THE ÆNEIDS OF VIRGIL

DONE INTO ENGLISH VERSE

BY

WILLIAM MORRIS

AUTHOR OF 'THE EARTHLY PARADISE'

THIRD IMPRESSION

LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON
NEW YORK AND BOMBAY
1900

Transcriber's note: Table of Contents generated for the HTML version.

Contents

[BOOK I.]
[BOOK II.]
[BOOK III.]
[BOOK IV.]
[BOOK V.]
[BOOK VI.]
[BOOK VII.]
[BOOK VIII.]
[BOOK IX.]
[BOOK X.]
[BOOK XI.]
[BOOK XII.]

THE ÆNEIDS OF VIRGIL.

BOOK I.

ARGUMENT.

ÆNEAS AND HIS TROJANS BEING DRIVEN TO LIBYA BY A TEMPEST, HAVE GOOD WELCOME OF DIDO, QUEEN OF CARTHAGE.

Lo I am he who led the song through slender reed to cry,
And then, come forth from out the woods, the fields that are thereby
In woven verse I bade obey the hungry tillers' need:
Now I, who sang their merry toil, sing Mars and dreadful deed.

I sing of arms, I sing of him, who from the Trojan land
Thrust forth by Fate, to Italy and that Lavinian strand
First came: all tost about was he on earth and on the deep
By heavenly might for Juno's wrath, that had no mind to sleep:
And plenteous war he underwent ere he his town might frame
And set his Gods in Latian earth, whence is the Latin name,
And father-folk of Alba-town, and walls of mighty Rome.

Say, Muse, what wound of godhead was whereby all this must come,
How grieving, she, the Queen of Gods, a man so pious drave
To win such toil, to welter on through such a troublous wave:10
—Can anger in immortal minds abide so fierce and fell?

There was a city of old time where Tyrian folk did dwell,
Called Carthage, facing far away the shores of Italy
And Tiber-mouth; fulfilled of wealth and fierce in arms was she,
And men say Juno loved her well o'er every other land,
Yea e'en o'er Samos: there were stored the weapons of her hand,
And there her chariot: even then she cherished the intent
To make her Lady of all Lands, if Fate might so be bent;
Yet had she heard how such a stem from Trojan blood should grow,
As, blooming fair, the Tyrian towers should one day overthrow,20
That thence a folk, kings far and wide, most noble lords of fight,
Should come for bane of Libyan land: such web the Parcæ dight.
The Seed of Saturn, fearing this, and mindful how she erst
For her beloved Argive walls by Troy the battle nursed—
—Nay neither had the cause of wrath nor all those hurts of old
Failed from her mind: her inmost heart still sorely did enfold
That grief of body set at nought in Paris' doomful deed,
The hated race, and honour shed on heaven-rapt Ganymede—
So set on fire, that Trojan band o'er all the ocean tossed,
Those gleanings from Achilles' rage, those few the Greeks had lost,30
She drave far off the Latin Land: for many a year they stray
Such wise as Fate would drive them on by every watery way.
—Lo, what there was to heave aloft in fashioning of Rome!

Now out of sight of Sicily the Trojans scarce were come
And merry spread their sails abroad and clave the sea with brass,
When Juno's heart, who nursed the wound that never thence would pass,
Spake out:
"And must I, vanquished, leave the deed I have begun,
Nor save the Italian realm a king who comes of Teucer's son?
The Fates forbid it me forsooth? And Pallas, might not she
Burn up the Argive fleet and sink the Argives in the sea40
For Oileus' only fault and fury that he wrought?
She hurled the eager fire of Jove from cloudy dwelling caught,
And rent the ships and with the wind the heaped-up waters drew,
And him a-dying, and all his breast by wildfire smitten through,
The whirl of waters swept away on spiky crag to bide.
While I, who go forth Queen of Gods, the very Highest's bride
And sister, must I wage a war for all these many years
With one lone race? What! is there left a soul that Juno fears
Henceforth? or will one suppliant hand gifts on mine altar lay?"

So brooding in her fiery heart the Goddess went her way50
Unto the fatherland of storm, full fruitful of the gale,
Æolia hight, where Æolus is king of all avail,
And far adown a cavern vast the bickering of the winds
And roaring tempests of the world with bolt and fetter binds:
They set the mountains murmuring much, a-growling angrily
About their bars, while Æolus sits in his burg on high,
And, sceptre-holding, softeneth them, and strait their wrath doth keep:
Yea but for that the earth and sea, and vault of heaven the deep,
They eager-swift would roll away and sweep adown of space:
For fear whereof the Father high in dark and hollow place60
Hath hidden them, and high above a world of mountains thrown
And given them therewithal a king, who, taught by law well known,
Now draweth, and now casteth loose the reins that hold them in:
To whom did suppliant Juno now in e'en such words begin:

"The Father of the Gods and men hath given thee might enow,
O Æolus, to smooth the sea, and make the storm-wind blow.
Hearken! a folk, my very foes, saileth the Tyrrhene main
Bearing their Troy to Italy, and Gods that were but vain:
Set on thy winds, and overwhelm their sunken ships at sea,
Or prithee scattered cast them forth, things drowned diversedly.70
Twice seven nymphs are in my house of body passing fair:
Of whom indeed Deïopea is fairest fashioned there.
I give her thee in wedlock sure, and call her all thine own
To wear away the years with thee, for thy deserving shown
To me this day; of offspring fair she too shall make thee sire."

To whom spake Æolus: "O Queen, to search out thy desire
Is all thou needest toil herein; from me the deed should wend.
Thou mak'st my realm; the sway of all, and Jove thou mak'st my friend,
Thou givest me to lie with Gods when heavenly feast is dight,
And o'er the tempest and the cloud thou makest me of might."80

Therewith against the hollow hill he turned him spear in hand
And hurled it on the flank thereof, and as an ordered band
By whatso door the winds rush out o'er earth in whirling blast,
And driving down upon the sea its lowest deeps upcast.
The East, the West together there, the Afric, that doth hold
A heart fulfilled of stormy rain, huge billows shoreward rolled.
Therewith came clamour of the men and whistling through the shrouds
And heaven and day all suddenly were swallowed by the clouds
Away from eyes of Teucrian men; night on the ocean lies,
Pole thunders unto pole, and still with wildfire glare the skies,90
And all things hold the face of death before the seamen's eyes.

Now therewithal Æneas' limbs grew weak with chilly dread,
He groaned, and lifting both his palms aloft to heaven, he said:
"O thrice and four times happy ye, that had the fate to fall
Before your fathers' faces there by Troy's beloved wall!
Tydides, thou of Danaan folk the mightiest under shield,
Why might I never lay me down upon the Ilian field,
Why was my soul forbid release at thy most mighty hand,
Where eager Hector stooped and lay before Achilles' wand,
Where huge Sarpedon fell asleep, where Simoïs rolls along100
The shields of men, and helms of men, and bodies of the strong?"

Thus as he cried the whistling North fell on with sudden gale
And drave the seas up toward the stars, and smote aback the sail;
Then break the oars, the bows fall off, and beam on in the trough
She lieth, and the sea comes on a mountain huge and rough.
These hang upon the topmost wave, and those may well discern
The sea's ground mid the gaping whirl: with sand the surges churn.
Three keels the South wind cast away on hidden reefs that lie
Midmost the sea, the Altars called by men of Italy,
A huge back thrusting through the tide: three others from the deep110
The East toward straits, and swallowing sands did miserably sweep,
And dashed them on the shoals, and heaped the sand around in ring:
And one, a keel the Lycians manned, with him, the trusty King
Orontes, in Æneas' sight a toppling wave o'erhung,
And smote the poop, and headlong rolled, adown the helmsman flung;
Then thrice about the driving flood hath hurled her as she lay,
The hurrying eddy swept above and swallowed her from day:
And lo! things swimming here and there, scant in the unmeasured seas,
The arms of men, and painted boards, and Trojan treasuries.
And now Ilioneus' stout ship, her that Achates leal120
And Abas ferried o'er the main, and old Aletes' keel
The storm hath overcome; and all must drink the baneful stream
Through opening leaky sides of them that gape at every seam.

But meanwhile Neptune, sorely moved, hath felt the storm let go,
And all the turmoil of the main with murmur great enow;
The deep upheaved from all abodes the lowest that there be:
So forth he put his placid face o'er topmost of the sea,
And there he saw Æneas' ships o'er all the main besprent,
The Trojans beaten by the flood and ruin from heaven sent.
But Juno's guile and wrathful heart her brother knew full well:130
So East and West he called to him, and spake such words to tell:

"What mighty pride of race of yours hath hold upon your minds,
That earth and sea ye turmoil so without my will, O winds;
That such upheaval and so great ye dare without my will?
Whom I—But first it comes to hand the troubled flood to still:
For such-like fault henceforward though with nought so light ye pay.
Go get you gone, and look to it this to your king to say:
That ocean's realm and three-tined spear of dread are given by Fate
Not unto him but unto me? he holds the cliffs o'ergreat,
Thine houses, Eurus; in that hall I bid him then be bold,140
Thine Æolus, and lord it o'er his winds in barred hold."

So saying and swifter than his word he layed the troubled main,
And put to flight the gathered clouds, and brought the sun again;
And with him Triton fell to work, and fair Cymothoë,
And thrust the ships from spiky rocks; with triple spear wrought he
To lift, and opened swallowing sands, and laid the waves alow.
Then on light wheels o'er ocean's face soft gliding did he go.
And, like as mid a people great full often will arise
Huge riot, and all the low-born herd to utter anger flies,
And sticks and stones are in the air, and fury arms doth find:150
Then, setting eyes perchance on one of weight for noble mind,
And noble deeds, they hush them then and stand with pricked-up ears,
And he with words becomes their lord, and smooth their anger wears;
—In such wise fell all clash of sea when that sea-father rose,
And looked abroad: who turned his steeds, and giving rein to those,
Flew forth in happy-gliding car through heaven's all-open way.

Æneas' sore forewearied host the shores that nearest lay
Stretch out for o'er the sea, and turn to Libyan land this while.
There goes a long firth of the sea, made haven by an isle,159
Against whose sides thrust out abroad each wave the main doth send
Is broken, and must cleave itself through hollow bights to wend:
Huge rocks on this hand and on that, twin horns of cliff, cast dread
On very heaven; and far and wide beneath each mighty head
Hushed are the harmless waters; lo, the flickering wood above
And wavering shadow cast adown by darksome hanging grove:
In face hereof a cave there is of rocks o'erhung, made meet
With benches of the living stone and springs of water sweet,
The house of Nymphs: a-riding there may way-worn ships be bold
To lie without the hawser's strain or anchor's hookèd hold.

That bight with seven of all his tale of ships Æneas gained,170
And there, by mighty love of land the Trojans sore constrained,
Leap off-board straight, and gain the gift of that so longed-for sand,
And lay their limbs with salt sea fouled adown upon the strand:
And first Achates smote alive the spark from out the flint,
And caught the fire in tinder-leaves, and never gift did stint
Of feeding dry; and flame enow in kindled stuff he woke;
Then Ceres' body spoilt with sea, and Ceres' arms they took,
And sped the matter spent with toil, and fruit of furrows found
They set about to parch with fire and 'twixt of stones to pound.

Meanwhile Æneas scaled the cliff and far and wide he swept180
The main, if anywhere perchance the sea his Antheus kept,
Tossed by the wind, if he might see the twi-banked Phrygians row;
If Capys, or Caïcus' arms on lofty deck might show.
Nor any ship there was in sight, but on the strand he saw
Three stags a-wandering at their will, and after them they draw
The whole herd following down the dales long strung out as they feed:
So still he stood, and caught in hand his bow and shafts of speed,
The weapons that Achates staunch was bearing then and oft;
And first the very lords of those, that bore their heads aloft
With branching horns, he felled, and then the common sort, and so190
Their army drave he with his darts through leafy woods to go:
Nor held his hand till on the earth were seven great bodies strown,
And each of all his ships might have one head of deer her own.
Thence to the haven gat he gone with all his folk to share,
And that good wine which erst the casks Acestes made to bear,
And gave them as they went away on that Trinacrian beach,
He shared about; then fell to soothe their grieving hearts with speech:

"O fellows, we are used ere now by evil ways to wend;
O ye who erst bore heavier loads, this too the Gods shall end.
Ye, ye have drawn nigh Scylla's rage and rocks that inly roar,200
And run the risk of storm of stones upon the Cyclops' shore:
Come, call aback your ancient hearts and put your fears away!
This too shall be for joy to you remembered on a day.
Through diverse haps, through many risks wherewith our way is strown,
We get us on to Latium, the land the Fates have shown
To be for peaceful seats for us: there may we raise up Troy.
Abide, endure, and keep yourselves for coming days of joy."

So spake his voice: but his sick heart did mighty trouble rack,
As, glad of countenance, he thrust the heavy anguish back.
But they fall to upon the prey, and feast that was to dight,210
And flay the hide from off the ribs, and bare the flesh to sight.
Some cut it quivering into steaks which on the spits they run,
Some feed the fire upon the shore, and set the brass thereon.
And so meat bringeth might again, and on the grass thereby,
Fulfilled with fat of forest deer and ancient wine, they lie.
But when all hunger was appeased and tables set aside,
Of missing fellows how they fared the talk did long abide;
Whom, weighing hope and weighing fear, either alive they trow,
Or that the last and worst has come, that called they hear not now.
And chief of all the pious King Æneas moaned the pass220
Of brisk Orontes, Amycus, and cruel fate that was
Of Lycus, and of Bias strong, and strong Cloanthus gone.

But now an end of all there was, when Jove a-looking down
From highest lift on sail-skimmed sea, and lands that round it lie,
And shores and many folk about, in topmost burg of sky
Stood still, and fixed the eyes of God on Libya's realm at last:
To whom, as through his breast and mind such cares of godhead passed,
Spake Venus, sadder than her due with bright eyes gathering tears:

"O thou, who rulest with a realm that hath no days nor years,
Both Gods and men, and mak'st them fear thy thunder lest it fall,230
What then hath mine Æneas done so great a crime to call?
What might have Trojan men to sin? So many deaths they bore
'Gainst whom because of Italy is shut the wide world's door.
Was it not surely promised me that as the years rolled round
The blood of Teucer come again should spring from out the ground,
The Roman folk, such very lords, that all the earth and sea
Their sway should compass? Father, doth the counsel shift in thee?
This thing indeed atoned to me for Troy in ashes laid,
And all the miserable end, as fate 'gainst fate I weighed:
But now the self-same fortune dogs men by such troubles driven240
So oft and oft. What end of toil then giv'st thou, King of heaven?
Antenor was of might enow to 'scape the Achæan host,
And safe to reach the Illyrian gulf and pierce Liburnia's coast,
And through the inmost realms thereof to pass Timavus' head,
Whence through nine mouths midst mountain roar is that wild water shed,
To cast itself on fields below with all its sounding sea:
And there he made Patavium's town and Teucrian seats to be,
And gave the folk their very name and Trojan arms did raise:
Now settled in all peace and rest he passeth quiet days.
But we, thy children, unto whom thou giv'st with bowing head250
The heights of heaven, our ships are lost, and we, O shame! betrayed,
Are driven away from Italy for anger but of one.
Is this the good man's guerdon then? is this the promised throne?"

The Sower of the Gods and men a little smiled on her
With such a countenance as calms the storms and upper air;
He kissed his daughter on the lips, and spake such words to tell:
"O Cytherean, spare thy dread! unmoved the Fates shall dwell
Of thee and thine, and thou shalt see the promised city yet,
E'en that Lavinium's walls, and high amidst the stars shalt set
Great-souled Æneas: nor in me doth aught of counsel shift260
But since care gnaws upon thine heart, the hidden things I lift
Of Fate, and roll on time for thee, and tell of latter days.
Great war he wars in Italy, and folk full wild of ways
He weareth down, and lays on men both laws and wallèd steads,
Till the third summer seeth him King o'er the Latin heads,
And the third winter's wearing brings the fierce Rutulians low.
Thereon the lad Ascanius, Iulus by-named now,
(And Ilus was he once of old, when Ilium's city was,)
Fulfilleth thirty orbs of rule with rolling months that pass,
And from the town Lavinium shifts the dwelling of his race,270
And maketh Alba-town the Long a mighty fencèd place.
Here when for thrice an hundred years untouched the land hath been
Beneath the rule of Hector's folk, lo Ilia, priestess-queen,
Goes heavy with the love of Mars, and bringeth twins to birth.
'Neath yellow hide of foster-wolf thence, mighty in his mirth,
Comes Romulus to bear the folk, and Mavors' walls to frame,
And by the word himself was called the Roman folk to name.
On them I lay no bonds of time, no bonds of earthly part;
I give them empire without end: yea, Juno, hard of heart,
Who wearieth now with fear of her the heavens and earth and sea,280
Shall gather better counsel yet, and cherish them with me;
The Roman folk, the togaed men, lords of all worldly ways.
Such is the doom. As weareth time there come those other days,
Wherein Assaracus shall bind Mycenæ of renown,
And Phthia, and shall lord it o'er the Argives beaten down.
Then shall a Trojan Cæsar come from out a lovely name,
The ocean-stream shall bound his rule, the stars of heaven his fame,
Julius his name from him of old, the great Iulus sent:
Him too in house of heaven one day 'neath spoils of Eastlands bent
Thou, happy, shalt receive; he too shall have the prayers of men.290
The wars of old all laid aside, the hard world bettereth then,
And Vesta and the hoary Faith, Quirinus and his twin
Now judge the world; the dreadful doors of War now shut within
Their iron bolts and strait embrace the godless Rage of folk,
Who, pitiless, on weapons set, and bound in brazen yoke
Of hundred knots aback of him foams fell from bloody mouth."

Such words he spake, and from aloft he sent down Maia's youth
To cause the lands and Carthage towers new-built to open gate
And welcome in the Teucrian men; lest Dido, fooled of fate,299
Should drive them from her country-side. The unmeasured air he beat
With flap of wings, and speedily in Libya set his feet:
And straightway there his bidding wrought, and from the Tyrians fall,
God willing it, their hearts of war; and Dido first of all
Took peace for Teucrians to her soul, and quiet heart and kind.

Now good Æneas through the night had many things in mind,
And set himself to fare abroad at first of holy day
To search the new land what it was, and on what shore he lay
Driven by the wind; if manfolk there abode, or nought but deer,
(For waste it seemed), and tidings true back to his folk to bear.
So in that hollow bight of groves beneath the cavern cleft,310
All hidden by the leafy trees and quavering shades, he left
His ships: and he himself afoot went with Achates lone,
Shaking in hand two slender spears with broad-beat iron done.
But as he reached the thicket's midst his mother stood before,
Who virgin face, and virgin arms, and virgin habit bore,
A Spartan maid; or like to her who tames the Thracian horse,
Harpalyce, and flies before the hurrying Hebrus' course.
For huntress-wise on shoulder she had hung the handy bow,
And given all her hair abroad for any wind to blow,
And, naked-kneed, her kirtle long had gathered in a lap:320
She spake the first:
"Ho youths," she said, "tell me by any hap
If of my sisters any one ye saw a wandering wide
With quiver girt, and done about with lynx's spotted hide,
Or following of the foaming boar with shouts and eager feet?"

