And here a multitude was rushing, swarming shoreward, with men and mothers, bodies of high-hearted heroes stripped of life, and boys and unwed girls, and young men set upon 405 the pyre of death before their fathers’ eyes: thick as the leaves that with the early frost of autumn drop and fall within the forest, or as the birds that flock along the beaches, in flight from frenzied seas when the chill season 410 drives them across the waves to lands of sun. They stand; each pleads to be the first to cross the stream; their hands reach out in longing for the farther shore. But Charon, sullen
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