Near where Anchises and Æneas stood Shades swarmed, dense, ever denser, in a wood Which rustled all its bushes with the press— As of a migrant nation numberless— Of Spirits emulous to be the first To reach grey Lethe’s edge, and quench their thirst— —Thus, in languorous stillness of noontide, Sudden the slumb’rous calm is swept aside By an inrush of bees; in wild descent, Like pirates from the main, on nothing bent But spoil they seem; yet each has its own flow’r, To which sure instinct guides it hour by hour,— Æneas saw the haste, knew not th’ excuse; For him it seemed to be Hell broken loose. Even when he heard the marvellous tale That the myriads gathered in that vale Were no unwilling, mourning outcasts there, Condemned to breathe once more the upper air, But after their secular repose full fain Flesh to resume, links in an endless chain, The world-worn hero shuddered none the less It might be his to count it happiness To exchange the peace of the myrtle grove For stark sunshine and gross body above; To be of those whom Lethe should wash clear Of all they once had been, and all they were:— That Elysium’s a waiting-room for life; Life a dust-heap for trials, failures, strife That men are Shadows all, expecting doom, Whether flesh, or to shift it in a tomb. “Forbear,” replied Anchises, old and wise, “To measure laws of Fate by earthly eyes. From the beginning of the sky and land, The stars where once the Titans held command, The sun and moon that share the day and night, Air’s liquid fields;—all owe their charm and light To eternal Spirit. That feeds the whole, Breathes into bodies, lifeless else, a soul. Mankind and beasts, winged Things, and monster strange, That ’neath the level plains of Ocean range, Draw hence their fire, the instinct of a birth Elsewhere;—alas! for the burdensome bulk Of limbs diseased, and joints that creak and sulk For the foul lusts they stir, the scares, affrights, The cowardly griefs, and as vain delights, The Dark through which flesh stumbles, halt and blind The dungeon where it keeps shut close the Mind, Lest at one breath of air it should in scorn Of earth fly back to Heaven where ’twas born. Meanwhile an evil partnership for both!— Spirit incorporate, however loth To be associate with sores and blains, Vice’s parasites, must bear fleshly pains To be cleansed; for death is itself no cure; Body, Soul with it, share in the Impure. Some, carcasses, swing, split open, for breeze To scour and wring, to bleach, and scorch, or freeze For some a mill-stream whirls a crime about, Or a furnace roars a rich baseness out. Just the Judgment, every judgment true; Each of us bears no more than is his due; High as the merits of our kith and kin, None but himself can carry his own sin. Blest the sharp ordeal for the few who thence Pass, not in sheer spiritual innocence,