Classic Poem

" Arriv'd now at our ship, we lancht, and set
Our Mast up, put forth saile, and in did get
Our late-got Cattell. Up our sailes, we went,
My wayward fellowes mourning now th'event.
A good companion yet, a foreright wind,
Circe (the excellent utterer of her mind)
Supplied our murmuring consorts with, that was
Both speed and guide to our adventurous passe.
All day our sailes stood to the winds, and made
Our voiage prosprous. Sunne then set, and shade
All wayes obscuring, on the bounds we fell
Of deepe Oceanus, where people dwell
Whom a perpetuall cloud obscures outright,
To whom the cheerfull Sunne lends never light,
Nor when he mounts the star-sustaining heaven,
Nor when he stoopes earth and sets up the Even;
But Night holds fixt wings, fetherd all with Banes,
Above those most unblest Cimmerianes.
Here drew we up our ship, our sheepe with-drew,
And walkt the shore till we attaind the view
Of that sad region Circe had foreshow'd;
And then the sacred offerings, to be vow'd,
Eurylochus and Perimedes bore.
When I my sword drew, and earth's wombe did gore
Till I a pit digg'd of a cubite round,
Which with the liquid sacrifice we crown'd —
First, honey mixt with wine, then sweete wine neate,
Then water powr'd in, last the flowre of wheate.
Much I importun'd then the weake-neckt dead,
And vowd, when I the barren soile should tread
Of cliffie Ithaca, amidst my hall
To kill a Heifer, my cleare best of all,
And give in offering on a Pile composd
Of all the choise goods my whole house enclosd —
And to Tiresias himselfe alone
A sheepe cole-blacke and the selectest one
Of all my flockes. When to the powres beneath,
The sacred nation that survive with Death,
My prayrs and vowes had done devotions fit,
I tooke the offrings, and upon the pit
Bereft their lives. Out gusht the sable blood,
And round about me fled out of the flood
The Soules of the deceast. There cluster'd then
Youths, and their wives, much suffering aged men,
Soft tender virgins that but new came there
By timelesse death, and greene their sorrowes were.
There men at Armes, with armors all embrew'd,
Wounded with lances and with faulchions hew'd,
In numbers up and downe the ditch did stalke,
And threw unmeasur'd cries about their walke,
So horrid that a bloodlesse feare surprisde
My daunted spirits. Straight then I advisde
My friends to flay the slaughter'd sacrifice,
Put them in fire, and to the Deities,
Sterne Pluto and Persephone, apply
Excitefull prayrs. Then drew I from my Thy
My well-edg'd sword, stept in, and firmely stood
Betwixt the prease of shadowes and the blood,
And would not suffer any one to dip
Within our offring his unsolide lip
Before Tiresias, that did all controule.
The first that preast in was Elpenor's soule,
His body in the broad-waid earth as yet
Unmournd, unburied by us, since we swet
With other urgent labours. Yet his smart
I wept to see, and ru'd it from my heart,
Enquiring how he could before me be
That came by ship?