So Venus; and so Venus' son began her words to meet:
"I have not seen, nor have I heard thy sisters nigh this place,
O maid:—and how to call thee then? for neither is thy face
Of mortals, nor thy voice of men: O very Goddess thou!
What! Phœbus' sister? or of nymphs whom shall I call thee now?
But whosoe'er thou be, be kind and lighten us our toil,330
And teach us where beneath the heavens, which spot of earthly soil
We are cast forth; unlearned of men, unlearned of land we stray,
By might of wind and billows huge here driven from out our way.
Our right hands by thine altar-horns shall fell full many a host."

Spake Venus: "Nowise am I worth so much of honour's cost:
The Tyrian maids are wont to bear the quiver even as I,
And even so far upon the leg the purple shoe-thong tie.
The Punic realm thou seest here, Agenor's town and folk,
But set amidst of Libyan men unused to bear the yoke.
Dido is Lady of the Land, who fled from Tyre the old,340
And from her brother: weary long were all the ill deed told,
And long its winding ways, but I light-foot will overpass.
Her husband was Sychæus hight, of land most rich he was
Of all Phoenicians: she, poor wretch! loved him with mighty love,
Whose father gave her, maid, to him, and first the rites did move
Of wedlock: but as King of Tyre her brother did abide,
Pygmalion, more swollen up in sin than any man beside:
Mad hatred yoked the twain of them, he blind with golden lust,
Godless with stroke of iron laid Sychæus in the dust
Unwares before the altar-horns; nor of the love did reck350
His sister had, but with vain hope played on the lover sick,
And made a host of feignings false, and hid the matter long.
Till in her sleep the image came of that unburied wrong,
Her husband dead; in wondrous wise his face was waxen pale:
His breast with iron smitten through, the altar of his bale,
The hooded sin of evil house, to her he open laid,
And speedily to flee away from fatherland he bade;
And for the help of travel showed earth's hidden wealth of old,
A mighty mass that none might tell of silver and of gold.
Sore moved hereby did Dido straight her flight and friends prepare:360
They meet together, such as are or driven by biting fear,
Or bitter hatred of the wretch: such ships as hap had dight
They fall upon and lade with gold; forth fare the treasures bright
Of wretch Pygmalion o'er the sea, a woman first therein.
And so they come unto the place where ye may see begin
The towers of Carthage, and the walls new built that mighty grow,
And bought the Byrsa-field good cheap, as still the name shall show,
So much of land as one bull's hide might scantly go about
—But ye forsooth, what men are ye, from what land fare ye out,
And whither go ye on your ways?"370
Her questioning in speech
He answered, and a heavy sigh from inmost heart did reach:
"O Goddess, might I tread again first footsteps of our way,
And if the annals of our toil thine hearkening ears might stay,
Yet Vesper first on daylight dead should shut Olympus' door.
From Troy the old, if yet perchance your ears have felt before
That name go by, do we come forth, and, many a water past,
A chance-come storm hath drifted us on Libyan shores at last.
I am Æneas, God-lover; I snatched forth from the foe
My Gods to bear aboard with me, a fame for heaven to know.
I seek the Italian fatherland, and Jove-descended line;380
Twice ten the ships were that I manned upon the Phrygian brine,
My Goddess-mother led the way, we followed fate god-given;
And now scarce seven are left to me by wave and east-wind riven;
And I through Libyan deserts stray, a man unknown and poor,
From Asia cast, from Europe cast,"
She might abide no more
To hear his moan: she thrusts a word amidst his grief and saith:
"Nay thou art not God's castaway, who drawest mortal breath,
And fairest to the Tyrian town, if aught thereof I know. Set on to Dido's threshold then e'en as the way doth show.
For take the tidings of thy ships and folk brought back again390
By shifting of the northern wind all safe from off the main:
Unless my parents learned me erst of soothsaying to wot
But idly. Lo there twice seven swans disporting in a knot,
Whom falling from the plain of air drave down the bird of Jove
From open heaven: strung out at length they hang the earth above,
And now seem choosing where to pitch, now on their choice to gaze,
As wheeling round with whistling wings they sport in diverse ways
And with their band ring round the pole and cast abroad their song.
Nought otherwise the ships and youth that unto thee belong
Hold haven now, or else full sail to harbour-mouth are come.400
Set forth, set forth and tread the way e'en as it leadeth home."

She spake, she turned, from rosy neck the light of heaven she cast,
And from her hair ambrosial the scent of Gods went past
Upon the wind, and o'er her feet her skirts fell shimmering down,
And very God she went her ways. Therewith his mother known,
With such a word he followed up a-fleeing from his eyes:

"Ah cruel as a God! and why with images and lies
Dost thou beguile me? wherefore then is hand to hand not given
And we to give and take in words that come from earth and heaven?"

Such wise he chided her, and then his footsteps townward bent:410
But Venus with a dusky air did hedge them as they went,
And widespread cloak of cloudy stuff the Goddess round them wrapped,
Lest any man had seen them there, or bodily had happed
Across their road their steps to stay, and ask their dealings there.
But she to Paphos and her home went glad amidst the air:
There is her temple, there they stand, an hundred altars meet,
Warm with Sabæan incense-smoke, with new-pulled blossoms sweet.

But therewithal they speed their way as led the road along;
And now they scale a spreading hill that o'er the town is hung,
And looking downward thereupon hath all the burg in face.420
Æneas marvels how that world was once a peasants' place,
He marvels at the gates, the roar and rattle of the ways.
Hot-heart the Tyrians speed the work, and some the ramparts raise,
Some pile the burg high, some with hand roll stones up o'er the ground;
Some choose a place for dwelling-house and draw a trench around;
Some choose the laws, and lords of doom, the holy senate choose.
These thereaway the havens dig, and deep adown sink those
The founding of the theatre walls, or cleave the living stone
In pillars huge, one day to show full fair the scene upon.
As in new summer 'neath the sun the bees are wont to speed430
Their labour in the flowery fields, whereover now they lead
The well-grown offspring of their race, or when the cells they store
With flowing honey, till fulfilled of sweets they hold no more;
Or take the loads of new-comers, or as a watch well set
Drive off the lazy herd of drones that they no dwelling get;
Well speeds the work, and thymy sweet the honey's odour is.

"Well favoured of the Fates are ye, whose walls arise in bliss!"
Æneas cries, a-looking o'er the housetops spread below;
Then, wonderful to tell in tale, hedged round with cloud doth go
Amid the thickest press of men, and yet of none is seen.440

A grove amid the town there is, a pleasant place of green,
Where erst the Tyrians, beat by waves and whirling of the wind,
Dug out the token Juno once had bidden them hope to find,
An eager horse's head to wit: for thus their folk should grow
Far-famed in war for many an age, of victual rich enow.
There now did Dido, Sidon-born, uprear a mighty fane
To Juno, rich in gifts, and rich in present godhead's gain:
On brazen steps its threshold rose, and brass its lintel tied,
And on their hinges therewithal the brazen door-leaves cried.
And now within that grove again a new thing thrusting forth450
'Gan lighten fear; for here to hope Æneas deemed it worth,
And trust his fortune beaten down that yet it might arise.
For there while he abode the Queen, and wandered with his eyes
O'er all the temple, musing on the city's fate to be,
And o'er the diverse handicraft and works of mastery,
Lo there, set out before his face the battles that were Troy's,
And wars, whereof all folk on earth had heard the fame and noise;
King Priam, the Atridæ twain, Achilles dire to both.
He stood, and weeping spake withal:
"Achates, lo! forsooth
What place, what land in all the earth but with our grief is stored?460
Lo Priam! and even here belike deed hath its own reward.
Lo here are tears for piteous things that touch men's hearts anigh:
Cast off thy fear! this fame today shall yet thy safety buy."

And with the empty painted thing he feeds his mind withal,
Sore groaning, and a very flood adown his face did fall.
For there he saw, as war around of Pergamus they cast,
Here fled the Greeks, the Trojan youth for ever following fast;
There fled the Phrygians, on their heels high-helmed Achilles' car;
Not far off, fair with snowy cloths, the tents of Rhesus are;
He knew them weeping: they of old in first of sleep betrayed,470
Tydides red with many a death a waste of nothing made,
And led those fiery steeds to camp ere ever they might have
One mouthful of the Trojan grass, or drink of Xanthus' wave.
And lo again, where Troilus is fleeing weaponless,
Unhappy youth, and all too weak to bear Achilles' stress,
By his own horses, fallen aback, at empty chariot borne,
Yet holding on the reins thereof; his neck, his tresses torn
O'er face of earth, his wrested spear a-writing in the dust.
Meanwhile were faring to the fane of Pallas little just
The wives of Troy with scattered hair, bearing the gown refused,480
Sad they and suppliant, whose own hands their very bosoms bruised,
While fixed, averse, the Goddess kept her eyes upon the ground.
Thrice had Achilles Hector dragged the walls of Troy around,
And o'er his body, reft of soul, was chaffering now for gold.
Deep groaned Æneas from his heart in such wise to behold
The car, the spoils, the very corpse of him, his fellow dead,
To see the hands of Priam there all weaponless outspread.
Yea, thrust amidst Achæan lords, his very self he knew;
The Eastland hosts he saw, and arms of Memnon black of hue.
There mad Penthesilea leads the maids of moony shield,490
The Amazons, and burns amidst the thousands of the field,
And with her naked breast thrust out above the golden girth,
The warrior maid hath heart to meet the warriors of the earth.

But while Æneas, Dardan lord, beholds the marvels there,
And, all amazed, stands moving nought with eyes in one set stare,
Lo cometh Dido, very queen of fairest fashion wrought,
By youths close thronging all about unto the temple brought.
Yea, e'en as on Eurotas' rim or Cynthus' ridges high
Diana leadeth dance about, a thousandfold anigh
The following Oreads gather round, with shoulder quiver-hung500
She overbears the Goddesses her swift feet fare among,
And great Latona's silent breast the joys of godhead touch.
Lo, such was Dido; joyously she bore herself e'en such
Amidst them, eager for the work and ordered rule to come;
Then through the Goddess' door she passed, and midmost 'neath the dome,
High raised upon a throne she sat, with weapons hedged about,
And doomed, and fashioned laws for men, and fairly sifted out
And dealt their share of toil to them, or drew the lot as happed.
There suddenly Æneas sees amidst a concourse wrapped
Antheus, Sergestus, and the strong Cloanthus draw anigh,510
And other Teucrians whom the whirl, wild, black, all utterly
Had scattered into other lands afar across the sea.
Amazed he stood, nor stricken was Achates less than he
By joy, by fear: they hungered sore hand unto hand to set;
But doubt of dealings that might be stirred in their hearts as yet;
So lurking, cloaked in hollow cloud they note what things betide
Their fellows there, and on what shore the ships they manned may bide,
And whence they come; for chosen out of all the ships they bear
Bidding of peace, and, crying out, thus temple-ward they fare.

But now when they were entered in, and gained the grace of speech,520
From placid heart Ilioneus the elder 'gan beseech:
"O Queen, to whom hath Jove here given a city new to raise,
And with thy justice to draw rein on men of wilful ways,
We wretched Trojans, tossed about by winds o'er every main,
Pray thee forbid it from our ships, the dreadful fiery bane.
Spare pious folk, and look on us with favouring kindly eyes!
We are not come with sword to waste the Libyan families,
Nor drive adown unto the strand the plunder of the strong:
No such high hearts, such might of mind to vanquished folk belong.
There is a place, Hesperia called of Greeks in days that are,530
An ancient land, a fruitful soil, a mighty land in war.
Œnotrian folk first tilled the land, whose sons, as rumours run,
Now call it nought but Italy from him who led them on.
And thitherward our course was turned,
When sudden, stormy, tumbling seas, Orion rose on us,
And wholly scattering us abroad with fierce blasts from the south,
Drave us, sea-swept, by shallows blind, to straits with wayless mouth:
But to thy shores we few have swum, and so betake us here.
What men among men are ye then? what country's soil may bear
Such savage ways? ye grudge us then the welcome of your sand,540
And fall to arms, and gainsay us a tide-washed strip of strand.
But if men-folk and wars of men ye wholly set at nought,
Yet deem the Gods bear memory still of good and evil wrought
Æneas was the king of us; no juster was there one,
No better lover of the Gods, none more in battle shone:
And if the Fates have saved that man, if earthly air he drink,
Nor 'neath the cruel deadly shades his fallen body shrink,
Nought need we fear, nor ye repent to strive in kindly deed
With us: we have in Sicily fair cities to our need.
And fields we have; Acestes high of Trojan blood is come.550
Now suffer us our shattered ships in haven to bring home,
To cut us timber in thy woods, and shave us oars anew.
Then if the Italian cruise to us, if friends and king are due,
To Italy and Latium then full merry wend we on.
But if, dear father of our folk, hope of thy health be gone,
And thee the Libyan water have, nor hope Iulus give,
Then the Sicanian shores at least, and seats wherein to live,
Whence hither came we, and the King Acestes let us seek."

So spake he, and the others made as they the same would speak,
The Dardan-folk with murmuring mouth.560

But Dido, with her head hung down, in few words answer gave:
"Let fear fall from you, Teucrian men, and set your cares aside;
Hard fortune yet constraineth me and this my realm untried
To hold such heed, with guard to watch my marches up and down.
Who knoweth not Æneas' folk? who knoweth not Troy-town,
The valour, and the men, and all the flame of such a war?
Nay, surely nought so dull as this the souls within us are,
Nor turns the sun from Tyrian town, so far off yoking steed.
So whether ye Hesperia great, and Saturn's acres need,
Or rather unto Eryx turn, and King Acestes' shore,570
Safe, holpen will I send you forth, and speed you with my store:
Yea and moreover, have ye will in this my land to bide.
This city that I build is yours: here leave your ships to ride:
Trojan and Tyrian no two wise at hands of me shall fare.
And would indeed the King himself, Æneas, with us were,
Driven by that self-same southern gale: but sure men will I send,
And bid them search through Libya from end to utmost end,
Lest, cast forth anywhere, he stray by town or forest part."

Father Æneas thereupon high lifted up his heart,
Nor stout Achates less, and both were fain the cloud to break;580
And to Æneas first of all the leal Achates spake:

"O Goddess-born, what thought hereof ariseth in thy mind?
All safe thou seest thy ships; thy folk fair welcomed dost thou find:
One is away, whom we ourselves saw sunken in the deep;
But all things else the promised word thy mother gave us keep."

Lo, even as he spake the word the cloud that wrapped them cleaves,
And in the open space of heaven no dusk behind it leaves;
And there Æneas stood and shone amid the daylight clear,
With face and shoulders of a God: for loveliness of hair
His mother breathed upon her son, and purple light of youth,590
And joyful glory of the eyes: e'en as in very sooth
The hand gives ivory goodliness, or when the Parian stone,
Or silver with the handicraft of yellow gold is done:
And therewithal unto the Queen doth he begin to speak,
Unlooked-for of all men:
"Lo here the very man ye seek,
Trojan Æneas, caught away from Libyan seas of late!
Thou, who alone of toils of Troy hast been compassionate,
Who takest us, the leavings poor of Danaan sword, outworn
With every hap of earth and sea, of every good forlorn,
To city and to house of thine: to thank thee to thy worth,600
Dido, my might may compass not; nay, scattered o'er the earth
The Dardan folk, for what thou dost may never give thee meed:
But if somewhere a godhead is the righteous man to heed,
If justice is, or any soul to note the right it wrought,
May the Gods give thee due reward. What joyful ages brought
Thy days to birth? what mighty ones gave such an one today?
Now while the rivers seaward run, and while the shadows stray
O'er hollow hills, and while the pole the stars is pasturing wide,
Still shall thine honour and thy name, still shall thy praise abide
What land soever calleth me."610
Therewith his right hand sought
His very friend Ilioneus, his left Serestus caught,
And then the others, Gyas strong, Cloanthus strong in fight.

Sidonian Dido marvelled much, first at the hero's sight,
Then marvelled at the haps he had, and so such word doth say:

"O Goddess-born, what fate is this that ever dogs thy way
With such great perils? What hath yoked thy life to this wild shore?
And art thou that Æneas then, whom holy Venus bore
Unto Anchises, Dardan lord, by Phrygian Simoïs' wave?
Of Teucer unto Sidon come a memory yet I have,
Who, driven from out his fatherland, was seeking new abode620
By Belus' help: but Belus then, my father, over-rode
Cyprus the rich, and held the same as very conquering lord:
So from that tide I knew of Troy and bitter Fate's award,
I knew of those Pelasgian kings—yea, and I knew thy name.
He then, a foeman, added praise to swell the Teucrian fame,
And oft was glad to deem himself of ancient Teucer's line.
So hasten now to enter in 'neath roofs of me and mine.
Me too a fortune such as yours, me tossed by many a toil,
Hath pleased to give abiding-place at last upon this soil,
Learned in illhaps full wise am I unhappy men to aid."630

Such tale she told, and therewith led to house full kingly made
Æneas, bidding therewithal the Gods with gifts to grace;
Nor yet their fellows she forgat upon the sea-beat place,
But sendeth them a twenty bulls, an hundred bristling backs
Of swine, an hundred fatted lambs, whereof his ewe none lacks,
And gifts and gladness of the God.
Meanwhile the gleaming house within with kingly pomp is dight,
And in the midmost of the hall a banquet they prepare:
Cloths laboured o'er with handicraft, and purple proud is there;
Great is the silver on the board, and carven out of gold640
The mighty deeds of father-folk, a long-drawn tale, is told,
Brought down through many and many an one from when their race began.

Æneas, through whose father's heart unquiet love there ran,
Sent on the swift Achates now unto the ships to speed,
To bear Ascanius all these haps, and townward him to lead;
For on Ascanius well beloved was all his father's thought:
And therewithal gifts good to give from Ilium's ruin caught
He bade him bring: a cope all stiff with golden imagery;
With saffron soft acanthus twine a veil made fair to see;
The Argive Helen's braveries, brought from Mycenæ erst,650
When she was seeking Pergamos and wedding all accursed:
Her mother Leda gave her these and marvellous they were.
A sceptre too that Ilione in days agone did bear,
The eldest-born of Priam's maids; a neckchain pearl bestrown,
And, doubly wrought with gold and gems, a kingly-fashioned crown.
So to the ships Achates went these matters forth to speed.

