“I see, I see the two-oar’d skiff. With hand on pole

Charon, the ferryman of the dead, thus calleth me:

‘Why dost thou loiter? Hasten! Thou’rt delaying us.’

With words like these in angry haste he urgeth me.”

To-day he rides in his own might:—

“Why are the mountains so dark, and why so woebegone?

Is it the wind at war there, or does the rain-storm scourge them?

It is not the wind at war there, it is not the rain that scourges,

It is only Charon passing across them with the dead;

He drives the youths before him, the old folk drags behind,