By speed of rosy Dawn’s four horses there. But for Æneas, with half Day’s course run, Not yet had the decisive stage begun. Perforce the Sibyl warned against delay; Nor thought Deiphobus his friend to stay. Though bowed by unimaginable ill, He faded into the Dark, to fulfil His fate, with Adieu; “a high lot enjoy! Be glory thine, and found a greater Troy!” The fifth Circle left, they desired by haste To pay time lost in grieving for the past. Where the road forked, they took the right, that led To Elysium; but, turning his head, Æneas stood—bewildered, and in awe; For, backed by a huge range of cliffs, he saw, Extending far, behind a triple wall, A city that one might a kingdom call, Girt by waters—Phlegethon their dread name— That whirl echoing rocks, and floods of flame. Then, if that torrent of fire could be crossed, What of the adamantine gates? Where host Of men, nay, Gods of high Heaven, with pow’r To tear those from their storm-defying tow’r? And, as if this were not enough to keep Dis safe, Tisiphone, who needs no sleep, Sits guard in blood-red robe beside the door, Reckoning each pulsation of the roar, Every whizz of the lash, moan of pain, Grating of iron, rattling of the chain. Æneas heard too; his feet in fear clove To the ground as frozen; he could not move From the spot he trod. “What sins punished there, And how? Whose those hoarse wailings of despair?” Repelled—attracted: his unuttered thought She answered: “Ask not of me to be brought Within; none guiltless enter but, like me, They set in charge under Queen Hecate. Herself, installing me, vouchsafed to tell The system on which Heaven peoples Hell. Committals hither are on sentence giv’n By Rhadamanthus, righteous as Heav’n. A sinner joys in craft that has concealed His crime in life; but here it stands revealed Blazing as the Sun; how vain cunning when Tisiphone hauls the convict, grieved then For old triumphs; in her right hand the scourge, In her left snakes. She screams the while to urge Her savage pair of sisters to make haste From banks of dim Cocytus for a feast! The Trials living men may not attend, Or the dire chastisements in which they end, But—for so much is lawful—thou shalt see The Prison’s threshold. At a sign from me, Look! Gates of Adamant have opened wide, Shrieking in loud protest; on either side, The Fury, and a Hydra, grisly sight, That hisses from fifty black jaws its spite; While Tartarus beyond them plunges down Full twice the space from red-hot Phlegethon To the blue vault of Ether.— Mark the twain, And thank thy fate for being spared my pain Of visiting the dungeons they control. Noting unending torturings of soul!”