But Cytherea in her heart turned over new-wrought rede,
New craft; how, face and fashion changed, her son the very Love
For sweet Ascanius should come forth, and, gift-giving, should move
The Queen to madness, make her bones the yoke-fellows of flame.660
Forsooth the doubtful house she dreads, the two-tongued Tyrian name;
And bitter Juno burneth her, and care the night doth wake:
Now therefore to the winged Love such words as this she spake:

"O son, my might, my only might, who fearest nought at all
How his, the highest Father's bolts, Typhœus' bane, may fall,
To thee I flee, and suppliant so thy godhead's power beseech:
Thy brother, e'en Æneas, tossed on every sea-side beach
Thou knowest; all the fashioning of wrongful Juno's hate
Thou knowest; oft upon my grief with sorrow wouldst thou wait.
Him now Phœnician Dido holds, and with kind words enow670
Delays him there, but unto what Junonian welcomes grow
I fear me: will she hold her hand when thus the hinge is dight?
Now therefore am I compassing to catch their craft in flight,
To ring the Queen about with flame that her no power may turn,
That she may cling to me and sore for mine Æneas yearn.
Now hearken how I counsel thee to bring about my will:
The kingly boy his father calls, he whom I cherish still,
To that Sidonian city now is ready dight to fare,
And gifts, the gleanings of the sea and flames of Troy, doth bear,
Whom soaked in sleep forthwith will I in high Cythera hide,680
Or in Idalium's holy place where I am wont to bide,
Lest any one the guile should know and thrust themselves between:
But thou with craft his fashion feign, and with his face be seen
Well known of all, for no more space than one night's wearing by;
And so, when Dido, gladdest grown, shall take thee up to lie
Upon her breast 'twixt queenly board and great Lyæus' wave,
And thou the winding of her arms and kisses sweet shalt have,
Then breathe the hidden flame in her and forge thy venomed guile."

His lovesome mother Love obeyed, and doffed his wings awhile,
And as Iulus goeth now rejoicing on his way.690
But Venus all Ascanius' limbs in quiet rest doth lay,
And cherished in her goddess' breast unto Idalian groves
She bears him, where the marjoram still soft about him moves
And breatheth sweet from scented shade and blossoms on the air.
Love wrought her will, and bearing now those royal gifts and rare,
Unto the Tyrians joyous went, e'en as Achates led.
But when he came into the house, there on her golden bed
With hangings proud Queen Dido lay amidmost of the place:
The father then, Æneas, then the youth of Trojan race,
There gather, and their bodies cast on purple spread abroad.700
Folk serve them water for their hands, and speed the baskets stored
With Ceres, and the towels soft of close-clipped nap they bear.
Within were fifty serving-maids, whose long array had care
To furnish forth the meat and drink, and feed the house-gods' flame;
An hundred more, and youths withal of age and tale the same,
Set on the meat upon the board and lay the cups about.
And now through that wide joyous door came thronging from without
The Tyrians, and, so bidden, lie on benches painted fair.
They wonder at Æneas' gifts, and at Iulus there,
The flaming countenance of God, and speech so feigned and fine;710
They wonder at the cope and veil with that acanthus twine.
And chiefly that unhappy one doomed to the coming ill,
Nor hungry hollow of her heart nor burning eyes may fill
With all beholding: gifts and child alike her heart do move.
But he, when he had satisfied his feignèd father's love,
And clipped Æneas all about, and round his neck had hung,
Went to the Queen, who with her eyes and heart about him clung,
And whiles would strain him to her breast—poor Dido! knowing nought
What God upon her bosom sat; who ever had in thought
His Acidalian mother's word, and slowly did begin720
To end Sychæus quite, and with a living love to win
Her empty soul at rest, and heart unused a weary tide.

But when the feasting first was stayed, and boards were done aside,
Great beakers there they set afoot, and straight the wine they crowned.
A shout goes up within the house, great noise they roll around
The mighty halls: the candles hang adown from golden roof
All lighted, and the torches' flame keeps dusky night aloof.
And now a heavy bowl of gold and gems the Queen bade bring
And fill with all unwatered wine, which erst used Belus king,729
And all from Belus come: therewith through the hushed house she said:

"O Jupiter! they say by thee the guesting laws were made;
Make thou this day to Tyrian folk, and folk come forth from Troy,
A happy day, and may our sons remember this our joy!
Mirth-giver Bacchus, fail thou not from midst our mirth! be kind,
O Juno! and ye Tyrian folk, be glad this bond to bind!"

She spake, and on the table poured the glorious wave of wine,
Then touched the topmost of the bowl with dainty lip and fine,
And, egging on, to Bitias gave: nought slothful to be told
The draught he drained, who bathed himself within the foaming gold;
Then drank the other lords of them: long-haired Iopas then740
Maketh the golden harp to sing, whom Atlas most of men
Erst taught: he sings the wandering moon and toiling of the sun,
And whence the kind of men and beasts, how rain and fire begun,
Arcturus, the wet Hyades, and twin-wrought Northern Bears:
And why so swift the winter sun unto his sea-bath fares,
And what delayeth night so long upon the daylight's hem.
Then praise on praise the Tyrians shout, the Trojans follow them.

Meanwhile unhappy Dido wore the night-tide as it sank
In diverse talk, and evermore long draughts of love she drank,
And many a thing of Priam asked, of Hector many a thing:750
With what-like arms Aurora's son had come unto the King;
What were the steeds of Diomed, how great Achilles was.
At last she said:
"But come, O guest, tell all that came to pass
From earliest tide; of Danaan craft, and how thy land was lorn,
And thine own wanderings; for as now the seventh year is worn
That thee a-straying wide away o'er earth and sea hath borne."

BOOK II.

ARGUMENT.

ÆNEAS TELLETH TO DIDO AND THE TYRIANS THE STORY OF TROY'S OVERTHROW.

All hearkened hushed, and fixed on him was every face of man,
As from the couch high set aloft Æneas thus began:

"Unutterable grief, O Queen, thou biddest me renew
The falling of the Trojan weal and realm that all shall rue
'Neath Danaan might; which thing myself unhappy did behold,
Yea, and was no small part thereof. What man might hear it told
Of Dolopes, or Myrmidons, or hard Ulysses' band,
And keep the tears back? Dewy night now falleth from the land
Of heaven, and all the setting stars are bidding us to sleep:
But if to know our evil hap thy longing is so deep,10
If thou wilt hear a little word of Troy's last agony,
Though memory shuddereth, and my heart shrunk up in grief doth lie,
I will begin.
By battle broke, and thrust aback by Fate
Through all the wearing of the years, the Danaan lords yet wait
And build a horse up mountain-huge by Pallas' art divine,
Fair fashioning the ribs thereof with timbers of the pine,
And feign it vowed for safe return, and let the fame fly forth.
Herein by stealth a sort of men chosen for bodies' worth
Amid its darkness do they shut; the caverns inly lost
Deep in the belly of the thing they fill with armed host.20

In sight of Troy lies Tenedos, an island known of all,
And rich in wealth before the realm of Priam had its fall,
Now but a bay and roadstead poor, where scarcely ships may ride.
So thither now they sail away in desert place to hide.
We thought them gone, and that they sought Mycenæ on a wind,
Whereat the long-drawn grief of Troy fell off from every mind.

The gates are opened; sweet it is the Dorian camp to see,
The dwellings waste, the shore all void where they were wont to be:
Here dwelt the band of Dolopes, here was Achilles set,29
And this was where their ships were beached; here edge to edge we met.
Some wonder at unwedded maid Minerva's gift of death,
That baneful mountain of a horse; and first Thymœtes saith
'Twere good in walls to lead the thing, on topmost burg to stand;
Whether such word the fate of Troy or evil treason planned
I know not: Capys and the rest, who better counsel have,
Bid take the fashioned guile of Greeks, the doubtful gift they gave,
To tumble it adown to sea, with piled-up fire to burn,
Or bore the belly of the beast its hidden holes to learn;
So cleft atwain is rede of men abiding there in doubt.

But first before all others now with much folk all about40
Laocoon the fiery man runs from the burg adown,
And shouts from far:
'O wretched men, how hath such madness grown?
Deem ye the foe hath fared away? Deem ye that Danaan gifts
May ever lack due share of guile? Are these Ulysses' shifts?
For either the Achæans lurk within this fashioned tree,
Or 'tis an engine wrought with craft bane of our walls to be,
To look into our very homes, and scale the town perforce:
Some guile at least therein abides: Teucrians, trust not the horse!
Whatso it is, the Danaan folk, yea gift-bearing I fear.'49

Thus having said, with valiant might he hurled a huge-wrought spear
Against the belly of the beast swelled out with rib and stave;
It stood a-trembling therewithal; its hollow caverns gave
From womb all shaken with the stroke a mighty sounding groan.
And but for God's heart turned from us, for God's fate fixed and known,
He would have led us on with steel to foul the Argive den,
And thou, O Troy, wert standing now, thou Priam's burg as then!

But lo, where Dardan shepherds lead, with plenteous clamour round,
A young man unto Priam's place with hands behind him bound,
Who privily had thrust himself before their way e'en now
The work to crown, and into Troy an open way to show60
Unto the Greeks; a steadfast soul, prepared for either end,
Or utterly to work his craft or unto death to bend.
Eager to see him as he went around the Trojans flock
On every side, and each with each contend the man to mock.
Lo now, behold the Danaan guile, and from one wrong they wrought
Learn ye what all are like to be.
For as he stood in sight of all, bewildered, weaponless,
And let his eyes go all around the gazing Phrygian press,
He spake:
'What land shall have me now, what sea my head shall hide?
What then is left of deed to do that yet I must abide?70
No place I have among the Greeks, and Dardan folk withal
My foemen are, and bloody end, due doom, upon me call.'

And with that wail our hearts were turned, and somewhat backward hung
The press of men: we bade him say from whence his blood was sprung,
And what he did, and if indeed a captive we might trust;
So thus he spake when now all fear from off his heart was thrust:

'Whatso betide, to thee, O King, the matter's verity
Will I lay bare unto the end, nor Argive blood deny:
This firstly; for if Fate indeed shaped Sinon for all bale
To make him liar and empty fool her worst may not avail.80
Perchance a rumour of men's talk about your ears hath gone,
Telling of Palamedes' fame and glory that he won,
The son of Belus: traitors' word undid him innocent;
By unjust doom for banning war the way of death he went,
Slain by Pelasgian men, that now his quenchèd light deplore.
Fellow to him, and nigh akin, I went unto the war,
Sent by my needy father forth, e'en from my earliest years;
Now while he reigned in health, a king fair blooming mid his peers
In council of the kings, I too had share of name and worth.
But after he had gone his way from land of upper earth,90
Thrust down by sly Ulysses' hate, (I tell all men's belief),
Then beaten down I dragged my life through shadowy ways of grief,
And heavily I took the death of him my sackless friend,
Nor held my peace, O fool! but vowed revenge if time should send
A happy tide; if I should come to Argos any more,
A victor then: so with my words I drew down hatred sore.
This was the first fleck of my ill; Ulysses ever now
Would threaten with some new-found guilt, and mid the folk would sow
Dark sayings, and knowing what was toward, sought weapons new at need;
Nor wearied till with Calchas now to help him to the deed.—100
—But why upturn these ugly things, or spin out time for nought?
For if ye deem all Greekish men in one same mould are wrought:
It is enough. Come make an end; Ulysses' hope fulfil!
With great price would the Atridæ buy such working of their will.'

Then verily to know the thing and reach it deep we burned,
So little in Pelasgian guile and evil were we learned.
He takes the tale up; fluttering-voiced from lying heart he speaks:

'The longing to be gone from Troy fell oft upon the Greeks,
And oft they fain had turned their backs on war without an end,
(I would they had), and oft as they were e'en at point to wend110
A tempest would forbid the sea, or southern gale would scare,
And chiefly when with maple-beams this horse that standeth here
They fashioned, mighty din of storm did all the heavens fulfil.
So held aback, Eurypylus we sent to learn the will
Of Phœbus: from the shrine he brought such heavy words as these:
With blood and with a virgin's death did ye the winds appease
When first ye came, O Danaan folk, unto the Ilian shore;
With blood and with an Argive soul the Gods shall ye adore
For your return.
'Now when that word men's ears had gone about
Their hearts stood still, and tremors cold took all their bones for doubt
What man the Fates had doomed thereto, what man Apollo would.121
Amidst us then the Ithacan drags in with clamour rude
Calchas the seer, and wearieth him the Gods' will to declare.
Of that craftsmaster's cruel guile had many bade beware
In words, and many silently foresaw the coming death.
Twice five days Calchas holdeth peace and, hidden, gainsayeth
To speak the word that any man to very death should cast,
Till hardly, by Ulysses' noise sore driven, at the last
He brake out with the speech agreed, and on me laid the doom;
All cried assent, and what each man feared on himself might come,130
'Gainst one poor wretch's end of days with ready hands they bear.
Now came the evil day; for me the rites do men prepare,
The salted cakes, the holy strings to do my brows about.
I needs must say I brake my bonds, from Death's house gat me out,
And night-long lay amid the sedge by muddy marish side
Till they spread sail, if they perchance should win their sailing tide.
Nor have I hope to see again my fatherland of old;
My longed-for father and sweet sons I never shall behold;
On whom the guilt of me who fled mayhappen men will lay,
And with their death for my default the hapless ones shall pay.140
But by the might of very God, all sooth that knoweth well,
By all the unstained faith that yet mid mortal men doth dwell,
If aught be left, I pray you now to pity such distress!
Pity a heart by troubles tried beyond its worthiness!'

His weeping won his life of us, and pity thereunto,
And Priam was the first who bade his irons to undo,
And hand-bonds, and in friendly words unto the man he speaks:

'Whoso thou art, henceforward now forget thy missing Greeks;
Thou shalt be ours: but learn me now, who fain the sooth would wot,
Wherefore they built this world of horse, what craftsman him begot,150
And what to do? What gift for Gods; what gin of war is he?'

He spake. The other, wise in guile and Greekish treachery,
Both palms of his from bonds new-freed raised toward the stars above,
And, 'O eternal fires!' he cried, 'O might that none may move,
Bear witness now! ye altar-stones, ye wicked swords I fled,
Ye holy fillets of the Gods bound round my fore-doomed head,
That I all hallowed Greekish rites may break and do aright,
That I may hate the men and bring all hidden things to light
If aught lie hid; nor am I held by laws my country gave!
But thou, O Troy, abide by troth, and well thy saviour save,160
If truth I bear thee, if great things for great I pay thee o'er!

'All hope the Danaans had, all trust for speeding on the war
On Pallas' aid was ever set: yet came a day no less
When godless Diomed and he, well-spring of wickedness,
Ulysses, brake the holy place that they by stealth might gain
The fate-fulfilled Palladium, when, all the burg-guards slain,
They caught the holy image up, and durst their bloody hands
Lay on the awful Goddess there and touch her holy bands:
The flood-tide of the Danaan hope ebbed from that very day;
Might failed them, and the Goddess-maid turned all her heart away:170
Token whereof Tritonia gave by portent none might doubt:
Scarce was the image set in camp when suddenly flashed out
Fierce fire from staring eyes of her, and salt sweat oozed and fell
O'er all her limbs, and she from earth, O wonderful to tell!
Leapt thrice, still holding in her hand the quivering spear and shield:
Then Calchas bade us turn to flight across the wavy field,
Singing how ruin of Pergamos the Argive steel shall lack,
Till Argos give the signs again, and we the God bring back
In hollow of the curved keel across the tumbling main.
And this is why they sought their home, Mycenæ's land, again,180
And there they dight them arms and God, and presently unwares
Will be on you across the sea—Calchas such doom declares.
So warned hereby for Godhead's hurt, in stolen Palladium's stead,
Atonement for their heavy guilt, this horse they fashionèd.
But him indeed did Calchas bid to pile so mountain-high
With such a might of mingled beams, and lead up to the sky,
Lest it within the gates should come, or mid the walls, and lest
Beneath their ancient Pallas-faith the people safe should rest.
For if upon Minerva's gift ye lay a godless hand,
Then mighty ruin (and would to God before his face might stand190
That ruin instead) on Priam's might, and Phrygian folk shall fall.
But if your hands shall lead it up within the city wall,
Then Asia, free and willing it, to Pelops' house shall come
With mighty war; and that same fate our sons shall follow home.'

Caught by such snares and crafty guile of Sinon the forsworn,
By lies and lies, and tears forced forth there were we overborne;
We, whom Tydides might not tame, nor Larissæan king
Achilles; nor the thousand ships, and ten years' wearying.

But now another, greater hap, a very birth of fear,
Was thrust before us wretched ones, our sightless hearts to stir.200
Laocoon, chosen out by lot for mighty Neptune's priest,
Would sacrifice a mighty bull at altars of the feast;
When lo, away from Tenedos, o'er quiet of the main
(I tremble in the tale) we see huge coils of serpents twain
Breasting the sea, and side by side swift making for the shore;
Whose fronts amid the flood were strained, and high their crests upbore
Blood-red above the waves, the rest swept o'er the sea behind,
And all the unmeasured backs of them coil upon coil they wind,
While sends the sea great sound of foam. And now the meads they gained,
The burning eyes with flecks of blood and streaks of fire are stained,
Their mouths with hisses all fulfilled are licked by flickering tongue.211
Bloodless we flee the sight, but they fare steadfastly along
Unto Laocoon; and first each serpent round doth reach
One little body of his sons, and knitting each to each,
And winding round and round about, the unhappy body gnaws:
And then himself, as sword in hand anigh for help he draws,
They seize and bind about in coils most huge, and presently
Are folded twice about his midst, twice round his neck they tie
Their scaly backs, and hang above with head and toppling mane,
While he both striveth with his hands to rend their folds atwain,220
His fillets covered o'er with blood and venom black and fell,
And starward sendeth forth withal a cry most horrible,
The roaring of a wounded bull who flees the altar-horn
And shaketh from his crest away the axe unhandy borne.

But fleeing to the shrines on high do those two serpents glide,
And reach the hard Tritonia's house, and therewithin they hide
Beneath the Goddess' very feet and orbèd shield of dread;
Then through our quaking hearts indeed afresh the terror spread,
And all men say Laocoon hath paid but worthily
For guilt of his, and hurt of steel upon the holy tree,230
When that unhappy wicked spear against its flank he threw.
They cry to lead the image on to holy house and due,
And Pallas' godhead to adore.
We break adown our rampart walls and bare the very town:
All gird themselves unto the work, set wheels that it may glide
Beneath his feet, about his neck the hempen bond is tied
To warp it on: up o'er the walls so climbs the fateful thing
Fruitful of arms; and boys about and unwed maidens sing
The holy songs, and deem it joy hand on the ropes to lay.
It enters; through the city's midst it wends its evil way.240
—O land! O Ilium, house of Gods! O glorious walls of war!
O Dardan walls!—four times amidst the threshold of our door
It stood: four times with sound of arms the belly of it rung;
But heedless, maddened hearts and blind, hard on the ropes we hung,
Nor but amidst the holy burg the monster's feet we stay.
And then Cassandra oped her mouth to tell the fateful day,—
Her mouth that by the Gods' own doom the Teucrians ne'er might trow.
Then on this day that was our last we bear the joyous bough,
Poor wretches! through the town to deck each godhead's holy place.

Meanwhile the heavens are faring round, night falls on ocean's face,250
Enwrapping in her mighty shade all earthly things and sky,
And all the guile of Myrmidons: silent the Teucrians lie
Through all the town, and Sleep her arms o'er wearied bodies slips.

And now the Argive host comes forth upon its ordered ships
From Tenedos, all hushed amid the kind moon's silent ways,
Seeking the well-known strand, when forth there breaks the bale-fire's blaze
On the king's deck: and Sinon, kept by Gods' unequal fate,
For Danaans hid in horse's womb undoes the piny gate
In stealthy wise: them now the horse, laid open to the air,
Gives forth again, and glad from out the hollow wood they fare;260
Thessandrus, Sthenelus, the dukes, and dire Ulysses pass;
Slipped down along a hanging rope, Thoas and Acamas,
Peleian Neoptolemus, and Machaon the first,
And Menelaüs, and the man who forged the guile accursed,
Epeos. Through the city sunk in sleep and wine they break,
Slain are the guards, at gates all oped their fellows in they take,
Till all their bands confederate are met at last in one.

