Trench the black earth a cubit long and wide:

To all the shades around libations pour,

And o’er the ingredients strew the hallow’d flour:

New wine and milk, with honey temper’d bring,

And living water from the crystal spring.

Then the wan shades and feeble ghosts implore,

With promised offerings on thy native shore;

A barren cow, the stateliest of the isle,

And heap’d with various wealth, a blazing pile:

These to the rest; but to the seer must bleed

A sable ram, the pride of all thy breed.

These solemn vows and holy offerings paid

To all the phantom nations of the dead,

Be next thy care the sable sheep to place

Full o’er the pit, and hellward turn their face:

But from the infernal rite thine eye withdraw,

And back to Ocean glance with reverend awe.

Sudden shall skim along the dusky glades

Thin airy shoals, and visionary shades.

Then give command the sacrifice to haste,

Let the flay’d victims in the flame be cast,

And sacred vows and mystic song applied

To grisly Pluto and his gloomy bride.

Wide o’er the pool thy falchion waved around

Shall drive the spectres from unbidden ground:

The sacred draught shall all the dead forbear,

Till awful from the shades arise the seer.

Let him, oraculous, the end, the way,

The turns of all thy future fate display,

Thy pilgrimage to come, and remnant of thy day.’


“So speaking, from the ruddy orient shone

The morn, conspicuous on her golden throne.

The goddess with a radiant tunic dress’d

My limbs, and o’er me cast a silken vest.

Long flowing robes, of purest white, array

The nymph, that added lustre to the day:

A tiar wreath’d her head with many a fold;

Her waist was circled with a zone of gold.

Forth issuing then, from place to place I flew;

Rouse man by man, and animate my crew.

‘Rise, rise, my mates! ’tis Circe gives command:

Our journey calls us; haste, and quit the land.’

All rise and follow, yet depart not all,