The chief unsheath'd his shining steel, prepar'd, Tho' seiz'd with sudden fear, to force the guard, Off'ring his brandish'd weapon at their face;Had not the Sibyl stopp'd his eager pace, And told him what those empty phantoms were:
Forms without bodies, and impassive air.
Hence to deep Acheron they take their way, Whose troubled eddies, thick with ooze and clay, Are whirl'd aloft, and in Cocytus lost.
There Charon stands, who rules the dreary coast-A sordid god: down from his hoary chin A length of beard descends, uncomb'd, unclean;His eyes, like hollow furnaces on fire;
A girdle, foul with grease, binds his obscene attire.
He spreads his canvas; with his pole he steers;The freights of flitting ghosts in his thin bottom bears.
He look'd in years; yet in his years were seen A youthful vigor and autumnal green.
An airy crowd came rushing where he stood, Which fill'd the margin of the fatal flood:
Husbands and wives, boys and unmarried maids, And mighty heroes' more majestic shades, And youths, intomb'd before their fathers' eyes, With hollow groans, and shrieks, and feeble cries.
Thick as the leaves in autumn strow the woods, Or fowls, by winter forc'd, forsake the floods, And wing their hasty flight to happier lands;Such, and so thick, the shiv'ring army stands, And press for passage with extended hands.
Now these, now those, the surly boatman bore:
The rest he drove to distance from the shore.
The hero, who beheld with wond'ring eyes The tumult mix'd with shrieks, laments, and cries, Ask'd of his guide, what the rude concourse meant;Why to the shore the thronging people bent;What forms of law among the ghosts were us'd;Why some were ferried o'er, and some refus'd.
"Son of Anchises, offspring of the gods,"The Sibyl said, "you see the Stygian floods, The sacred stream which heav'n's imperial state Attests in oaths, and fears to violate.
The ghosts rejected are th' unhappy crew Depriv'd of sepulchers and fun'ral due:
The boatman, Charon; those, the buried host, He ferries over to the farther coast;Nor dares his transport vessel cross the waves With such whose bones are not compos'd in graves.