Classic Poem

THE RIVER OF ACHERON .

Hence is the way that leads to Tartarean Acheron's billows;
Here, aroil with slime, and with vortex vast, is a whirlpool,
Seething, and all its mud disgorging into Cocytus.
Guarding these waters and floods is a boatman, beheld with a shudder,
Charon, of terrible filth, whose great gray beard all neglected
Flows from his chin; his eyes outstanding like fiery torches,
Dingy the mantle and foul that hangs in a knot from his shoulders.
Poling his barge himself, he handles the sails unassisted,
While in his dusky skiff he ferries the dead o'er the river;
Old, even now, but a god's old age is ruddy and rugged.
Hither a straggling crowd were all rushing down to the margin, —
Matrons and men, and the souls, discharged from life's duty, of heroes
Valiant of heart, and of boys, and unmarried girls, and of children
Laid on funeral pyres before the sad eyes of their parents,
Many as are the leaves that fall at the first cold of autumn
Far in the forest, or thick as the birds that from Ocean's deep waters
Gather in flight to land when icy Winter pursues them
Over the billows, and urges them on to a sunnier climate.
Standing there, then, they begged to be first in making the crossing;
Stretching out their hands to the further shore in entreaty;
But the inflexible ferryman, choosing now one, now another,
Drives the others away far back from the banks of the river.
Moved and amazed by the tumult, Æneas cries, " Tell me, O maiden,
What is the will of this multitude thronging the bank of the river?
What do these souls desire? Or say with what discrimination
These retire from the shore, while those are swept o'er the dark waters? "
Briefly the prophetess old replied to the question as follows: —
" Son of Anchises, assuredly sprung from the gods, thou art looking
Down on the Stygian lake, and the slumbering depths of Cocytus,
Taking an oath in whose name e'en the gods are afraid to be faithless.
All this throng thou beholdest are poor and unfuneralled people;
Yonder old ferryman, Charon; those crossing the river, the buried;
None may he bear across these dreadful shores and hoarse waters,
Till in their quiet graves their bodies are peacefully sleeping,
Near to these banks for an hundred years they wander and hover,
Then are permitted once more to return to the coveted waters. "