Unto the realm of Pluto many roads
Lead with dark winding from the bright abodes
Of men, and when life’s last detaining thread
Is cut by Iris, and the body, dead,
With Charon’s coin in palm, rests in the tomb
Or on the pyre, the dÆmon of its doom
After much pitiful forbearance tears
The soul from its environment of cares
With promise sweet of love’s awaiting kiss,
Of old friends greeting, and much holy bliss
On shores Elysian, where all ways are peace,
And all existence virtue without cease;
But ere the fields of Asphodel are won
Dire labours manifold must first be done
By soul and dÆmon.

All the paths descend
To four great streams, whose turgid waters blend
With suffering souls: here flows sad Acheron
On whose black banks impatient spirits run
And call to that grim boatman, ferrying o’er
His last embarker to the nether shore
In silence, bent with duty’s measured pull,
Certain of all to follow; there, too, full
Of awful lamentations from lost souls
Cocytus its fierce waves of sorrow rolls
Wherein dwells one whose face is only seen—

Above the surface, human and serene,
Below, her horrid serpent-form encoils
And stings the hapless spirits in her toils
With scorpion venom; Phlegethon rolls by
Flaming with waves that hiss, and mount on high
To lick with burning tongue each crusted shore
Where not the vilest weed dare clamber o’er,
There swim huge salamanders, whose desire
Grows with the maddening tumult of the fire;
And lastly, Styx, that pool of pitchy slime
Whereby the great gods swear their vows sublime,
In whose black channel hatred finds a home,
And breeds with fury many a plague-born gnome
Loathsome to gods and men.

These rivers run
Far to the West, beyond the sinking sun,
Beyond old Ocean’s limits, past the range
Of starry travel or where comets strange
Rush in hot madness; there too Lethe flows
Where souls must drink to gain the sweet repose
Of all-forgetfulness, before the Fates
Lose power to plague them, or their bygone states
Haunt them like ghosts.

These waters safely crossed,
The plains beneath thick filled with spirits lost,
Avernus meets the view, vast, horrid lake
At Hades’ entrance; who its waters take,
Sicken and die in torture that must rend
With endless tooth, for such death has no end.
Beyond Avernus stands the gate of Hell,
With Cerberus to guard its portals well.

Unto that gate came Orpheus with his lute
Whose most melodious music had made mute
The wailing souls on Acheron’s sad shore,
And charmed old Charon, as he ferried o’er
The son of great Apollo in his quest
For her whom of all women he loved best,
And as he came fierce Cerberus stood still
Fixed by the magic of the player’s skill:
On Orpheus went and played, for he knew well
The wondrous potency of this great spell
Would by a pause be broken, and his fate
Never to pass alive the solemn gate;
He roused the Harpies, those most fearful things
With heads and breasts of women and the wings
Of birds, and talons of the lion fierce,
Whose breath is poison and whose venoms pierce
Deep in man’s soul—the hags were planning then
Foul plots for planting grief in hearts of men;
He stayed stern Nemesis, now poised for flight
As she in darkness left her mother Night;
The three great judges of the soul now paused
In giving sentence, for the music caused
Minos and Æacus and Rhadamanthus think
What change the gods had wrought, that at the brink
Of Tartarus such heavenly sounds should rise
To make the heart upleap and to the eyes
Communicate swift tears of sudden joy—
Had Jupiter grown mad to let this boy,
This gold-haired stripling with the silver strings
Enter dark Hades with such sound that brings
Pity to their stern breasts?

The Gorgons stare
In vain at Orpheus through their viper-hair,
He sings and heeds them not, and he alone
Looks at them, eye for eye, and not to stone
Is turned; the Lemures, that spectral swarm,
That fill the space of Hades without form,
Halt in their wanderings to hear the notes
That fall as from a thousand song-birds’ throats.
Pale Death sits sharpening her dart and hears
With sad dismay the sound that soothes her ears,
Her arm grows powerless—the black dart falls
With echoing clang on Hades’ marbled halls;
The triple sisters who turn mad the mind
With envy, rage, and hatred, and make blind
The heart with judgment false, hear the high strains,
And knowledge of lost joy o’erwhelms their brains;
Triptolemus stands still with bated breath
While on his way to that great hall of death
Where his stern fellow judges sit aghast
Still pondering on Orpheus.

Now he passed
Poor Marsyas, whose love of music great
Lured him to challenge for his after-fate
The laurel-crowned Apollo and his lyre,
Wherefore he stayed in the eternal fire;
But Orpheus, passing, played so wondrous well
That all the flames about him flickered, fell,
And left the wretch in peace to hear once more
The power of sound he staked his spirit for.
Black Discord in her den of hideous noise
Grew sudden silent, and her br

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

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