Page:Homer. The Odyssey (IA homerodyssey00collrich).pdf/89

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THE VISIT TO THE SHADES.
79
Or when he climbs the starry arch, or whenSlope toward the earth he wheels adown the sky;But sad night weighs upon them wearily."

They reached the spot, says Ulysses, described to him at parting by Circe, where the dark rivers Acheron and Cocytus mix at the entrance into Hades. The incantations which she had carefully enjoined were duly made; a black ram and ewe were offered to the powers of darkness, and their blood poured into the trench which he had dug—"a cubit every way."

"Forthwith from Erebus a phantom crowdLoomed forth, the shadowy people of the dead,— Old men, with load of earthly anguish bowed, Brides in their bloom cut off, and youths unwed, Virgins whose tender eyelids then first shed True sorrow, men with gory arms renowned, Pierced by the sharp sword on the death-plain red, All these flock darkling with a hideous sound,Lured by the scent of blood, the open trench around."

But he had been charged by Circe not to allow the ghastly crew to slake their thirst, until he had evoked the shade of Tiresias, the blind prophet of Thebes, who retained his art and his honours even in these regions of the dead. So he kept them off with his sword,—not suffering even the phantom of his dead mother Anticleia, who came among the rest, to taste, until the great prophet appeared, leaning on his golden staff.

"To the bloody brink He stooped, and with his shadowy lips made shrinkThe sacrificial pool that darkling layBeneath him."
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