and streams; a beard Shaggy, dirty-white, from his chin flows down; Frowzy his cloak tied by a knot; a frown Sits on his brow, o’er eyes twin pools of fire. The barge, poled, sails to help, is, like the sire, In iron-rusty age, but crude-green, good To ship Shades numberless across the flood. In truth masses rush pell-mell to the bank, Dead of all sorts, without order, or rank; Heroes that in their country’s cause had bled, Aged wives and husbands, boys, girls unwed, Youths leaving parents to inscribe the stone, And linger through unwelcome years alone:— As many as the leaves Autumn’s first frost Brings down; as winged swarms that have ocean crossed To escape in warm lands harsh winter’s blasts. Pitiful the entreaties to be passed Over. Some Charon takes, rejects the rest— Perhaps with “sad” heart hid inside that rugged breast! Well might Æneas wonder at the haste To reach o’er those waters yon gloomy waste. “Cocytus this,” the Maid, “that Styx, in whose Name Gods dare not swear, and then break their vows; They mark the boundaries of life and death, Between the world above, the world beneath; Spirit cannot claim to pass either flood While it must drag behind it flesh and blood.