Crying, "Wo to you, wicked spirits! hope not
Ever to see the sky again. I come
To take you to the other shore across,
Into eternal darkness, there to dwell

In fierce heat and in ice.' And thou, who there
Standest, live spirit! get thee hence, and leave
These who are dead." But soon as he beheld
I left them not, "By other way," said he,
"By other haven shalt thou come to shore,
Not by this passage; thee a nimbler boat2
Must carry."

Then to him thus spake my guide: "Charon! thyself torment not: so 'tis will'd, Where will and power are one: ask thou no more." Straightway in silence fell the shaggy cheeks Of him, the boatman o'er the livid lake,3

Around whose eyes glared wheeling flames. Meanwhile

Those spirits, faint and naked, color changed,
And gnash'd their teeth, soon as the cruel words
They heard. God and their parents they blasphemed,
The human kind, the place, the time, and seed,
That did engender them and give them birth.

Then all together sorely wailing drew
To the cursed strand, that every man must pass
Who fears not God. Charon, demoniac form,
With eyes of burning coal, collects them all,
Beckoning, and each, that lingers, with his oar

1 In fierce heat and in ice.]

The bitter change

Of fierce extremes, extremes by change more fierce,
From beds of raging fire to starve in ice
Their soft ethereal warmth.-

Milton, P. L., b. ii. 601.

-The delighted spirit

To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside

In thrilling regions of thick-ribbed ice.

Shaksp. Measure for Measure, a. iii. s. 1.

See note to C. xxxii. 23.

2 A nimbler boat.] He perhaps alludes to the bark "swift and light," in which the Angel conducts the spirits to Purgatory. See Purg., c. ii. 40.

3 The livid lake.] Vada livida. Virg. Æn., lib. vi. 320. -Totius ut lacûs putidæque paludis Lividissima, maximeque est profunda vorago.

4 With eyes of burning coal.]

Catullus, xviii. 10.

His looks were dreadful, and his fiery eyes,

Like two great beacons, glared bright and wide.

Spenser, F. Q., b. vi. c. vii. st. 42.