“_Not against your will You and your fellows longer shall abide Within my house; but you must first fulfil_ “_Another journey yet, the house to see Of Hades and renowned Persephone._“[9] The awful words fell horribly on Odysseus’s ear. So they might not then simply hoist sail and away, gaily bound for Ithaca? Instead, there was yet to make the bitterest voyage that even Odysseus had made—a dark and awesome journey to the nether world, there to see and hold converse with the dead prophet, Tiresias. _So spake she; but my heart was rent in me, And sitting on the bed I bitterly Wept, and no longer did my soul desire To live, or yet the light of day to see._[9] But so it was decreed, and since all his grief and horror could not alter it, he begged of Circe at least to tell him how he might find his way to the dread World of the Dead, and how he might return in safety from it. Circe smiled inscrutably. She knew that the passage there is all too easily won. “_Take no concern, for pilot need you none._ “_Hoist but your mast and spread the sails of white, And sitting let the North wind’s breath aright Bear her: but when on shipboard you have crossed The Ocean-river, there will come in sight_ “_The tangled groves of Queen Persephone, A low shore set with the tall poplar tree And willow that untimely sheds her fruit; There run your ship abeach out of the sea,_ “_Beside the Ocean-stream’s deep-eddying flow, And to the mouldering house of Hades go Afoot._“[9] She told him all that he must do there; how he must pass right through the crowding shadowy forms, and where two loud-thundering rivers meet he must dig a trench and pour out a drink-offering before the dead. But he must not let them partake of it, and must keep them at bay with drawn sword till the prophet Tiresias should appear and prophesy to him of his return. _So spake she, and Dawn straightway rose and shone Gold-throned; and in my shirt and cloak anon I clad me, and the nymph herself a great White mantle, thin and beautiful, put on;_ _And round her loins a golden girdle fair She drew, and cast a kerchief on her hair; But I throughout the house to everyman Went with soft words, and bade my crew prepare._[9]