With glittering arms their manly limbs array,

And pass the city gate; Ulysses leads the way.

Now flames the rosy dawn, but Pallas shrouds

The latent warriors in a veil of clouds.


BOOK XXIV.


ARGUMENT.


The souls of the suitors are conducted by Mercury to the infernal shades.

Ulysses in the country goes to the retirement of his father, Laertes; he finds

him busied in his garden all alone; the manner of his discovery to him is

beautifully described. They return together to his lodge, and the king is

acknowledged by Dolius and the servants. The Ithacensians, led by Eupithes, the

father of Antinous, rise against Ulysses, who gives them battle in which

Eupithes is killed by Laertes: and the goddess Pallas makes a lasting peace

between Ulysses and his subjects, which concludes the Odyssey.


Cyllenius now to Pluto’s dreary reign

Conveys the dead, a lamentable train!

The golden wand, that causes sleep to fly,

Or in soft slumber seals the wakeful eye,

That drives the ghosts to realms of night or day,

Points out the long uncomfortable way.

Trembling the spectres glide, and plaintive vent

Thin, hollow screams, along the deep descent.

As in the cavern of some rifted den,

Where flock nocturnal bats, and birds obscene;

Cluster’d they hang, till at some sudden shock

They move, and murmurs run through all the rock!

So cowering fled the sable heaps of ghosts,

And such a scream fill’d all the dismal coasts.

And now they reach’d the earth’s remotest ends,

And now the gates where evening Sol descends,

And Leucas’ rock, and Ocean’s utmost streams,

And now pervade the dusky land of dreams,

And rest at last, where souls unbodied dwell

In ever-flowing meads of asphodel.

The empty forms of men inhabit there,

Impassive semblance, images of air!

Naught else are all that shined on earth before:

Ajax and great Achilles are no more!

Yet still a master ghost, the rest he awed,

The rest adored him, towering as he trod;