XLI. Into the deep Cocytus. [Charon] there,
Grim ferryman, stands sentry. Mean his guise,
His chin a wilderness of hoary hair,
And like a flaming furnace stare his eyes.
Hung in a loop around his shoulders lies
A filthy gaberdine. He trims the sail,
And, pole in hand, across the water plies
His steel-grey shallop with the corpses pale,		361
Old, but a god's old age has left him green and hale.
XLII. There shoreward rushed a multitude, the shades
Of noble heroes, numbered with the dead,
Boys, husbands, mothers and unwedded maids,
Sons on the pile before their parents spread,
As leaves in number, which the trees have shed
When Autumn's frosts begin to chill the air,
Or birds, that from the wintry blasts have fled
And over seas to sunnier shores repair.		370
So thick the foremost stand, and, stretching hands of prayer,
XLIII. Plead for a passage. Now the boatman stern
Takes these, now those, then thrusts the rest away,
And vainly for the distant bank they yearn.
Then spake Æneas, for with strange dismay
He viewed the tumult, "Prithee, maiden, say
What means this thronging to the river-side?
What seek the souls? Why separate, do they
Turn back, while others sweep the leaden tide?		379
Who parts the shades, what doom the difference can decide?"
XLIV. Thereto in brief the aged priestess spake:
"Son of Anchises, and the god's true heir,
Thou see'st Cocytus and the Stygian lake,
By whose dread majesty no god will dare
His solemn oath attested to forswear.
These are the needy, who a burial crave;
The ferryman is Charon; they who fare
Across the flood, the buried; none that wave		388
Can traverse, ere his bones have rested in the grave.
XLV. "A hundred years they wander in the cold
Around these shores, till at the destined date
The wished-for pools, admitted, they behold."
Sad stood Æneas, pitying their estate,
And, thoughtful, pondered their unequal fate.
Leucaspis there, and Lycia's chief he viewed,
Orontes, joyless, tombless, whom of late,
Sea-tost from Troy, the blustering South pursued,		397
And ship and crew at once whelmed in the rolling flood.

XLVI. There paced in sorrow Palinurus' ghost,
Who, lately from the Libyan shore their guide,
Watching the stars, headforemost from his post
Had fallen, and perished in the wildering tide.
Him, known, but dimly in the gloom descried,
The Dardan hails, "O Palinurus! who
Of all the gods hath torn thee from our side?
Speak, for Apollo, never known untrue,		406
This once hath answered false, and mocked with hopes undue.
XLVII. "Safe—so he sang—should'st thou escape the sea,
And scatheless to Ausonia's coast attain.
Lo, this, his plighted promise!"—"Nay," said he,
"Nor answered Phoebus' oracle in vain,
Nor did a god o'erwhelm me in the main.
For while I ruled the rudder, charged to keep
Our course, and steered thee o'er the billowy plain,
Sudden, I slipped, and, falling prone and steep,		415
Snapped with sheer force the helm, and dragged it to the deep.
XLVIII. "Naught—let the rough seas witness—but for thee
I feared, lest rudderless, her pilot lost,
Your ship should fail in such a towering sea.
Three wintry nights, nipt with the chilling frost,
Upon the boundless waters I was tost,
And on the fourth dawn from a wave at last
Descried Italia. Slowly to her coast
I swam, and clutching at the rock, held fast,		424
Cumbered with dripping clothes, and deemed the worst o'erpast.