Classic Poem

When to the powers beneath,
The sacred nation that survives with Death,
My prayers and vows had done devotions fit,
I took the offerings, and upon the pit
Bereft their lives. Out gushed the sable blood,
And round about me fled out of the flood
The souls of the deceased. There clustered then
Youths, and their wives, much suffering aged men,
Soft tender virgins that but new came there
By timeless death, and green their sorrows were.
There men at arms, with armours all imbrued,
Wounded with lances and with falchions hewed,
In numbers up and down the ditch did stalk,
And threw unmeasured cries about their walk,
So horrid that a bloodless fear surprised
My daunted spirits. Straight then I advised
My friends to flay the slaughtered sacrifice,
Put them in fire, and to the Deities,
Stem Pluto and Persephone apply
Exciteful prayers. Then drew I from my thigh
My well-edged sword, stepped in, and firmly stood
Betwixt the press of shadows and the blood,
And would not suffer any one to dip
Within our offering his unsolid lip
Before Tiresias, that did all control.
The first that pressed in was Elpenor's soul,
His body in the broad-wayed earth as yet
Unmourned, unburied by us since we sweat
With other urgent labours. Yet his smart
Swept to see, and rued it from my heart,
Enquiring how he could before me be
That came by ship? He, mourning, answered me:
In Circe's house, the spite some spirit did bear
And the unspeakable good liquor there
Hath been my bane. For being to descend
A ladder much in height, I did not tend
My way well down, but forwards made a proof
To tread the rounds, and from the very roof
Felt on my neck and brake it. And this made
My soul thus visit this internal shade.
And here, by them that next thyself are dear,
Thy wife and father, that a little one
Gave food to thee, and by thy only son
At home behind thee left, Telemachus,
Do not depart by stealth and leave me thus,
Unmourned, unburied, test neglected I
Bang on thyself th' incensed Deity.