It was the time when that first peace of sick men hath begun,
By very gift of God o'er all in sweetest wise to creep,
When Hector comes before mine eyes amid the dreams of sleep,270
Most sorrowful to see he was, and weeping plenteous flood,
And e'en as torn behind the car, black with the dust and blood,
His feet all swollen with the thong that pierced them through and through.
Woe worth the while for what he was! How changed from him we knew!
The Hector come from out the fight in arms Achilles lost,
The Hector that on Danaan decks the Phrygian firebrands tost.
Foul was his beard, and all his hair was matted up with gore,
And on his body were the wounds, the many wounds he bore
Around his Troy. I seemed in sleep, I weeping e'en as he,
To speak unto the hero first in voice of misery:280

'O Light of Troy, most faithful hope of all the Teucrian men,
What stay hath held thee back so long? from what shore com'st thou then,
Long-looked-for Hector? that at last, so many died away,
Such toil of city, toil of men, we see thy face today,
We so forewearied? What hath fouled in such an evil wise
Thy cheerful face? what mean these hurts thou showest to mine eyes?'

Nought: nor my questions void and vain one moment turned his speech;
Who from the inmost of his heart a heavy groan did reach:
'O Goddess-born, flee forth,' he said, 'and snatch thee from the fire!
The foeman hath the walls, and Troy is down from topmost spire.290
For Priam and for country now enough. If any hand
Might have kept Pergamos, held up by mine it yet should stand.
Her holy things and household gods Troy gives in charge to thee;
Take these as fellows of thy fate: go forth the walls to see,
The great walls thou shalt build, when thou the sea hast wandered o'er.'

He spake, and from the inner shrine forth in his hands he bore
Great Vesta, and the holy bands, and fire that never dies.

Meanwhile the city's turmoiled woe was wrought in diverse wise,
And though my father's house aback apart from all was set,
And hedged about with many trees, clearer and clearer yet300
The sounds grew on us, ever swelled the weapons' dread and din.
I shake off sleep and forthwithal climb up aloft and win
To topmost roof: with ears pricked up I stand to hearken all.
As when before the furious South the driven flame doth fall
Among the corn: or like as when the hill-flood rolls in haste
To waste the fields and acres glad, the oxen's toil to waste,
Tearing the headlong woods along, while high upon a stone
The unready shepherd stands amazed, and hears the sound come on.

Then was their faith made manifest, then Danaan guile lay bare;
Deïphobus' wide house e'en now, o'ertopped by Vulcan's flare,
Shows forth its fall; Ucalegon's is burning by its side:310
The narrow seas Sigæum guards gleam litten far and wide.
The shout of men ariseth now, and blaring of the horn,
And mad, I catch my weapons up though idly they be borne;
But burned my heart to gather folk for battle, and set forth
Upon the burg in fellowship; for fury and great wrath
Thrust on my heart: to die in arms, it seemed a good reward.

But lo, now Panthus newly slipped from 'neath the Achean sword,
Panthus the son of Othrys, priest of Phœbus' house on high;
His holy things and vanquished Gods, his little lad thereby320
He drags, and as a madman runs, to gain our doorway set.
'Panthus, how fares it at the worst? what stronghold keep we yet?'
Scarce had I said, when from his mouth a groan and answer fares:

'Troy's latest day has come on us, a tide no struggling wears:
Time was, the Trojans were; time was, and Ilium stood; time was,
And glory of the Teucrian folk! Jove biddeth all to pass
To Argos now: in Troy afire the Danaans now are lords;
The horse high set amidst the town pours forth a flood of swords,
And Sinon, of the victors now, the flame is driving home
High mocking: by the open gates another sort is come,330
As many thousands as ere flocked from great Mycenæ yet:
Others with weapons ready dight the narrow ways beset,
And ban all passage; point and edge are glittering drawn and bare
Ready for death: and scarcely now the first few gatewards dare
The battle, and blind game of Mars a little while debate.'

Spurred by such speech of Othrys' son, and force of godhead great,
Mid fire and steel I follow on as grim Erinnys shows,
Where call the cries, where calls the shout that ever heavenward goes,
Rhipeus therewith, and Epytus the mighty under shield,
Dymas and Hypanis withal their fellowship now yield;340
Met by the moon they join my side with young Corœbus; he
The son of Mygdon, at that tide in Troy-town chanced to be;
Drawn thither by Cassandra's love that burned within his heart.
So he to Priam service gave, and helped the Phrygian part:
Unhappy! that the warning word of his God-maddened love
He might not hearken on that day.
Now when I see them gathered so to dare the battle's pain,
Thus I begin:
'O fellows fair, O hardy hearts in vain!
If now ye long to follow me who dares the utterance
And certain end, ye see indeed what wise our matters chance.350
The Gods, who in the other days our lordship mighty made,
Are gone from altar and from shrine: a town of flames ye aid.
Fall on a very midst the fire and die in press of war!
One hope there is for vanquished men, to cherish hope no more.'

Therewith the fury of their minds I feed, and thence away,
As ravening wolves by night and cloud their bellies' lust obey,
That bitter-sharp is driving on, the while their whelps at home
Dry-jawed await them, so by steel, by crowd of foes we come
Into the very death; we hold the city's midmost street,
Black night-tide's wings with hollow shade about our goings meet.360

O ruin and death of that ill night, what tongue may set it forth!
Or who may pay the debt of tears that agony was worth!
The ancient city overthrown, lord for so many a year,
The many bodies of the slain, that, moveless, everywhere
Lie in the street, in houses lie, lie round the holy doors
Of Gods. But not alone that night the blood of Teucrians pours,
For whiles the valour comes again in vanquished hearts to bide,
And conquering Danaans fall and die: grim grief on every side,
And fear on every side there is, and many-faced is death.

Androgeus, whom a mighty band of Danaans followeth,370
First falleth on the road of us, and, deeming us to be
His fellow-folk, in friendly words he speaketh presently:

'Haste on, O men! what sloth is this delayeth so your ways?
While others hand and haul away in Pergamos ablaze;
What! fellows, from the lofty ships come ye but even now?'

But with the word, no answer had wherein at all to trow,
He felt him fallen amid the foe, and taken in the snare;
Then foot and voice aback he drew, and stood amazèd there,
As one who through the thicket thrusts, and unawares doth tread
Upon a snake, and starts aback with sudden rush of dread380
From gathering anger of the thing and swelling neck of blue:
So, quaking at the sight of us, Androgeus backward drew.
But we fall on with serried arms and round their rout we crowd,
And fell them knowing nought the place, and with all terror cowed:
So sweet the breath of fortune was on our first handicraft.

But with good-hap and hardihood Corœbus' spirit laughed;
'Come, fellows, follow up,' he cries, 'the way that fortune shows
This first of times, and where belike a little kind she grows.
Change we our shields, and do on us the tokens of the Greeks;
Whether with fraud or force he play what man of foeman seeks,390
Yea, these themselves shall give us arms.'
He spake, and forth did bear
Androgeus' high-crested helm and shield emblazoned fair,
And did it on, and Argive sword he girt unto his thigh:
So Rhipeus did, and Dymas did, and all did joyously,
And each man wholly armed himself with plunder newly won.
Then mingled with the Greeks we fare, and no God helps us on,
And many a battle there we join amid the eyeless night,
And many a Danaan send adown to Orcus from the light:
Some fled away unto the ships, some to the safe sea-shore,399
Or smitten with the coward's dread climbed the great horse once more
And there they lie all close within the well-known womb of wood.

Alas! what skills it man to trust in Gods compelled to good?
For lo, Cassandra, Priam's maid, with hair cast all about,
From Pallas' house and innermost of holy place dragged out,
And straining with her burning eyes in vain to heaven aloft;
Her eyes, for they in bonds had bound her tender palms and soft.
Nought bore Corœbus' maddened mind to see that show go by,
And in the middle of their host he flung himself to die,
And all we follow and fall on with points together set.
And first from that high temple-top great overthrow we get410
From weapons of our friends, and thence doth hapless death arise
From error of the Greekish crests and armour's Greekish guise;
Then crying out for taken maid, fulfilled thereat with wrath,
The gathered Greeks fall in on us: comes keenest Ajax forth;
The sons of Atreus, all the host of Dolopes are there:—
As whiles, the knit whirl broken up, the winds together bear
And strive, the West wind and the South, the East wind glad and free
With Eastland steeds; sore groan the woods; and Nereus stirs the sea
From lowest deeps, and trident shakes, and foams upon the wave:—
They even to whom by night and cloud great overthrow we gave,420
Through craft of ours, and drave about through all the town that while,
Now show themselves, and know our shields and weapons worn for guile
The first of all; our mouths unmeet for Greekish speech they tell
Then o'er us sweeps the multitude; and first Corœbus fell
By Peneleus before the Maid who ever in the fight
Prevaileth most; fell Rhipeus there, the heedfullest of right
Of all among the Teucrian folk, the justest man of men;
The Gods deemed otherwise. Dymas and Hypanis died then,
Shot through by friends, and not a whit availed to cover thee,
O Panthus, thine Apollo's bands or plenteous piety.430
Ashes of Ilium, ye last flames where my beloved ones burned,
Bear witness mid your overthrow my face was never turned
From Danaan steel and Danaan deed! if fate had willed it so
That I should fall, I earned my wage.
Borne thence away, we go
Pelias and Iphitus and I; but Iphitus was spent
By eld, and by Ulysses' hurt half halting Pelias went.
So unto Priam's house we come, called by the clamour there,
Where such a mighty battle was as though none otherwhere
Yet burned: as though none others fell in all the town beside.
There all unbridled Mars we saw, the Danaans driving wide440
Against the house; with shield-roofs' rush the doors thereof beset.
The ladders cling unto the walls, men by the door-posts get
Some foothold up; with shielded left they meet the weapons' rain,
While on the battlements above grip with the right they gain.
The Dardans on the other side pluck roof and pinnacle
From off the house; with such-like shot they now, beholding well
The end anigh, all death at hand, make ready for the play:
And gilded beams, the pomp and joy of fathers passed away.
They roll adown, and other some with naked point and edge
The nether doorways of the place in close arrayment hedge.450
Blazed up our hearts again to aid this palace of a king,
To stead their toil, to vanquished men a little help to bring.

A door there was, a secret pass into the common way
Of all King Priam's houses there, that at the backward lay
As one goes by: in other days, while yet the lordship was,
Hapless Andromache thereby unto the twain would pass
Alone, or leading to the king Astyanax her boy.
And thereby now I gain the tower, whence wretched men of Troy
In helpless wise from out their hands were casting darts aloof.
There was a tower, a sheer height down, builded from highest roof460
Up toward the stars; whence we were wont on Troy to look adown,
And thence away the Danaan ships, the Achæan tented town.
Against the highest stage hereof the steel about we bear,
Just where the joints do somewhat give: this from its roots we tear,
And heave it up and over wall, whose toppling at the last
Bears crash and ruin, and wide away the Danaans are down cast
Beneath its fall: but more come on: nor drift of stones doth lack,
Nor doth all kind of weapon-shot at any while grow slack.
Lo, Pyrrhus in the very porch forth to the door doth pass
Exulting; bright with glittering points and flashing of the brass;470
—E'en as a snake to daylight come, on evil herbage fed,
Who, swollen, 'neath the chilly soil hath had his winter bed,
And now, his ancient armour doffed, and sleek with youth new found,
With front upreared his slippery back he coileth o'er the ground
Up 'neath the sun; his three-cleft tongue within his mouth gleams clear:—
And with him Periphas the huge, Achilles' charioteer,
Now shield-bearer Automedon and all the Scyrian host
Closed on the walls and on the roof the blazing firebrands tost.
Pyrrhus in forefront of them all catches a mighty bill,
Beats in the hardened door, and tears perforce from hinge and sill480
The brazen leaves; a beam hewn through, wide gaped the oak hard knit
Into a great-mouthed window there, and through the midst of it
May men behold the inner house; the long halls open lie;
Bared is the heart of Priam's home, the place of kings gone by;
And close against the very door all armèd men they see.

That inner house indeed was mazed with wail and misery,
The inmost chambers of the place an echoing hubbub hold
Of women's cries, whose clamour smites the far-off stars of gold,
And through the house so mighty great the fearful mothers stray,
And wind their arms about the doors, and kisses on them lay.490

But Pyrrhus with his father's might comes on; no bolt avails,
No man against the might of him; the door all battered fails,
The door-leaves torn from off of hinge tumble and lie along:
Might maketh road; through passage forced the entering Danaans throng,
And slay the first and fill the place with armour of their ranks.
Nay nought so great is foaming flood that through its bursten banks
Breaks forth, and beateth down the moles that 'gainst its going stand.
And falls a fierce heap on the plain, and over all the land
Drags off the herds and herd-houses.
There saw I Pyrrhus wild
With death of men amidst the door, and either Atreus' child;500
And Hecuba and hundred wives her sons wed saw I there,
And Priam fouling with his blood the very altars fair
Whose fires he hallowed: fifty beds the hope of house to be,
The doorways proud with outland gold and war-got bravery
Sunk into ash; where fire hath failed the Danaans are enow.

Belike what fate on Priam fell thou askest me to show:
For when he saw the city lost, and his own house-door stormed,
And how in bowels of his house the host of foemen swarmed,
The ancient man in vain does on the arms long useless laid
About his quaking back of eld, and girds himself with blade510
Of no avail, and fareth forth amid the press to die.
A very midmost of the courts beneath the naked sky
A mighty altar stood: anear a bay exceeding old,
The altar and the Gods thereof did all in shadow hold;
And round about that altar-stead sat Hecuba the queen,
And many daughters: e'en as doves all huddled up are seen
'Neath the black storm they cling about the dear God's images.

But when in arms of early days King Priam now she sees,
She crieth: 'O unhappy spouse! what evil heart hast thou,
With weapons thus to gird thyself, or whither wilt thou now?520
Today availeth no such help, and no such warder's stay
May better aught; not even were my Hector here today.
But come thou hither unto me; this altar all shall save,
Or we shall die together here!'
Her arms about she gave
And took him, and the elder set adown in holy stead.

But lo! now one of Priam's sons, Polites, having fled
From Pyrrhus' murder through the swords and through the foeman's throng,
Runs wounded through the empty hall from out the cloister long,
And burning Pyrrhus, hard at heel, the deadly hurt doth bear,
And grip of hand is on him now, and now the point of spear.530
But as he rushed before their eyes, his parents' face beneath
He fell, and with most plenteous blood shed forth his latest breath;
Then Priam, howsoever nigh the very death might grip,
Refrained him nothing at the sight, but voice and wrath let slip:
'Ah, for such wickedness,' he cried, 'for daring such a deed,
If aught abide in heaven as yet such things as this to heed,
May the Gods give thee worthy thanks, and pay thee well-earned prize,
That thou hast set the death of sons before my father's eyes,
That thou thy murder's fouling thus in father's face hast flung.
Not he, Achilles, whence indeed thou liar hast never sprung,540
Was such a foe to Priam erst; for shamfast meed he gave
To law and troth of suppliant men, and rendered to the grave
The bloodless Hector dead, and me sent to mine own again.'

So spake the elder, and cast forth a toothless spear and vain,
That forthwith from the griding brass was put aback all spent,
And from the shield-boss' outer skin hung down, for nothing sent.
Then Pyrrhus cried: 'Yea tell him this, go take the tidings down
To Peleus' son my father then, of Pyrrhus worser grown
And all these evil deeds of mine! take heed to tell the tale!
Now die!'
And to the altar-stone him quivering did he hale,550
And sliding in his own son's blood so plenteous: in his hair
Pyrrhus his left hand wound, his right the gleaming sword made bare,
That even to the hilts thereof within his flank he hid.
Such was the end of Priam's day, such faring forth fate bid,
Troy all aflame upon the road, all Pergamus adown.
He, of so many peoples once the mighty lord and crown,
So many lands of Asia once, a trunk beside the sea
Huge with its headless shoulders laid, a nameless corpse is he.

Then first within the compassing of bitter fear I was;
The image of my father dear by me all mazed did pass,560
When I beheld the like-aged king gasping his life away
Through cruel wound: upon mine eyes forlorn Creusa lay,
The wasted house, my little one, Iulus', evil end.
I look aback to see what folk about me yet do wend,
But all, foredone, had fallen away, their weary bodies spent,
Some all amid the fire had cast, some unto earth had sent.

Alone was I of all men now, when lo, in Vesta's house
Abiding, and in inmost nook silent and lurking close,
Helen the seed of Tyndarus! the clear fires give her light
As there she strayeth, turning eyes on every shifting sight;570
She, fearful of the Teucrian wrath for Pergamus undone,
And fearful of the Danaan wrath and husband left alone,
The wasting fury both of Troy and land where she was born,
She hid her by the altar-stead, a thing of Gods forlorn.

Forth blazed the wildfire in my soul, wrath stirred me up to slake
My vengeance for my dying home, and ill's atonement take.
What! should she come to Sparta safe, and her Mycenæ then,
And in the hard-won triumphing go forth a Queen of men,
And see her husband and her home, her parents and her sons,
Served by the throng of Ilian wives and Phrygian vanquished ones?580
Shall Priam so be slain with sword; shall Troy so blaze aloft;
Shall the sea-beach the Dardan blood have sweat so oft and oft
For this? Nay, nay: and though forsooth no deed to blaze abroad
The slaying of a woman be, nor gaineth fame's reward,
Yet still to quench an evil thing and pay the well-earned meed
Is worthy praise, and joy it were unto the full to feed
My heart's fell flame, and satisfy these ashes well beloved.

Such things my soul gave forth; such things in furious heart I moved.
When lo, my holy mother now, ne'er seen by eyes of mine
So clear before, athwart the dark in simple light did shine;590
All God she was; of countenance and measure was she nought,
But her the heaven-abiders see; so my right hand she caught,
And held me, and from rosy mouth moreover added word:

'O son, what anger measureless thy mighty grief hath stirred?
Why ragest thou? or whither then is gone thy heed of me?
Wilt thou not first behold the place where worn by eld is he,
Anchises, left? Wilt thou not see if yet thy wife abide
Creusa, or Ascanius yet? The Greekish bands fare wide
About them now on every hand, and but my care withstood
The fire had wafted them away or sword had drunk their blood.600
Laconian Helen's beauty cursed this overthrow ne'er wrought.
Nor guilty Paris; nay, the Gods, the Gods who pity nought,
Have overturned your lordship fair, and laid your Troy alow.
Behold! I draw aside the cloud that all abroad doth flow,
Dulling the eyes of mortal men, and darkening dewily
The world about. And look to it no more afeard to be
Of what I bid, nor evermore thy mother's word disown.
There where thou seest the great walls cleft, and stone torn off from stone,
And seest the waves of smoke go by with mingled dust-cloud rolled,—
There Neptune shakes the walls and stirs the foundings from their hold
With mighty trident, tumbling down the city from its base.611
There by the Scæan gates again hath bitter Juno place
The first of all, and wild and mad, herself begirt with steel,
Calls up her fellows from the ships.
Look back! Tritonian Pallas broods o'er topmost burg on high,
All flashing bright with Gorgon grim from out her stormy sky;
The very Father hearteneth on, and stays with happy might
The Danaans, crying on the Gods against the Dardan fight.
Snatch flight, O son, whiles yet thou may'st, and let thy toil be o'er,
I by thy side will bring thee safe unto thy father's door.'620

She spake, and hid herself away where thickest darkness poured.
Then dreadful images show forth, great Godheads are abroad,
The very haters of our Troy.
And then indeed before mine eyes all Ilium sank in flame,
And overturned was Neptune's Troy from its foundations deep.
E'en as betideth with an ash upon the mountain steep,
Round which sore smitten by the steel the acre-biders throng,
And strive in speeding of the axe: and there it threateneth long,
And, shaken, trembleth nodding still with heavy head of leaf;
Till overcome by many hurts it groans its latest grief,630
And torn from out the ridgy hill, drags all its ruin alow.

