guide. 5

Ye gods, whose empire is the shades—spirits of silence,

Chaos and Phlegethon, stretching wide in the stillness of

night, suffer me to tell what has reached my ears; grant

me your aid to reveal things buried underground, deep and

dark. 10

On they went, darkling in solitary night, far into the

gloom, through Pluto’s void halls and ghostly realms—like

a journey in a wood under the niggard beams of a

doubtful moon, when Jupiter has shrouded heaven in