Stood branching: here, they say, the Vain Dreams roost;—
There’s not a leaf without one stuck behind!
Next he saw twisted beasts of the old tales:
Centaurs were stabled at the gates: Scyllas
Spread their twin shapes, Briareus his hundred arms
And Lerna’s beast behold hissing out fear,
Chimæra too, who fights with fire, and Gorgons
And Harpies, and a shade with a triple form!
Such was the horror seized Æneas then
He made to meet their onset with cold steel,
And had th’ instructed Sybil not advised
That these were gossamer vitalities
Flitting in stuffless mockery of form,
He’d have leapt on and lashed the empty air.
Hence leads a road to Acheron, vast flood
Of thick and restless slime: all that foul ooze
It belches in Cocytus. Here keeps watch
That wild and filthy pilot of the marsh
Charon, from whose rugged old chin trails down
The hoary beard of centuries: his eyes
Are Fixed, but flame. His grimy cloak hangs loose
Rough-knotted at the shoulder : his own hands
Pole on the boat, or tend the sail that wafts
His dismal skiff and its fell freight along.
Ah, he is old, but with that toughening eld
That speaks his godhead! To the bank and him
All a great multitude came pouring down,
Brothers and husbands, and the proud-souled heroes,
Life’s labour done: and boys and unwed maidens
And the young men by whose flame-funeral
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