I get me down, and, Goddess-led, speed on 'twixt fire and foe,
And point and edge give place to me, before me sinks the flame;
But when unto my father's door and ancient house I came,
And I was fain of all things first my father forth to bear
Unto the mountain-tops, and first I sought to find him there,
Still he gainsayed to spin out life now Troy was lost and dead,
Or suffer exile: 'Ye whose blood is hale with youth,' he said,
'Ye other ones, whose might and main endureth and is stout,
See ye to flight while yet ye may!640
Full surely if the heavenly ones my longer life had willed,
They would have kept me this abode: the measure is fulfilled
In that the murder I have seen, and lived when Troy-town fell.
O ye, depart, when ye have bid my body streaked farewell.
My hand itself shall find out death, or pity of my foes,
Who seek my spoils: the tomb methinks a little thing to lose.
Forsooth I tarry overlong, God-cursed, a useless thing,
Since when the Father of the Gods, the earth-abiders' King,
Blew on me blast of thunder-wind and touched me with his flame.'

His deed was stubborn as his word, no change upon him came.650
But all we weeping many tears, my wife Creusa there,
Ascanius, yea and all the house, besought him not to bear
All things to wrack with him, nor speed the hastening evil tide.
He gainsaith all, and in his will and home will yet abide.
So wretchedly I rush to arms with all intent to die;
For what availeth wisdom now, what hope in fate may lie?

'And didst thou hope, O father, then, that thou being left behind,
My foot would fare? Woe worth the word that in thy mouth I find!
But if the Gods are loth one whit of such a town to save,
And thou with constant mind wilt cast on dying Troy-town's grave660
Both thee and thine, wide is the door to wend adown such ways;
For Pyrrhus, red with Priam's blood, is hard at hand, who slays
The son before the father's face, the father slays upon
The altar. Holy Mother, then, for this thou ledst me on
Through fire and sword!—that I might see our house filled with the foe,
My father old, Ascanius, Creusa lying low,
All weltering in each other's blood, and murdered wretchedly.
Arms, fellows, arms! the last day's light on vanquished men doth cry.
Ah! give me to the Greeks again, that I may play the play
Another while: not unavenged shall all we die today.'670

So was I girt with sword again, and in my shield would set
My left hand now, and was in point from out of doors to get,
When lo, my wife about my feet e'en in the threshold clung,
Still to his father reaching out Iulus tender-young:
'If thou art on thy way to die, then bear us through it all;
But if to thee the wise in arms some hope of arms befall,
Then keep this house first! Unto whom giv'st thou Iulus' life,
Thy father's, yea and mine withal, that once was called thy wife?'

So crying out, the house she filled with her exceeding moan,
When sudden, wondrous to be told, a portent was there shown;680
For as his woeful parents' hands and lips he hangs between,
On topmost of Iulus' head a thin peaked flame is seen,
That with the harmless touch of fire, whence clearest light is shed,
Licks his soft locks and pastures round the temples of his head.
Quaking with awe from out his hair we fall the fire to shake,
And bring the water of the well the holy flame to slake.
But joyous to the stars aloft Anchises raiseth eyes,
And with his hands spread out abroad to very heaven he cries:
'Almighty Jove, if thou hast will toward any prayers to turn,
Look down on us this while alone; if aught our goodness earn,690
Father, give help and strengthen us these omens from the sky!'

Scarce had the elder said the word ere crashing suddenly
It thundered on the left, and down across the shades of night
Ran forth a great brand-bearing star with most abundant light;
And clear above the topmost house we saw it how it slid
Lightening the ways, and at the last in Ida's forest hid.
Then through the sky a furrow ran drawn out a mighty space,
Giving forth light, and sulphur-fumes rose all about the place.

My father vanquished therewithal his visage doth upraise,
And saith a word unto the Gods that holy star to praise:700
'Now, now, no tarrying is at all, I follow where ye lead;
O Father-Gods heed ye our house and this my son's son heed!
This is your doom; and Troy is held beneath your majesty.
I yield, O son, nor more gainsay to go my ways with thee.'

He spake; and mid the walls meanwhile we hear the fire alive
Still clearer, and the burning place more nigh the heat doth drive.

'O hasten, father well-beloved, to hang about my neck!
Lo, here my shoulders will I stoop, nor of the labour reck.
And whatsoever may befall, the two of us shall bide
One peril and one heal and end: Iulus by my side710
Shall wend, and after us my wife shall follow on my feet
Ye serving-folk, turn ye your minds these words of mine to meet:
Scant from the city is a mound and temple of old tide,
Of Ceres' lone, a cypress-tree exceeding old beside.
Kept by our fathers' worshipping through many years agone:
Thither by divers roads go we to meet at last in one.
Now, father, take thy fathers' Gods and holy things to hold,
For me to touch them fresh from fight and murder were o'erbold,
A misdeed done against the Gods, till in the living flood
I make a shift to wash me clean.'720

I stooped my neck and shoulders broad e'en as the word I said,
A forest lion's yellow fell for cloth upon them laid,
And took my burden up: my young Iulus by my side,
Holding my hand, goes tripping short unto his father's stride;
My wife comes after: on we fare amidst a mirky world.
And I, erewhile as nothing moved by storm of weapons hurled,
I, who the gathering of the Greeks against me nothing feared,
Now tremble at each breath of wind, by every sound am stirred,
Sore troubled for my fellows both, and burden that I bore.

And now we draw anigh the gates, and all the way seemed o'er,730
When sudden sound of falling feet was borne upon our ears,
And therewithal my father cries, as through the dusk he peers,
'Haste, son, and get thee swift away, for they are on us now;
I see the glittering of the brass and all their shields aglow.'

What Godhead nought a friend to me amidst my terror there
Snatched wit away I nothing know: for while I swiftly fare
By wayless places, wandering wide from out the road I knew,
Creusa, whether her the Fates from me unhappy drew,
Whether she wandered from the way, or weary lagged aback,
Nought know I, but that her henceforth mine eyes must ever lack.740
Nor turned I round to find her lost, nor had it in my thought,
Till to that mound and ancient house of Ceres we were brought;
Where, all being come together now, there lacked but her alone,
And there her fellows' hopes, her son's, her husband's were undone.

On whom of men, on whom of Gods, then laid I not the guilt?
What saw I bitterer to be borne in all the city spilt?
Ascanius and Anchises set the Teucrian Gods beside,
I give unto my fellows there in hollow dale to hide,
But I unto the city turn with glittering weapons girt;
Needs must I search all Troy again, and open every hurt,750
And into every peril past must thrust my head once more.
And first I reach the walls again and mirk ways of the door
Whereby I wended out erewhile; and my old footsteps' track
I find, and mid the dusk of night with close eyes follow back;
While on the heart lies weight of fear, and e'en the hush brings dread,
Thence to the house, if there perchance, if there again she tread,
I go: infall of Greeks had been, and all the house they hold,
And 'neath the wind the ravening fire to highest ridge is rolled.
The flames hang o'er, with raging heat the heavens are hot withal;
Still on: I look on Priam's house and topmost castle-wall;760
And in the desert cloisters there and Juno's very home
Lo, Phœnix and Ulysses cursed, the chosen wards, are come
To keep the spoil; fair things of Troy, from everywhither brought,
Rapt from the burning of the shrines, Gods' tables rudely caught,
And beakers utterly of gold and raiment snatched away
Are there heaped up; and boys and wives drawn out in long array
Stand trembling round about the heap.
And now withal I dared to cast my cries upon the dark,
I fill the streets with clamour great, and, groaning woefully,
'Creusa,' o'er and o'er again without avail I cry.770

But as I sought and endlessly raved all the houses through
A hapless shape, Creusa's shade, anigh mine eyen drew,
And greater than the body known her image fashioned was;
I stood amazed, my hair rose up, nor from my jaws would pass
My frozen voice, then thus she spake my care to take away:
'Sweet husband, wherefore needest thou with such mad sorrow play?
Without the dealing of the Gods doth none of this betide;
And they, they will not have thee bear Creusa by thy side,
Nor will Olympus' highest king such fellowship allow.
Long exile is in store for thee, huge plain of sea to plough,780
Then to Hesperia shalt thou come, where Lydian Tiber's wave
The wealthiest meads of mighty men with gentle stream doth lave:
There happy days and lordship great, and kingly wife, are born
For thee. Ah! do away thy tears for loved Creusa lorn.
I shall not see the Myrmidons' nor Dolopes' proud place,
Nor wend my ways to wait upon the Greekish women's grace;
I, daughter of the Dardan race, I, wife of Venus' son;
Me the great Mother of the Gods on Trojan shore hath won.
Farewell, and love the son we loved together once, we twain.'

She left me when these words were given, me weeping sore, and fain790
To tell her much, and forth away amid thin air she passed:
And there three times about her neck I strove mine arms to cast,
And thrice away from out my hands the gathered image streams,
E'en as the breathing of the wind or wingèd thing of dreams.

And so at last, the night all spent, I meet my folk anew;
And there I found great multitude that fresh unto us drew,
And wondered thereat: wives were there, and men, and plenteous youth;
All gathered for the faring forth, a hapless crowd forsooth:
From everywhere they draw to us, with goods and courage set,
To follow o'er the sea where'er my will may lead them yet.800

And now o'er Ida's topmost ridge at last the day-star rose
With dawn in hand: all gates and doors by host of Danaan foes
Were close beset, and no more hope of helping may I bide.
I turned and took my father up and sought the mountain-side.

BOOK III.

ARGUMENT.

ÆNEAS TELLS OF HIS WANDERINGS AND MISHAPS BY LAND AND BY SEA.

Now after it had pleased the Gods on high to overthrow
The Asian weal and sackless folk of Priam, and alow
Proud Ilium lay, and Neptune's Troy was smouldering on the ground,
For diverse outlands of the earth and waste lands are we bound,
Driven by omens of the Gods. Our fleet we built beneath
Antandros, and the broken steeps of Phrygian Ida's heath,
Unwitting whither Fate may drive, or where the Gods shall stay
And there we draw together men.
Now scarce upon the way
Was summer when my father bade spread sails to Fate at last.
Weeping I leave my fatherland, and out of haven passed10
Away from fields where Troy-town was, an outcast o'er the deep,
With folk and son and Household Gods and Greater Gods to keep.

Far off a peopled land of Mars lies midst its mighty plain,
Tilled of the Thracians; there whilom did fierce Lycurgus reign.
'Twas ancient guesting-place of Troy: our Gods went hand in hand
While bloomed our weal: there are we borne, and on the hollow strand
I set my first-born city down, 'neath evil fates begun,
And call the folk Æneadæ from name myself had won.

Unto Dione's daughter there, my mother, and the rest,
I sacrificed upon a day to gain beginning blest,20
And to the King of Heavenly folk was slaying on the shore
A glorious bull: at hand by chance a mound at topmost bore
A cornel-bush and myrtle stiff with shafts close set around:
Thereto I wend and strive to pluck a green shoot from the ground,
That I with leafy boughs thereof may clothe the altars well;
When lo, a portent terrible and marvellous to tell!
For the first stem that from the soil uprooted I tear out
Oozes black drops of very blood, that all the earth about
Is stained with gore: but as for me, with sudden horror chill
My limbs fall quaking, and my blood with freezing fear stands still.30
Yet I go on and strive from earth a new tough shoot to win,
That I may search out suddenly what causes lurk within;
And once again from out the bark blood followeth as before.

I turn the matter in my mind: the Field-Nymphs I adore,
And him, Gradivus, father dread, who rules the Thracian plain,
And pray them turn the thing to good and make its threatenings vain.
But when upon a third of them once more I set my hand,
And striving hard thrust both my knees upon the opposing sand—
—Shall I speak now or hold my peace?—a piteous groan is heard
From out the mound, and to mine ears is borne a dreadful word:40
'Why manglest thou a wretched man? O spare me in my tomb!
Spare to beguilt thy righteous hand, Æneas! Troy's own womb
Bore me, thy kinsman; from this stem floweth no alien gore:
Woe's me! flee forth the cruel land, flee forth the greedy shore;
For I am Polydore: pierced through, by harvest of the spear
O'ergrown, that such a crop of shafts above my head doth bear.'

I stood amazed: the wildering fear the heart in me down-weighed.
My hair rose up, my frozen breath within my jaws was stayed.
Unhappy Priam privily had sent this Polydore,
For fostering to the Thracian king with plenteous golden store.50
In those first days when he began to doubt the Dardan might,
Having the leaguered walls of Troy for ever in his sight.
This king, as failed the weal of Troy and fortune fell away,
Turned him about to conquering arms and Agamemnon's day.
He brake all right, slew Polydore, and all the gold he got
Perforce: O thou gold-hunger cursed, and whither driv'st thou not
The hearts of men?
But when at length the fear from me did fall,
Unto the chosen of the folk, my father first of all,
I show those portents of the Gods and ask them of their will,
All deem it good that we depart that wicked land of ill,60
And leave that blighted guesting-place and give our ships the breeze.
Therefore to Polydore we do the funeral services,
The earth is heaped up high in mound; the Death-Gods' altars stand
Woeful with bough of cypress black and coal-blue holy band;
The wives of Ilium range about with due dishevelled hair;
Cups of the warm and foaming milk unto the dead we bear,
And bowls of holy blood we bring, and lay the soul in grave,
And cry a great farewell to him, the last that he shall have.
But now, when we may trust the sea and winds the ocean keep
Unangered, and the South bids on light whispering to the deep,70
Our fellows crowd the sea-beach o'er and run the ships adown,
And from the haven are we borne, and fadeth field and town.

Amid the sea a land there lies, sweet over everything,
Loved of the Nereids' mother, loved by that Ægean king
Great Neptune: this, a-wandering once all coasts and shores around,
The Bow-Lord good to Gyaros and high Myconos bound,
And bade it fixed to cherish folk nor fear the wind again:
There come we; and that gentlest isle receives us weary men;
In haven safe we land, and thence Apollo's town adore;
King Anius, who, a king of men, Apollo's priesthood bore,80
His temples with the fillets done and crowned with holy bays,
Meets us, and straight Anchises knows, his friend of early days.
So therewith hand to hand we join and houseward get us gone.

There the God's fane I pray unto, the place of ancient stone:
'Thymbræan, give us house and home, walls to the weary give,
In folk and city to endure: let Pergamus twice live,
In Troy twice built, left of the Greeks, left of Achilles' wrath!
Ah, whom to follow? where to go? wherein our home set forth?
O Father, give us augury and sink into our heart!

Scarce had I said the word, when lo all doors with sudden start90
Fell trembling, and the bay of God, and all the mountain side,
Was stirred, and in the opened shrine the holy tripod cried:
There as a voice fell on our ears we bowed ourselves to earth:
'O hardy folk of Dardanus, the land that gave you birth
From root and stem of fathers old, its very bosom kind,
Shall take you back: go fare ye forth, your ancient mother find:
There shall Æneas' house be lords o'er every earth and sea,
The children of his children's sons, and those that thence shall be.'

So Phœbus spake, and mighty joy arose with tumult mixed,
As all fell wondering where might be that seat of city fixed,100
Where Phœbus called us wandering folk, bidding us turn again.
Thereat my father, musing o'er the tales of ancient men,
Saith: 'Hearken, lords, and this your hope a little learn of me!
There is an isle of mightiest Jove called Crete amid the sea;
An hundred cities great it hath, that most abundant place;
And there the hill of Ida is, and cradle of our race.
Thence Teucer our first father came, if right the tale they tell,
When borne to those Rhœtean shores he chose a place to dwell
A very king: no Ilium was, no Pergamus rose high;
He and his folk abode as then in dales that lowly lie:110
Thence came Earth-mother Cybele and Corybantian brass,
And Ida's thicket; thence the hush all hallowed came to pass,
And thence the lions yoked and tame, the Lady's chariot drag.
On then! and led by God's command for nothing let us lag!
Please we the winds, and let our course for Gnosian land be laid;
Nor long the way shall be for us: with Jupiter to aid,
The third-born sun shall stay our ships upon the Cretan shore.'

So saying, all the offerings due he to the altar bore,
A bull to Neptune, and a bull to thee, Apollo bright,
A black ewe to the Storm of sea, to Zephyr kind a white.120
Fame went that Duke Idomeneus, thrust from his fathers' land,
Had gone his ways, and desert now was all the Cretan strand,
That left all void of foes to us those habitations lie.
Ortygia's haven then we leave, and o'er the sea we fly
By Naxos of the Bacchus ridge, Donusa's green-hued steep,
And Olearon, and Paros white, and scattered o'er the deep
All Cyclades; we skim the straits besprent with many a folk;
And diverse clamour mid the ships seafarers striving woke;
Each eggs his fellow; On for Crete, and sires of time agone!
And rising up upon our wake a fair wind followed on.130

And so at last we glide along the old Curetes' strand,
And straightway eager do I take the city wall in hand,
And call it Pergamea, and urge my folk that name who love,
For love of hearth and home to raise a burg their walls above.

And now the more part of the ships are hauled up high and dry,
To wedding and to work afield the folk fall presently,
And I give laws and portion steads; when suddenly there fell
From poisoned heaven a wasting plague, a wretched thing to tell,
On limbs of men, on trees and fields; and deadly was the year,
And men must leave dear life and die, or weary sick must bear140
Their bodies on: then Sirius fell to burn the acres dry;
The grass was parched, the harvest sick all victual did deny.
Then bids my father back once more o'er the twice-measured main,
To Phœbus and Ortygia's strand, some grace of prayer to gain:
What end to our outworn estate he giveth? whence will he
That we should seek us aid of toil; where turn to o'er the sea?
Night falleth, and all lives of earth doth sleep on bosom bear,
When lo, the holy images, the Phrygian House-gods there,
E'en them I bore away from Troy and heart of burning town,
Were present to the eyes of me in slumber laid adown,150
Clear shining in the plenteous light that over all was shed
By the great moon anigh her full through windows fashionèd.
Then thus they fall to speech with me, end of my care to make:

'The thing that in Ortygia erst the seer Apollo spake
Here telleth he, and to thy doors come we of his good will:
Thee and thine arms from Troy aflame fast have we followed still.
We 'neath thy care and in thy keel have climbed the swelling sea,
And we shall bear unto the stars thy sons that are to be,
And give thy city majesty: make ready mighty wall
For mighty men, nor toil of way leave thou, though long it fall.160
Shift hence abode; the Delian-born Apollo ne'er made sweet
These shores for thee, nor bade thee set thy city down in Crete:
There is a place, the Westland called of Greeks in days that are,
An ancient land, a fruitful soil, a mighty land of war;
Œnotrian folk first tilled the land, whose sons, as rumours run,
Now call it nought but Italy, from him who led them on.
This is our very due abode: thence Dardanus outbroke,
Iasius our father thence, beginner of our folk.
Come rise, and glad these tidings tell unto thy father old,
No doubtful tale: now Corythus, Ausonian field and fold170
Let him go seek, for Jupiter banneth Dictæan mead.'

