The Underworld, an Empire manifold, Is famed within it two main States to hold;— For the Damned, and Fiends to torment them, Dis, The Elysian fields for Saints in bliss.— But Spirits of the Dead, ere they can come Before their Judge to be assigned a home Among the Blest or Sinners, undergo Two stages of probation; first, we know, For it to be on due inspection clear They are qualified as Ghosts; and, next, where To prepare for trial.— From graves men rise Shadows, bodiless, but as Death’s surprise Caught them; and therefore shadows of the whole, Of Body with its accidents, and Soul. Such—Ghosts—they wake on Acheron’s dark shore: Such by grim Charon are they ferried o’er; As such they show when rapping at Hell’s gate; And are sorted in vestibules to wait. A few mortals, and living, there have been Who, by the Gods’ leave, in a day have seen The whole Nether World; but e’en its wide marge, Reserved for Untried, would take men at large Their lives to traverse. Reckon! the huge space Needed to lodge the dead of human race! Expectants of a summons to be tried For the lives they led, and the deaths they died! On probation for abjuring Earth and Sun When their work above was not fully done! For being here before it had begun! Causes peopling this land of Little Ease Myriad! body’s accidents, disease, A wild beast’s claws, a sudden east-wind’s blight; Riches, poverty; daring and affright; Jealousies of nations, brothers; the smart Of love rejected, and a broken heart: Hope become despair, as past, present schemes Melt all into the fairy-land of dreams. The victims—“Legion”—seeming still alive— Wait here, distributed in Circles five; Creatures of strange aspect, Earth’s rust inlaid On spirit bearing it without flesh to aid. Wanted a world to lodge the whole; and still Continual accretions, plain, vale, hill, Forest, are reclaimed from Immensity, To hold this wreckage of humanity.