Page:Collected poems of Flecker.djvu/240

 And hailed censorious:–"Thou who walkest down Clashing thy armour by our streams of Hell, Speak thy intent : there on thy road stand still! Here lies the land of shadow dream and night, And no warm flesh may ride on Stygian keel, Small joy had I admitting to this mere Hercules or those victor sons of Heaven Peirithoos and Theseus. Hercules Chained with bare hands the dog of Tartarus And dragged him from the throne quaking: they came To rape our mistress from the bed of Dis." "We spin no snares," the Amphrysian sharp replied: "Be soothed, no violence these arms portend. Let the huge Janitor’s eternal cry Still from his cave confound the bloodless ghosts, And Proserpine unravished still attend Her kinsman’s threshold. Æneas of Troy, Famed dutiful and fearless, here descends" To embrace his father in your pits of gloom. If high devotion spells thee nought, this bough, (She drew it from her breast) may move thee still."  Calm sank the heart but now swoln out with rage: With no word more, eyeing that ancient bough, Doom’s symbol, after ages seen again, Turned he his cærule prow and made the shore. Thence other souls who sat along the dunes He drave, and let his gangway down, and took The huge Æneas in his patchèd punt, Which groaned o’ercargoed; and through many a crack  Oozed up the mere: yet safe across the stream  204