All mazed was I with sight and voice of Gods; because indeed
This was not sleep, but face to face, as one a real thing sees.
I seemed to see their coifèd hair and very visages,
And over all my body too cold sweat of trembling flowed.
I tore my body from the bed, and, crying out aloud,
I stretched my upturned hands to heaven and unstained gifts I spilled
Upon the hearth, and joyfully that worship I fulfilled.
Anchises next I do to wit and all the thing unlock;
And he, he saw the twi-branched stem, twin fathers of our stock,180
And how by fault of yesterday through steads of old he strayed.

'O son, well learned in all the lore of Ilium's fate,' he said,
'Cassandra only of such hap would sing; I mind me well
Of like fate meted to our folk full oft would she foretell;
And oft would call to Italy and that Hesperian home.
But who believed that Teucrian folk on any day might come
Unto Hesperia's shores? or who might trow Cassandra then?
Yield we to Phœbus, follow we as better counselled men
The better part.'
We, full of joy, obey him with one mind;
From this seat too we fare away and leave a few behind;190
With sail abroad in hollow tree we skim the ocean o'er.

But when our keels the deep sea made, nor had we any more
The land in sight, but sea around, and sky around was spread,
A coal-blue cloud drew up to us that, hanging overhead,
Bore night and storm, and mirky gloom o'er all the waters cast:
Therewith the winds heap up the waves, the seas are rising fast
And huge; and through the mighty whirl scattered we toss about;
The storm-clouds wrap around the day, and wet mirk blotteth out
The heavens, and mid the riven clouds the ceaseless lightnings live.
So are we blown from out our course, through might of seas we drive,200
Nor e'en might Palinurus self the day from night-tide sift,
Nor have a deeming of the road atwixt the watery drift.
Still on for three uncertain suns, that blind mists overlay,
And e'en so many starless nights, across the sea we stray;
But on the fourth day at the last afar upon us broke
The mountains of another land, mid curling wreaths of smoke.
Then fall the sails, we rise on oars, no sloth hath any place,
The eager seamen toss the spray and sweep the blue sea's face;
And me first saved from whirl of waves the Strophades on strand
Now welcome; named by Greekish name Isles of the Sea, they stand210
Amid the great Ionian folk: Celæno holds the shores,
And others of the Harpies grim, since shut were Phineus' doors
Against them, and they had to leave the tables they had won.
No monster woefuller than they, and crueller is none
Of all God's plagues and curses dread from Stygian waters sent.
A wingèd thing with maiden face, whose bellies' excrement
Is utter foul; and hookèd hands, and face for ever pale
With hunger that no feeding stints.

Borne thither, into haven come, we see how everywhere
The merry wholesome herds of neat feed down the meadows fair,220
And all untended goatish flocks amid the herbage bite.
With point and edge we fall on them, and all the Gods invite,
Yea very Jove, to share the spoil, and on the curvèd strand
We strew the beds, and feast upon rich dainties of the land.
When lo, with sudden dreadful rush from out the mountains hap
The Harpy folk, and all about their clanging wings they flap,
And foul all things with filthy touch as at the food they wrench,
And riseth up their grisly voice amid the evilest stench.

Once more then 'neath a hollow rock at a long valley's head,229
Where close around the boughs of trees their quavering shadows shed,
We dight the boards, and once again flame on the altars raise.
Again from diverse parts of heaven, from dusky lurking-place,
The shrieking rout with hookèd feet about the prey doth fly,
Fouling the feast with mouth: therewith I bid my company
To arms, that with an evil folk the war may come to pass.
They do no less than my commands, and lay along the grass
Their hidden swords, and therewithal their bucklers cover o'er.
Wherefore, when swooping down again, they fill the curvèd shore
With noise, Misenus blows the call from off a watch-stead high
With hollow brass; our folk fall on and wondrous battle try,240
Striving that sea-fowl's filthy folk with point and edge to spill.
But nought will bite upon their backs, and from their feathers still
Glanceth the sword, and swift they flee up 'neath the stars of air,
Half-eaten meat and token foul leaving behind them there.
But on a rock exceeding high yet did Celæeno rest,
Unhappy seer! there breaks withal a voice from out her breast:

'What, war to pay for slaughtered neat, war for our heifers slain?
O children of Laomedon, the war then will ye gain?
The sackless Harpies will ye drive from their own land away?
Then let this sink into your souls, heed well the words I say;250
The Father unto Phœbus told a tale that Phœbus told
To me, and I the first-born fiend that same to you unfold:
Ye sail for Italy, and ye, the winds appeased by prayer,
Shall come to Italy, and gain the grace of haven there:
Yet shall ye gird no wall about the city granted you,
Till famine, and this murder's wrong that ye were fain to do,
Drive you your tables gnawed with teeth to eat up utterly.'

She spake, and through the woody deeps borne off on wings did fly.
But sudden fear fell on our folk, and chilled their frozen blood;259
Their hearts fell down; with weapon-stroke no more they deem it good
To seek for peace: but rather now sore prayers and vows they will,
Whether these things be goddesses or filthy fowls of ill.
Father Anchises on the strand stretched both his hands abroad,
And, bidding all their worship due, the Mighty Ones adored:
'Gods, bring their threats to nought! O Gods, turn ye the curse, we pray!
Be kind, and keep the pious folk!'
Then bade he pluck away
The hawser from the shore and slack the warping cable's strain:
The south wind fills the sails, we fare o'er foaming waves again,
E'en as the helmsman and the winds have will that we should fare.

And now amidmost of the flood Zacynthus' woods appear,270
Dulichium, Samos, Neritos, with sides of stony steep:
Wide course from cliffs of Ithaca, Laertes' land, we keep,
Cursing the soil that bore and nursed Ulysses' cruelty.
Now open up Leucata's peaks, that fare so cloudy high
Over Apollo, mighty dread to all seafarers grown;
But weary thither do we steer and make the little town,
We cast the anchors from the bows and swing the sterns a-strand.
And therewithal since we at last have gained the longed-for land,
We purge us before Jupiter and by the altars pray,
Then on the shores of Actium's head the Ilian plays we play.280
Anointed with the sleeking oil there strive our fellows stripped
In wrestling game of fatherland: it joys us to have slipped
By such a host of Argive towns amidmost of the foe.

Meanwhile, the sun still pressing on, the year about doth go,
And frosty winter with his north the sea's face rough doth wear;
A buckler of the hollow brass of mighty Abas' gear
I set amid the temple-doors with singing scroll thereon,
Æneas hangeth armour here from conquering Danaans won.
And then I bid to leave the shore and man the thwarts again.
Hard strive the folk in smiting sea, and oar-blades brush the main.290
The airy high Phæacian towers sink down behind our wake,
And coasting the Epirote shores Chaonia's bay we make,
And so Buthrotus' city-walls high set we enter in.

There tidings hard for us to trow unto our ears do win,
How Helenus, e'en Priam's son, hath gotten wife and crown
Of Pyrrhus come of Æacus, and ruleth Greekish town,
And that Andromache hath wed one of her folk once more.
All mazed am I; for wondrous love my heart was kindling sore
To give some word unto the man, of such great things to learn:
So from the haven forth I fare, from ships and shore I turn.300

But as it happed Andromache was keeping yearly day,
Pouring sad gifts unto the dead, amidst a grove that lay
Outside the town, by wave that feigned the Simoïs that had been,
Blessing the dead by Hector's mound empty and grassy green,
Which she with altars twain thereby had hallowed for her tears.
But when she saw me drawing nigh with armour that Troy bears
About me, senseless, throughly feared with marvels grown so great,
She stiffens midst her gaze; her bones are reft of life-blood's heat,
She totters, scarce, a long while o'er, this word comes forth from her:

'Is the show true, O Goddess-born? com'st thou a messenger310
Alive indeed? or if from thee the holy light is fled,
Where then is Hector?'
Flowed the tears e'en as the word she said,
And with her wailing rang the place: sore moved I scarce may speak
This word to her, grown wild with grief, in broken voice and weak:
'I live indeed, I drag my life through outer ways of ill;
Doubt not, thou seest the very sooth.
Alas! what hap hath caught thee up from such a man downcast?
Hath any fortune worthy thee come back again at last?
Doth Hector's own Andromache yet serve in Pyrrhus' bed?'

She cast her countenance adown, and in a low voice said:320
'O thou alone of Trojan maids that won a little joy,
Bidden to die on foeman's tomb before the walls of Troy!
Who died, and never had to bear the sifting lot's award,
Whose slavish body never touched the bed of victor lord!
We from our burning fatherland carried o'er many a sea,
Of Achillæan offspring's pride the yoke-fellow must be,
Must bear the childbed of a slave: thereafter he, being led
To Leda's child Hermione and that Laconian bed,
To Helenus his very thrall me very thrall gave o'er:
But there Orestes, set on fire by all the love he bore330
His ravished wife, and mad with hate, comes on him unaware
Before his fathers' altar-stead and slays him then and there.

By death of Neoptolemus his kingdom's leavings came
To Helenus, who called the fields Chaonian fields by name,
And all the land Chaonia, from Chaon of Troy-town;
And Pergamus and Ilian burg on ridgy steep set down.
What winds, what fates gave thee the road to cross the ocean o'er?
Or what of Gods hath borne thee on unwitting to our shore?
What of the boy Ascanius? lives he and breathes he yet?
Whom unto thee when Troy yet was——340
The boy then, of his mother lost, hath he a thought of her?
Do him Æneas, Hector gone, father and uncle, stir,
To valour of the ancient days, and great hearts' glorious gain?'

Such tale she poured forth, weeping sore, and long she wept in vain
Great floods of tears: when lo, from out the city draweth nigh
Lord Helenus the Priam-born midst mighty company,
And knows his kin, and joyfully leads onward to his door,
Though many a tear 'twixt broken words the while doth he outpour.
So on; a little Troy I see feigned from great Troy of fame,
A Pergamus, a sandy brook that hath the Xanthus name,350
On threshold of a Scæan gate I stoop to lay a kiss.
Soon, too, all Teucrian folk are wrapped in friendly city's bliss,
And them the King fair welcomes in amid his cloisters broad,
And they amidmost of the hall the bowls of Bacchus poured,
The meat was set upon the gold, and cups they held in hand.

So passed a day and other day, until the gales command
The sails aloft, and canvas swells with wind from out the South:
Therewith I speak unto the seer, such matters in my mouth:
'O Troy-born, O Gods' messenger, who knowest Phœbus' will,
The tripods and the Clarian's bay, and what the stars fulfil,360
And tongues of fowl, and omens brought by swift foreflying wing,
Come, tell the tale! for of my way a happy heartening thing
All shrines have said, and all the Gods have bid me follow on
To Italy, till outland shores, far off, remote were won:
Alone Celæno, Harpy-fowl, new dread of fate set forth,
Unmeet to tell, and bade us fear the grimmest day of wrath,
And ugly hunger. How may I by early perils fare?
Or doing what may I have might such toil to overbear?'

So Helenus, when he hath had the heifers duly slain,
Prays peace of Gods, from hallowed head he doffs the bands again,370
And then with hand he leadeth me, O Phœbus, to thy door,
My fluttering soul with all thy might of godhead shadowed o'er.
There forth at last from God-loved mouth the seer this word did send:

'O Goddess-born, full certainly across the sea ye wend
By mightiest bidding, such the lot the King of Gods hath found
All fateful; so he rolls the world, so turns its order round.
Few things from many will I tell that thou the outland sea
May'st sail the safer, and at last make land in Italy;
The other things the Parcæ still ban Helenus to wot,
Saturnian Juno's will it is that more he utter not.380
First, from that Italy, which thou unwitting deem'st anigh,
Thinking to make in little space the haven close hereby,
Long is the wayless way that shears, and long the length of land;
And first in the Trinacrian wave must bend the rower's wand.
On plain of that Ausonian salt your ships must stray awhile,
And thou must see the nether meres, Ææan Circe's isle,
Ere thou on earth assured and safe thy city may'st set down.
I show thee tokens; in thy soul store thou the tokens shown.
When thou with careful heart shalt stray the secret stream anigh,
And 'neath the holm-oaks of the shore shalt see a great sow lie,390
That e'en now farrowed thirty head of young, long on the ground
She lieth white, with piglings white their mother's dugs around,—
That earth shall be thy city's place, there rest from toil is stored.
Nor shudder at the coming curse, the gnawing of the board,
The Fates shall find a way thereto; Apollo called shall come.
But flee these lands of Italy, this shore so near our home,
That washing of the strand thereof our very sea-tide seeks;
For in all cities thereabout abide the evil Greeks.
There now have come the Locrian folk Narycian walls to build;
And Lyctian Idomeneus Sallentine meads hath filled400
With war-folk; Philoctetes there holdeth Petelia small,
Now by that Melibœan duke fenced round with mighty wall.
Moreover, when your ships have crossed the sea, and there do stay,
And on the altars raised thereto your vows ashore ye pay,
Be veiled of head, and wrap thyself in cloth of purple dye,
Lest 'twixt you and the holy fires ye light to God on high
Some face of foeman should thrust in the holy signs to spill.
Now let thy folk, yea and thyself, this worship thus fulfil,
And let thy righteous sons of sons such fashion ever mind.
But when, gone forth, to Sicily thou comest on the wind,410
And when Pelorus' narrow sea is widening all away,
Your course for leftward lying land and leftward waters lay,
How long soe'er ye reach about: flee right-hand shore and wave.
In time agone some mighty thing this place to wrack down drave,
So much for changing of the world doth lapse of time avail.

It split atwain, when heretofore the two lands, saith the tale,
Had been but one, the sea rushed in and clave with mighty flood
Hesperia's side from Italy, and field and city stood
Drawn back on either shore, along a sundering sea-race strait.
There Scylla on the right hand lurks, the left insatiate420
Charybdis holds, who in her maw all whirling deep adown
Sucketh the great flood tumbling in thrice daily, which out-thrown
Thrice daily doth she spout on high, smiting the stars with brine.
But Scylla doth the hidden hole of mirky cave confine;
With face thrust forth she draweth ships on to that stony bed;
Manlike above, with maiden breast and lovely fashioned
Down to the midst, she hath below huge body of a whale,
And unto maw of wolfish heads is knit a dolphin's tail.
'Tis better far to win about Pachynus, outer ness
Of Sicily, and reach long round, despite the weariness,430
Than have that ugly sight of her within her awful den,
And hear her coal-blue baying dogs and rocks that ring again.

Now furthermore if Helenus in anything have skill,
Or aught of trust, or if his soul with sooth Apollo fill,
Of one thing, Goddess-born, will I forewarn thee over all,
And spoken o'er and o'er again my word on thee shall fall:
The mighty Juno's godhead first let many a prayer seek home;
To Juno sing your vows in joy, with suppliant gifts o'ercome
That Lady of all Might; and so, Trinacria overpast,
Shalt thou be sped to Italy victorious at the last.440
When there thou com'st and Cumæ's town amidst thy way hast found,
The Holy Meres, Avernus' woods fruitful of many a sound,
There the wild seer-maid shalt thou see, who in a rock-hewn cave
Singeth of fate, and letteth leaves her names and tokens have:
But whatso song upon those leaves the maiden seer hath writ
She ordereth duly, and in den of live stone leaveth it:
There lie the written leaves unmoved, nor shift their ordered rows.
But when the hinge works round, and thence a light air on them blows,
Then, when the door doth disarray among the frail leaves bear,
To catch them fluttering in the cave she never hath a care,450
Nor will she set them back again nor make the song-words meet;
So folk unanswered go their ways and loathe the Sibyl's seat.
But thou, count not the cost of time that there thou hast to spend;
Although thy fellows blame thee sore, and length of way to wend
Call on thy sails, and thou may'st fill their folds with happy gale,
Draw nigh the seer, and strive with prayers to have her holy tale;
Beseech her sing, and that her words from willing tongue go free:
So reverenced shall she tell thee tale of folk of Italy
And wars to come; and how to 'scape, and how to bear each ill,
And with a happy end at last thy wandering shall fulfil.460
Now is this all my tongue is moved to tell thee lawfully:
Go, let thy deeds Troy's mightiness exalt above the sky!'

So when the seer from loving mouth such words as this had said,
Then gifts of heavy gold and gifts of carven tooth he bade
Be borne a-shipboard; and our keels he therewithal doth stow
With Dodonæan kettle-ware and silver great enow,
A coat of hookèd woven mail and triple golden chain,
A helm with noble towering crest crowned with a flowing mane,
The arms of Pyrrhus: gifts most meet my father hath withal;
And steeds he gives and guides he gives,470
Fills up the tale of oars, and arms our fellows to their need.
Anchises still was bidding us meanwhile to have a heed
Of setting sail, nor with the wind all fair to make delay;
To whom with words of worship now doth Phœbus' servant say:
'Anchises, thou whom Venus' bed hath made so glorious,
Care of the Gods, twice caught away from ruin of Pergamus,
Lo, there the Ausonian land for thee, set sail upon the chase:
Yet needs must thou upon the sea glide by its neighbouring face.
Far off is that Ausonia yet that Phœbus open lays.
Fare forth, made glad with pious son! why tread I longer ways480
Of speech, and stay the rising South with words that I would tell?'

And therewithal Andromache, sad with the last farewell,
Brings for Ascanius raiment wrought with picturing wool of gold,
And Phrygian coat; nor will she have our honour wax acold,
But loads him with the woven gifts, and such word sayeth she:
'Take these, fair boy; keep them to be my hands' last memory,
The tokens of enduring love thy younger days did win
From Hector's wife Andromache, the last gifts of thy kin.
O thou, of my Astyanax the only image now!
Such eyes he had, such hands he had, such countenance as thou,490
And now with thee were growing up in equal tale of years.'

Then I, departing, spake to them amid my rising tears:
'Live happy! Ye with fortune's game have nothing more to play,
While we from side to side thereof are hurried swift away.
Your rest hath blossomed and brought forth; no sea-field shall ye till,
Seeking the fields of Italy that fade before you still.
Ye see another Xanthus here, ye see another Troy,
Made by your hands for better days mehopes, and longer joy:
And soothly less it lies across the pathway of the Greek,
If ever I that Tiber flood and Tiber fields I seek500
Shall enter, and behold the walls our folk shall win of fate.
Twin cities some day shall we have, and folks confederate,
Epirus and Hesperia; from Dardanus each came,
One fate had each: them shall we make one city and the same,
One Troy in heart: lo, let our sons of sons' sons see to it!'

