Into the deep Cocytus.

Charon there, Grim ferryman, stands sentry.

Mean his guise, His chin a wilderness of hoary hair, And like a flaming furnace stare his eyes.
Hung in a loop around his shoulders lies A filthy gaberdine.

He trims the sail, And, pole in hand, across the water plies His steel-grey shallop with the corpses pale, Old, but a god's old age has left him green and hale.
XLII.

There shoreward rushed a multitude, the shades Of noble heroes, numbered with the dead, Boys, husbands, mothers and unwedded maids, Sons on the pile before their parents spread, As leaves in number, which the trees have shed When Autumn's frosts begin to chill the air, Or birds, that from the wintry blasts have fled And over seas to sunnier shores repair.
So thick the foremost stand, and, stretching hands of prayer, XLIII.