Plead for a passage.

Now the boatman stern Takes these, now those, then thrusts the rest away, And vainly for the distant bank they yearn.
Then spake AEneas, for with strange dismay He viewed the tumult, "Prithee, maiden, say What means this thronging to the river-side?
What seek the souls?
Why separate, do they Turn back, while others sweep the leaden tide?
Who parts the shades, what doom the difference can decide ?" XLIV.

Thereto in brief the aged priestess spake: "Son of Anchises, and the god's true heir, Thou see'st Cocytus and the Stygian lake, By whose dread majesty no god will dare His solemn oath attested to forswear.
These are the needy, who a burial crave; The ferryman is Charon; they who fare Across the flood, the buried; none that wave Can traverse, ere his bones have rested in the grave.
XLV.

"A hundred years they wander in the cold Around these shores, till at the destined date The wished-for pools, admitted, they behold." Sad stood AEneas, pitying their estate, And, thoughtful, pondered their unequal fate.
Leucaspis there, and Lycia's chief he viewed, Orontes, joyless, tombless, whom of late, Sea-tost from Troy, the blustering South pursued, And ship and crew at once whelmed in the rolling flood.
XLVI.

There paced in sorrow Palinurus' ghost, Who, lately from the Libyan shore their guide, Watching the stars, headforemost from his post Had fallen, and perished in the wildering tide.
Him, known, but dimly in the gloom descried, The Dardan hails, "O Palinurus! who Of all the gods hath torn thee from our side?
Speak, for Apollo, never known untrue, This once hath answered false, and mocked with hopes undue.
XLVII.