Past nigh Ceraunian mountain-sides thence o'er the sea we flit,
Whence the sea-way to Italy the shortest may be made.
But in the meanwhile sets the sun, the dusk hills lie in shade,
And, choosing oar-wards, down we lie on bosom of the land
So wished for: by the water-side and on the dry sea-strand510
We tend our bodies here and there; sleep floodeth every limb.
But ere the hour-bedriven night in midmost orb did swim,
Nought slothful Palinurus rose, and wisdom strives to win
Of all the winds: with eager ear the breeze he drinketh in;
He noteth how through silent heaven the stars soft gliding fare,
Arcturus, the wet Hyades, and either Northern Bear,
And through and through he searcheth out Orion girt with gold.
So when he sees how everything a peaceful sky foretold,
He bloweth clear from off the poop, and we our campment shift,
And try the road and spread abroad our sail-wings to the lift.520

And now, the stars all put to flight, Aurora's blushes grow,
When we behold dim fells afar and long lands lying low,
—E'en Italy. Achates first cries out on Italy;
To Italy our joyous folk glad salutation cry.
Anchises then a mighty bowl crowned with a garland fair,
And filled it with unwatered wine and called the Gods to hear,
High standing on the lofty deck:
'O Gods that rule the earth and sea, and all the tides of storm,
Make our way easy with the wind, breathe on us kindly breath!'

Then riseth up the longed-for breeze, the haven openeth530
As nigh we draw, and on the cliff a fane of Pallas shows:
Therewith our fellow-folk furl sail and shoreward turn the prows.
Bow-wise the bight is hollowed out by eastward-setting flood,
But over-foamed by salt-sea spray thrust out its twin horns stood,
While it lay hidden; tower-like rocks let down on either hand
Twin arms of rock-wall, and the fane lies backward from the stand.

But I beheld upon the grass four horses, snowy white,
Grazing the meadows far and wide, first omen of my sight.
Father Anchises seeth and saith: 'New land, and bear'st thou war?
For war are horses dight; so these war-threatening herd-beasts are.540
Yet whiles indeed those four-foot things in car will well refrain,
And tamed beneath the yoke will bear the bit and bridle's strain,
So there is yet a hope of peace.'
Then on the might we call
Of Pallas of the weapon-din, first welcomer of all,
And veil our brows before the Gods with cloth of Phrygian dye;
And that chief charge of Helenus we do all rightfully,
And Argive Juno worship there in such wise as is willed.

We tarry not, but when all vows are duly there fulfilled,
Unto the wind our sail-yard horns we fall to turn about,
And leave the houses of the Greeks, and nursing fields of doubt.550
And next is seen Tarentum's bay, the Herculean place
If fame tell true; Lacinia then, the house of Gods, we face;
And Caulon's towers, and Scylaceum, of old the shipman's bane.
Then see we Ætna rise far off above Trinacria's main;
Afar the mighty moan of sea, and sea-cliffs beaten sore,
We hearken, and the broken voice that cometh from the shore:
The sea leaps high upon the shoals, the eddy churns the sand.

Then saith Anchises: 'Lo forsooth, Charybdis is at hand,
Those rocks and stones the dread whereof did Helenus foretell.
Save ye, O friends! swing out the oars together now and well!'560

Nor worser than his word they do, and first the roaring beaks
Doth Palinurus leftward wrest; then all the sea-host seeks
With sail and oar the waters wild upon the left that lie:
Upheaved upon the tossing whirl we fare unto the sky,
Then down unto the nether Gods we sink upon the wave:
Thrice from the hollow-carven rocks great roar the sea-cliffs gave;
Thrice did we see the spray cast forth and stars with sea-dew done;
But the wind left us weary folk at sinking of the sun,
And on the Cyclops' strand we glide unwitting of the way.

Locked from the wind the haven is, itself an ample bay;570
But hard at hand mid ruin and fear doth Ætna thunder loud;
And whiles it blasteth forth on air a black and dreadful cloud,
That rolleth on a pitchy wreath, where bright the ashes mix,
And heaveth up great globes of flame and heaven's high star-world licks,
And other whiles the very cliffs, and riven mountain-maw
It belches forth; the molten stones together will it draw
Aloft with moan, and boileth o'er from lowest inner vale.
This world of mountain presseth down, as told it is in tale,
Enceladus the thunder-scorched; huge Ætna on him cast,
From all her bursten furnaces breathes out his fiery blast;580
And whensoe'er his weary side he shifteth, all the shore
Trinacrian trembleth murmuring, and heaven is smoke-clad o'er.

In thicket close we wear the night amidst these marvels dread,
Nor may we see what thing it is that all that noise hath shed:
For neither showed the planet fires, nor was the heaven bright
With starry zenith; mirky cloud hung over all the night,
In mist of dead untimely tide the moon was hidden close.

But when from earliest Eastern dawn the following day arose,
And fair Aurora from the heaven the watery shades had cleared,
Lo, suddenly from out the wood new shape of man appeared.590
Unknown he was, most utter lean, in wretchedest of plight:
Shoreward he stretched his suppliant hands; we turn back at the sight,
And gaze on him: all squalor there, a mat of beard we see,
And raiment clasped with wooden thorns; and yet a Greek is he,
Yea, sent erewhile to leaguered Troy in Greekish weed of war.
But when he saw our Dardan guise and arms of Troy afar,
Feared at the sight he hung aback at first a little space,
But presently ran headlong down into our sea-side place
With tears and prayers:
'O Teucrian men, by all the stars,' he cried,
'By all the Gods, by light of heaven ye breathe, O bear me wide600
Away from here! to whatso land henceforth ye lead my feet
It is enough. That I am one from out the Danaan fleet,
And that I warred on Ilian house erewhile, most true it is;
For which, if I must pay so much wherein I wrought amiss,
Then strew me on the flood and sink my body in the sea!
To die by hands of very men shall be a joy to me.'

He spake with arms about our knees, and wallowing still he clung
Unto our knees: but what he was and from what blood he sprung
We bade him say, and tell withal what fate upon him drave.
His right hand with no tarrying then Father Anchises gave610
Unto the youth, and heartened him with utter pledge of peace.
So now he spake when fear of us amid his heart did cease:

'Luckless Ulysses' man am I, and Ithaca me bore,
Hight Achemenides, who left that Adamastus poor
My father (would I still were there!) by leaguered Troy to be.
Here while my mates aquake with dread the cruel threshold flee,
They leave me in the Cyclops' den unmindful of their friend;
A house of blood and bloody meat, most huge from end to end,
Mirky within: high up aloft star-smiting to behold
Is he himself;—such bane, O God, keep thou from field and fold!620
Scarce may a man look on his face; no word to him is good;
On wretches' entrails doth he feed and black abundant blood.
Myself I saw him of our folk two hapless bodies take
In his huge hand, whom straight he fell athwart a stone to break
As there he lay upon his back; I saw the threshold swim
With spouted blood, I saw him grind each bloody dripping limb,
I saw the joints amidst his teeth all warm and quivering still.
—He payed therefore, for never might Ulysses bear such ill,
Nor was he worser than himself in such a pinch bestead:
For when with victual satiate, deep sunk in wine, his head630
Fell on his breast, and there he lay enormous through the den,
Snorting out gore amidst his sleep, with gobbets of the men
And mingled blood and wine; then we sought the great Gods with prayer
And drew the lots, and one and all crowded about him there,
And bored out with a sharpened pike the eye that used to lurk
Enormous lonely 'neath his brow overhanging grim and mirk,
As great a shield of Argolis, or Phœbus' lamp on high;
And so our murdered fellows' ghosts avenged we joyously.
—But ye, O miserable men, flee forth! make haste to pluck
The warping hawser from the shore!640
For even such, and e'en so great as Polypheme in cave
Shuts in the wealth of woolly things and draws the udders' wave,
An hundred others commonly dwell o'er these curving bights,
Unutterable Cyclop folk, or stray about the heights.
Thrice have the twin horns of the moon fulfilled the circle clear
While I have dragged out life in woods and houses of the deer,
And gardens of the beasts; and oft from rocky place on high
Trembling I note the Cyclops huge, hear foot and voice go by.
And evil meat of wood-berries, and cornel's flinty fruit649
The bush-boughs give; on grass at whiles I browse, and plucked-up root
So wandering all about, at last I see unto the shore
Your ships a-coming: thitherward my steps in haste I bore:
Whate'er might hap enough it was to flee this folk of ill;
Rather do ye in any wise the life within me spill.'

And scarcely had he said the word ere on the hill above
The very shepherd Polypheme his mountain mass did move,
A marvel dread, a shapeless trunk, an eyeless monstrous thing,
Who down unto the shore well known his sheep was shepherding;
A pine-tree in the hand of him leads on and stays his feet;
The woolly sheep his fellows are, his only pleasure sweet,660
The only solace of his ill.
But when he touched the waters deep, and mid the waves was come,
He falls to wash the flowing blood from off his eye dug out;
Gnashing his teeth and groaning sore he walks the sea about,
But none the less no wave there was up to his flank might win.
Afeard from far we haste to flee, and, having taken in
Our suppliant, who had earned it well, cut cable silently,
And bending to the eager oars sweep out along the sea.
He heard it, and his feet he set to follow on the sound;
But when his right hand failed to reach, and therewithal he found670
He might not speed as fast as fares the Ionian billow lithe,
Then clamour measureless he raised, and ocean quaked therewith
Through every wave, and inwardly the land was terrified
Of Italy, and Ætna boomed from many-hollowed side.
But all the race of Cyclops stirred from woods and lofty hills,
Down rushes to the haven-side and all the haven fills;
And Ætna's gathered brethren there we see; in vain they stand
Glowering grim-eyed with heads high up in heaven, a dreadful band
Of councillors: they were as when on ridge aloft one sees
The oaks stand thick against the sky, and cone-hung cypresses,680
Jove's lofty woods, or thicket where Diana's footsteps stray.

Then headlong fear fell on our folk in whatsoever way
To shake the reefs out spreading sail to any wind that blew;
But Helenus had bid us steer a midmost course and true
'Twixt Scylla and Charybdis, lest to death we sail o'er-close:
So safest seemed for backward course to let the sails go loose.
But lo, from out Pelorus' strait comes down the northern flaw,
And past Pantagia's haven-mouth of living stone we draw,
And through the gulf of Megara by Thapsus lying low.
Such names did Achemenides, Ulysses' fellow, show,690
As now he coasted back again the shore erst wandered by.

In jaws of the Sicanian bay there doth an island lie
Against Plemyrium's wavy face; folk called it in old days
Ortygia: there, as tells the tale, Alpheus burrowed ways
From his own Elis 'neath the sea, and now by mouth of thine,
O Arethusa, blendeth him with that Sicilian brine.
We pray the isle's great deities, e'en as we bidden were:
And thence we pass the earth o'erfat about Helorus' mere;
Then by Pachynus' lofty crags and thrust-forth rocks we skim,
And Camarina showeth next a long way off and dim;700
Her whom the Fates would ne'er be moved: then comes the plain in sight
Of Gela, yea, and Gela huge from her own river hight:
Then Acragas the very steep shows great walls far away,
Begetter of the herds of horse high-couraged on a day.
Then thee, Selinus of the palms, I leave with happy wind,
And coast the Lilybean shoals and tangled skerries blind.

But next the firth of Drepanum, the strand without a joy,
Will have me. There I tossed so sore, the tempests' very toy,
O woe is me! my father lose, lightener of every care,
Of every ill: me all alone, me weary, father dear,710
There wouldst thou leave; thou borne away from perils all for nought!
Ah, neither Helenus the seer, despite the fears he taught,
Nor grim Celæno in her wrath, this grief of soul forebode.
This was the latest of my toils, the goal of all my road,
For me departed thence some God to this your land did bear."

So did the Father Æneas, with all at stretch to hear,
Tell o'er the fateful ways of God, and of his wanderings teach:
But here he hushed him at the last and made an end of speech.

BOOK IV.

ARGUMENT.

HEREIN IS TOLD OF THE GREAT LOVE OF DIDO, QUEEN OF CARTHAGE, AND THE WOEFUL ENDING OF HER.

Meanwhile the Queen, long smitten sore with sting of all desire,
With very heart's blood feeds the wound and wastes with hidden fire.
And still there runneth in her mind the hero's valiancy,
And glorious stock; his words, his face, fast in her heart they lie:
Nor may she give her body peace amid that restless pain.

But when the next day Phœbus' lamp lit up the lands again,
And now Aurora from the heavens had rent the mist apart,
Sick-souled her sister she bespeaks, the sharer of her heart:
"Sister, O me, this sleepless pain that fears me with unrest!
O me, within our house and home this new-come wondrous guest!10
Ah, what a countenance and mien! in arms and heart how strong!
Surely to trow him of the Gods it doth no wisdom wrong;
For fear it is shows base-born souls. Woe's me! how tossed about
By fortune was he! how he showed war's utter wearing out!
And, but my heart for ever now were set immovably
Never to let me long again the wedding bond to tie,
Since love betrayed me first of all with him my darling dead,
And were I not all weary-sick of torch and bridal bed,
This sin alone of all belike my falling heart might trap;
For, Anna, I confess it thee, since poor Sychæus' hap,20
My husband dead, my hearth acold through murderous brother's deed,
This one alone hath touched the quick; this one my heart may lead
Unto its fall: I feel the signs of fire of long agone.
And yet I pray the deeps of earth beneath my feet may yawn,
I pray the Father send me down bolt-smitten to the shades,
The pallid shades of Erebus, the night that never fades,
Before, O Shame, I shame thy face, or loose what thou hast tied!
He took away the love from me, who bound me to his side
That first of times. Ah, in the tomb let love be with him still!"

The tears arisen as she spake did all her bosom fill.30
But Anna saith: "Dearer to me than very light of day,
Must thou alone and sorrowing wear all thy youth away,
Nor see sweet sons, nor know the joys that gentle Venus brings?
Deem'st thou dead ash or buried ghosts have heed of such-like things?
So be it that thy sickened soul no man to yield hath brought
In Libya as in Tyre; let be Iarbas set at nought,
And other lords, whom Africa, the rich in battle's bliss,
Hath nursed: but now, with love beloved,—must thou be foe to this?
Yea, hast thou not within thy mind amidst whose bounds we are?
Here the Gætulian cities fierce, a folk unmatched in war,40
And hard Numidia's bitless folk, and Syrtes' guestless sand
Lie round thee: there Barcæans wild, the rovers of the land,
Desert for thirst: what need to tell of wars new-born in Tyre,
And of thy murderous brother's threats?
Meseems by very will of Gods, by Juno's loving mind,
The Ilian keels run down their course before the following wind.
Ah, what a city shalt thou see! how shall the lordship wax
With such a spouse! with Teucrian arms our brothers at our backs
Unto what glory of great deeds the Punic realm may reach!
But thou, go seek the grace of Gods, with sacrifice beseech;50
Then take thy fill of guest-serving; weave web of all delays:
The wintry raging of the sea, Orion's watery ways,
The way-worn ships, the heavens unmeet for playing seaman's part."

So saying, she blew the flame of love within her kindled heart,
And gave her doubtful soul a hope and loosed the girth of shame.

Then straight they fare unto the shrines, by every altar's flame
Praying for peace; and hosts they slay, chosen as custom would,
To Phœbus, Ceres wise of law, Father Lyæus good,
But chiefest unto Juno's might, that wedlock hath in care.
There bowl in hand stands Dido forth, most excellently fair,60
And pours between the sleek cow's horns; or to and fro doth pace
Before the altars fat with prayer, 'neath very godhead's face,
And halloweth in the day with gifts, and, gazing eagerly
Amid the host's yet beating heart, for answering rede must try.
—Woe's me! the idle mind of priests! what prayer, what shrine avails
The wild with love!—and all the while the smooth flame never fails
To eat her heart: the silent wound lives on within her breast:
Unhappy Dido burneth up, and, wild with all unrest,
For ever strays the city through: as arrow-smitten doe,
Unwary, whom some herd from far hath drawn upon with bow70
Amid the Cretan woods, and left the swift steel in the sore,
Unknowing: far in flight she strays the woods and thickets o'er,
'Neath Dictæ's heights; but in her flank still bears the deadly reed.

Now midmost of the city-walls Æneas doth she lead,
And shows him the Sidonian wealth, the city's guarded ways;
And now she falls to speech, and now amidst a word she stays.
Then at the dying of the day the feast she dights again,
And, witless, once again will hear the tale of Ilium's pain;
And once more hangeth on the lips that tell the tale aloud.
But after they were gone their ways, and the dusk moon did shroud80
Her light in turn, and setting stars bade all to sleep away,
Lone in the empty house she mourns, broods over where he lay,
Hears him and sees him, she apart from him that is apart
Or, by his father's image smit, Ascanius to her heart
She taketh, if her utter love she may thereby beguile.
No longer rise the walls begun, nor play the youth this while
In arms, or fashion havens forth, or ramparts of the war:
Broken is all that handicraft and mastery; idle are
The mighty threatenings of the walls and engines wrought heaven high.

Now when the holy wife of Jove beheld her utterly90
Held by that plague, whose madness now not e'en her fame might stay,
Then unto Venus, Saturn's seed began such words to say:
"Most glorious praise ye carry off, meseems, most wealthy spoil,
Thou and thy Boy; wondrous the might, and long to tell the toil,
Whereas two Gods by dint of craft one woman have o'erthrown.
But well I wot, that through your fear of walls I call mine own,
In welcome of proud Carthage doors your hearts may never trow.
But what shall be the end hereof? where wends our contest now?
What if a peace that shall endure, and wedlock surely bound,99
We fashion? That which all thine heart was set on thou hast found.
For Dido burns: bone of her bone thy madness is today:
So let us rule these folks as one beneath an equal sway:
Let the doom be that she shall take a Phrygian man for lord,
And to thine hand for dowry due her Tyrian folk award."

But Venus felt that Juno's guile within the word did live,
Who lordship due to Italy to Libya fain would give,
So thus she answered her again: "Who were so overbold
To gainsay this? or who would wish war against thee to hold,
If only this may come to pass, and fate the deed may seal?
But doubtful drifts my mind of fate, if one same town and weal110
Jove giveth to the Tyrian folk and those from Troy outcast,
If he will have those folks to blend and bind the treaty fast
Thou art his wife: by prayer mayst thou prove all his purpose weighed.
Set forth, I follow."
Juno then took up the word and said:
"Yea, that shall be my very work: how that which presseth now
May be encompassed, hearken ye, in few words will I show:
Æneas and the hapless queen are minded forth to fare
For hunting to the thicket-side, when Titan first shall bear
Tomorrow's light aloft, and all the glittering world unveil:
On them a darkening cloud of rain, blended with drift of hail,120
Will I pour down, while for the hunt the feathered snare-lines shake,
And toils about the thicket go: all heaven will I awake
With thunder, and their scattered folk the mid-mirk shall enwrap:
Then Dido and the Trojan lord on one same cave shall hap;
I will be there, and if to me thy heart be stable grown,
In wedlock will I join the two and deem her all his own:
And there shall be their bridal God."
Then Venus nought gainsaid,
But, nodding yea, she smiled upon the snare before her laid.

