Orpheus and Other Poems

BY EDWARD BURROUGH BROWNLOW. (SAREPTA.) Published by The Pen and Pencil Club. Montreal. 1896. Entered according to Act of the Parliament of Canada, in the Year 1896, by The Pen and Pencil Club, at the Department of Agriculture, Ottawa . THESE POEMS ARE NOW COLLECTED AND PUBLISHED IN MEMORY OF EDWARD BURROUGH BROWNLOW, Born in London, England, 27 November, 1857, Died in Montreal, Canada, 8 September, 1895, BY His Fellow-Members of THE PEN AND PENCIL CLUB.
Printed by D. Bentley & Co. At Montreal, Canada, this First day of May, A.D. 1896.

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.