Page:Collected poems of Flecker.djvu/236

 Stood branching: here, they say, the Vain Dreams roost;— There’s not a leaf without one stuck behind! Next he saw twisted beasts of the old tales: Centaurs were stabled at the gates: Scyllas Spread their twin shapes, Briareus his hundred arms And Lerna’s beast behold hissing out fear, Chimæra too, who fights with fire, and Gorgons And Harpies, and a shade with a triple form! Such was the horror seized Æneas then He made to meet their onset with cold steel, And had th’ instructed Sybil not advised That these were gossamer vitalities Flitting in stuffless mockery of form, He’d have leapt on and lashed the empty air. Hence leads a road to Acheron, vast flood Of thick and restless slime: all that foul ooze It belches in Cocytus. Here keeps watch That wild and filthy pilot of the marsh Charon, from whose rugged old chin trails down The hoary beard of centuries: his eyes Are Fixed, but flame. His grimy cloak hangs loose Rough-knotted at the shoulder : his own hands Pole on the boat, or tend the sail that wafts His dismal skiff and its fell freight along. Ah, he is old, but with that toughening eld That speaks his godhead! To the bank and him All a great multitude came pouring down, Brothers and husbands, and the proud-souled heroes, Life’s labour done: and boys and unwed maidens And the young men by whose flame-funeral 200