When a spirit, sad, silent, and sober,
Whose glance was a word of control,
Drew me down to the dark Lake Avernus,
In the desolate Kingdom of Death—
To the mist-covered Lake of Avernus,
In the ghoul-haunted Kingdom of Death.
And there, as I shivered and waited,
I talked with the souls of the dead—
With those whom the living call dead;
The lawless, the lone, and the hated,