Meanwhile Aurora risen up had left the ocean stream,
And gateward throng the chosen youth in first of morning's beam,130
And wide-meshed nets, and cordage-toils and broad-steeled spears abound,
Massylian riders go their ways with many a scenting hound.
The lords of Carthage by the door bide till the tarrying queen
Shall leave her chamber: there, with gold and purple well beseen,
The mettled courser stands, and champs the bit that bids him bide.
At last she cometh forth to them with many a man beside:
A cloak of Sidon wrapped her round with pictured border wrought,
Her quiver was of fashioned gold, and gold her tresses caught;
The gathering of her purple gown a golden buckle had.

Then come the Phrygian fellows forth; comes forth Iulus glad;140
Yea and Æneas' very self is of their fellowship,
And joins their band: in goodliness all those did he outstrip:
E'en such as when Apollo leaves the wintry Lycian shore,
And Xanthus' stream, and Delos sees, his mother's isle once more;
And halloweth in the dance anew, while round the altars shout
The Cretans and the Dryopes, and painted Scythian rout:
He steps it o'er the Cynthus' ridge, and leafy crown to hold
His flowing tresses doth he weave, and intertwines the gold,
And on his shoulders clang the shafts. Nor duller now passed on
Æneas, from his noble face such wondrous glory shone.150
So come they to the mountain-side and pathless deer-fed ground,
And lo, from hill-tops driven adown, how swift the wild goats bound
Along the ridges: otherwhere across the open lea
Run hart and hind, and gathering up their hornèd host to flee,
Amid a whirling cloud of dust they leave the mountain-sides.
But here the boy Ascanius the midmost valley rides,
And glad, swift-horsed, now these he leaves, now those he flees before,
And fain were he mid deedless herds to meet a foaming boar,
Or see some yellow lion come the mountain-slopes adown.159

Meanwhile with mighty murmuring sound confused the heavens are grown,
And thereupon the drift of rain and hail upon them broke;
Therewith the scattered Trojan youth, the Tyrian fellow-folk,
The son of Venus' Dardan son, scared through the meadows fly
To diverse shelter, while the streams rush from the mountains high.

Then Dido and the Trojan lord meet in the self-same cave;
Then Earth, first-born of everything, and wedding Juno gave
The token; then the wildfires flashed, and air beheld them wed,
And o'er their bridal wailed the nymphs in hill-tops overhead.

That day began the tide of death; that day the evil came;
No more she heedeth eyes of men; no more she heedeth fame;170
No more hath Dido any thought a stolen love to win,
But calls it wedlock: yea, e'en so she weaveth up the sin.

Straight through the mighty Libyan folks is Rumour on the wing—
Rumour, of whom nought swifter is of any evil thing:
She gathereth strength by going on, and bloometh shifting oft!
A little thing, afraid at first, she springeth soon aloft;
Her feet are on the worldly soil, her head the clouds o'erlay.
Earth, spurred by anger 'gainst the Gods, begot her as they say,
Of Cœus and Enceladus the latest sister-birth.
Swift are her wings to cleave the air, swift-foot she treads the earth:180
A monster dread and huge, on whom so many as there lie
The feathers, under each there lurks, O strange! a watchful eye;
And there wag tongues, and babble mouths, and hearkening ears upstand
As many: all a-dusk by night she flies 'twixt sky and land
Loud clattering, never shutting eye in rest of slumber sweet.
By day she keepeth watch high-set on houses of the street,
Or on the towers aloft she sits for mighty cities' fear!
And lies and ill she loves no less than sooth which she must bear.

She now, rejoicing, filled the folk with babble many-voiced,
And matters true and false alike sang forth as she rejoiced:190
How here was come Æneas now, from Trojan blood sprung forth,
Whom beauteous Dido deemed indeed a man to mate her worth:
How winter-long betwixt them there the sweets of sloth they nursed,
Unmindful of their kingdoms' weal, by ill desire accursed.
This in the mouth of every man the loathly Goddess lays,
And thence to King Iarbas straight she wendeth on her ways,
To set his mind on fire with words, and high his wrath to lead.

He, sprung from Garamantian nymph and very Ammon's seed,
An hundred mighty fanes to Jove, an hundred altars fair,
Had builded in his wide domain, and set the watch-fire there,200
The everlasting guard of God: there fat the soil was grown
With blood of beasts; the threshold bloomed with garlands diverse blown.
He, saith the tale, all mad at heart, and fired with bitter fame,
Amidmost of the might of God before the altars came,
And prayed a many things to Jove with suppliant hands outspread:

"O Jupiter, almighty lord, to whom from painted bed
The banqueting Maurusian folk Lenæan joy pours forth,
Dost thou behold? O Father, is our dread of nothing worth
When thou art thundering? Yea, forsooth, a blind fire of the clouds,
An idle hubbub of the sky, our souls with terror loads!210
A woman wandering on our shore, who set her up e'en now
A little money-cheapened town, to whom a field to plough
And lordship of the place we gave, hath thrust away my word
Of wedlock, and hath taken in Æneas for her lord:
And now this Paris, hedged around with all his gelding rout,
Mæonian mitre tied to chin, and wet hair done about,
Sits on the prey while to thine house a many gifts we bear,
Still cherishing an idle tale who our begetters were."

The Almighty heard him as he prayed holding the altar-horns,
And to the war-walls of the Queen his eyes therewith he turns,220
And sees the lovers heeding nought the glory of their lives;
Then Mercury he calls to him, and such a bidding gives:
"Go forth, O Son, the Zephyrs call, and glide upon the wing
Unto the duke of Dardan men in Carthage tarrying,
Who hath no eyes to see the walls that fate to him hath given:
Speak to him, Son, and bear my words down the swift air of heaven:
His fairest mother promised us no such a man at need,
Nor claimed him twice from Greekish sword to live for such a deed.
But Italy, the fierce in war, the big with empire's brood,
Was he to rule; to get for us from glorious Teucer's blood230
That folk of folks, and all the world beneath his laws to lay.
But if such glory of great deeds nought stirreth him today,
Nor for his own fame hath he heart the toil to overcome,
Yet shall the father grudge the son the towered heights of Rome?
What doth he? tarrying for what hope among the enemy?
And hath no eyes Ausonian sons, Lavinian land to see?
Let him to ship! this is the doom; this word I bid thee bear."

He spake: his mighty father's will straight did the God prepare
To compass, and his golden shoes first bindeth on his feet,
E'en those which o'er the ocean plain aloft on feathers fleet,240
Or over earth swift bear him on before the following gale:
And then his rod he takes, wherewith he calleth spirits pale
From Orcus, or those others sends sad Tartarus beneath,
And giveth sleep and takes away, and openeth eyes to death;
The rod that sways the ocean-winds and rules the cloudy rack.
Now winging way he comes in sight of peak and steepy back
Of flinty Atlas, on whose head all heaven is set adown—
Of Atlas with the piny head, and never-failing crown
Of mirky cloud, beat on with rain and all the winds that blow:249
A snow-cloak o'er his shoulders falls, and headlong streams overflow
His ancient chin; his bristling beard with plenteous ice is done.
There hovering on his poisèd wings stayed that Cyllenian one,
And all his gathered body thence sent headlong toward the waves;
Then like a bird the shores about, about the fishy caves,
Skims low adown upon the wing the sea-plain's face anigh,
Not otherwise 'twixt heaven and earth Cyllene's God did fly;
And now, his mother's father great a long way left behind,
Unto the sandy Libya's shore he clave the driving wind.
But when the cot-built place of earth he felt beneath his feet,
He saw Æneas founding towers and raising houses meet:260
Starred was the sword about him girt with yellow jasper stone,
The cloak that from his shoulders streamed with Tyrian purple shone:
Fair things that wealthy Dido's hand had given him for a gift,
Who with the gleam of thready gold the purple web did shift.

Then brake the God on him: "Forsooth, tall Carthage wilt thou found,
O lover, and a city fair raise up from out the ground?
Woe's me! thy lordship and thy deeds hast thou forgotten quite?
The very ruler of the Gods down from Olympus bright
Hath sent me, he whose majesty the earth and heavens obey;
This was the word he bade me bear adown the windy way.270
What dost thou? hoping for what hope in Libya dost thou wear
Thy days? if glorious fated things thine own soul may not stir,
And heart thou lackest for thy fame the coming toil to wed,
Think on Ascanius' dawn of days and hope inherited,
To whom is due the Italian realm and all the world of Rome!"

But when from out Cyllenius' mouth such word as this had come,
Amidst his speech he left the sight of men that die from day,
And mid thin air from eyes of folk he faded far away.
But sore the sight Æneas feared, and wit from out him drave;
His hair stood up, amidst his jaws the voice within him clave.280
Bewildered by that warning word, and by that God's command,
He yearneth to depart and flee, and leave the lovely land.
Ah, what to do? and with what word may he be bold to win
Peace of the Queen all mad with love? what wise shall he begin?
Hither and thither now he sends his mind all eager-swift,
And bears it diversely away and runs o'er every shift:
At last, as many things he weighed, this seemed the better rede.
Mnestheus, Sergestus, straight he calls, Sergestus stout at need,
And bids them dight ship silently and bring their folk to shore,
And dight their gear, and cause thereof with lying cover o'er;290
While he himself, since of all this kind Dido knoweth nought,
Nor of the ending of such love may ever have a thought,
Will seek to draw anigh the Queen, seek time wherein the word
May softliest be said to her, the matter lightliest stirred.
So all they glad his bidding do, and get them to the work.

But who may hoodwink loving eyes? She felt the treason lurk
About her life, and from the first saw all that was to be;
Fearing indeed where no fear was. That Rumour wickedly
Told her wild soul of ship-host armed and ready to set out;
The heart died in her; all aflame she raves the town about,300
E'en as a Thyad, who, soul-smit by holy turmoil, hears
The voice of Bacchus on the day that crowns the triple years,
And mirk Cithæron through the night hath called her clamorous.

Unto Æneas at the last herself she speaketh thus:
"O thou forsworn! and hast thou hoped with lies to cover o'er
Such wickedness, and silently to get thee from my shore?
Our love, it hath not held thee back? nor right hand given in faith
Awhile agone? nor Dido doomed to die a bitter death?
Yea, e'en beneath the winter heavens thy fleet thou gatherest
In haste to fare across the main amid the north's unrest310
O cruel! What if land unknown and stranger field and fold
Thou sought'st not; if the ancient Troy stood as in days of old;
Wouldst thou not still be seeking Troy across the wavy brine?
—Yea, me thou fleest. O by these tears, by that right hand of thine,
Since I myself have left myself unhappy nought but this,
And by our bridal of that day and early wedding bliss,
If ever I were worthy thanks, if sweet in aught I were,
Pity a falling house! If yet be left a space for prayer,
O then I pray thee put away this mind of evil things!
Because of thee the Libyan folks, and those Numidian kings,320
Hate me, and Tyrians are my foes: yea, and because of thee
My shame is gone, and that which was my heavenward road to be.
My early glory.—Guest, to whom leav'st thou thy dying friend?
Since of my husband nought but this is left me in the end.
Why bide I till Pygmalion comes to lay my walls alow,
Till taken by Getulian kings, Iarbas' slave I go?
Ah! if at least ere thou wert gone some child of thee I had!
If yet Æneas in mine house might play a little lad,
E'en but to bring aback the face of that beloved one,
Then were I never vanquished quite, nor utterly undone."330

She spake: he, warned by Jove's command, his eyes still steadfast held,
And, striving, thrust his sorrow back, howso his heart-strings swelled:
At last he answered shortly thus:
"O Queen, though words may fail
To tell thy lovingkindness, ne'er my heart belies the tale:
Still shall it be a joy to think of sweet Elissa's days
While of myself I yet may think, while breath my body sways.
Few words about the deed in hand: ne'er in my mind it came
As flees a thief to flee from thee; never the bridal flame
Did I hold forth, or plight my troth such matters to fulfil.
If fate would let me lead a life according to my will,340
Might I such wise as pleaseth me my troubles lay to rest,
By Troy-town surely would I bide among the ashes blest
Of my beloved, and Priam's house once more aloft should stand;
New Pergamus for vanquished men should rise beneath my hand.
But now Grynean Phœbus bids toward Italy the great
To reach my hand; to Italy biddeth the Lycian fate:
There is my love, there is my land. If Carthage braveries
And lovely look of Libyan walls hold fast thy Tyrian eyes,
Why wilt thou grudge the Teucrian men Ausonian dwelling-place?
If we too seek the outland realm, for us too be there grace!350
Father Anchises, whensoever night covereth up the earth
With dewy dark, and whensoe'er the bright stars come to birth,
His troubled image midst of sleep brings warning word and fear.
Ascanius weigheth on my heart with wrong of head so dear,
Whom I beguile of fateful fields and realm of Italy.
Yea, even now God's messenger sent from the Jove on high,
(Bear witness either head of us!) bore doom of God adown
The eager wind: I saw the God enter the fair-walled town
In simple light: I drank his voice, yea with these ears of mine.
Cease then to burn up with thy wail my burdened heart and thine!360
Perforce I follow Italy."

But now this long while, as he spake, athwart and wild she gazed,
And here and there her eyeballs rolled, and strayed with silent look
His body o'er; and at the last with heart of fire outbroke:
"Traitor! no Goddess brought thee forth, nor Dardanus was first
Of thine ill race; but Caucasus on spiky crags accurst
Begot thee; and Hyrcanian dugs of tigers suckled thee.
Why hide it now? why hold me back lest greater evil be?
For did he sigh the while I wept? his eyes—what were they moved?
Hath he been vanquished unto tears, or pitied her that loved?370
—Ah, is aught better now than aught, when Juno utter great,
Yea and the Father on all this with evil eyen wait?
All faith is gone! I took him in a stranded outcast, bare:
Yea in my very throne and land, ah fool! I gave him share.
His missing fleet I brought aback; from death I brought his friends.
—Woe! how the furies burn me up!—Now seer Apollo sends,
Now bidding send the Lycian lots; now sendeth Jove on high
His messenger to bear a curse adown the windy sky!
Such is the toil of Gods aloft; such are the cares that rack
Their souls serene.—I hold thee not, nor cast thy words aback.380
Go down the wind to Italy! seek lordship o'er the sea!
Only I hope amid the rocks, if any God there be,
Thou shalt drink in thy punishment and call on Dido's name
Full oft: and I, though gone away, will follow with black flame;
And when cold death from out my limbs my soul hath won away,
I will be with thee everywhere; O wretch, and thou shalt pay.
Ah, I shall hear; the tale of all shall reach me midst the dead."

Therewith she brake her speech athwart, and sick at heart she fled
The outer air, and turned away, and gat her from his eyes;
Leaving him dallying with his fear, and turning many wise390
The words to say. Her serving-maids the fainting body weak,
Bear back unto the marble room and on the pillows streak.

But god-fearing Æneas now, however fain he were
To soothe her grief and with soft speech assuage her weary care,
Much groaning, and the heart of him shaken with loving pain.
Yet went about the God's command and reached his ships again.
Then fall the Teucrians on indeed, and over all the shore
Roll the tall ships; the pitchy keel swims in the sea once more:
They bear the oars still leaf-bearing: they bring the might of wood,
Unwrought, so fain of flight they are,400
Lo now their flitting! how they run from all the town in haste!
E'en as the ants, the winter-wise, are gathered whiles to waste
A heap of corn, and toil that same beneath their roof to lay,
Forth goes the black troop mid the mead, and carries forth the prey
Over the grass in narrow line: some strive with shoulder-might
And push along a grain o'ergreat, some drive the line aright,
Or scourge the loiterers: hot the work fares all along the road.

Ah Dido, when thou sawest all what heart in thee abode!
What groans thou gavest when thou saw'st from tower-top the long strand
A-boil with men all up and down; the sea on every hand410
Before thine eyes by stir of men torn into all unrest!
O evil Love, where wilt thou not drive on a mortal breast?
Lo, she is driven to weep again and pray him to be kind,
And suppliant, in the bonds of love her lofty heart to bind,
Lest she should leave some way untried and die at last for nought.

"Anna, thou seest the strand astir, the men together brought
From every side, the canvas spread calling the breezes down.
While joyful on the quarter-deck the sea-folk lay the crown.
Sister, since I had might to think that such a thing could be,
I shall have might to bear it now: yet do one thing for me,420
Poor wretch, O Anna: for to thee alone would he be kind,
That traitor, and would trust to thee the inmost of his mind;
And thou alone his softening ways and melting times dost know.
O sister, speak a suppliant word to that high-hearted foe:
I never swore at Aulis there to pluck up root and branch
The Trojan folk; for Pergamus no war-ship did I launch:
Anchises' buried ghost from tomb I never tore away:
Why will his ears be ever deaf to any word I say?
Where hurrieth he? O let him give his wretched love one gift;
Let him but wait soft sailing-tide, when fair the breezes shift.430
No longer for the wedding past, undone, I make my prayer,
Nor that he cast his lordship by, and promised Latium fair.
For empty time, for rest and stay of madness now I ask,
Till Fortune teach the overthrown to learn her weary task.
Sister, I pray this latest grace; O pity me today,
And manifold when I am dead the gift will I repay."

So prayed she: such unhappy words of weeping Anna bears,
And bears again and o'er again: but him no weeping stirs,
Nor any voice he hearkeneth now may turn him from his road:
God shut the hero's steadfast ears; fate in the way abode.440
As when against a mighty oak, strong growth of many a year,
On this side and on that the blasts of Alpine Boreas bear,
Contending which shall root it up: forth goes the roar, deep lie
The driven leaves upon the earth from shaken bole on high.
But fast it clingeth to the crag, and high as goes its head
To heaven aloft, so deep adown to hell its roots are spread.
E'en so by ceaseless drift of words the hero every wise
Is battered, and the heavy care deep in his bosom lies;
Steadfast the will abides in him; the tears fall down for nought.
Ah, and unhappy Dido then the very death besought,450
Outworn by fate: the hollow heaven has grown a sight to grieve.
And for the helping of her will, that she the light may leave,
She seeth, when mid the frankincense her offering she would lay,
The holy water blackening there, O horrible to say!
The wine poured forth turned into blood all loathly as it fell.
Which sight to none, not e'en unto her sister, would she tell.
Moreover, to her first-wed lord there stood amidst the house
A marble shrine, the which she loved with worship marvellous,
And bound it was with snowy wool and leafage of delight;459
Thence heard she, when the earth was held in mirky hand of night,
Strange sounds come forth, and words as if her husband called his own.
And o'er and o'er his funeral song the screech-owl wailed alone,
And long his lamentable tale from high aloft was rolled.
And many a saying furthermore of god-loved seers of old
Fears her with dreadful memory: all wild amid her dreams
Cruel Æneas drives her on, and evermore she seems
Left all alone; and evermore a road that never ends,
Mateless, and seeking through the waste her Tyrian folk, she wends.
As raving Pentheus saw the rout of that Well-willing Folk,
When twofold sun and twofold Thebes upon his eyes outbroke:470
Or like as Agamemnon's son is driven across the stage,
Fleeing his mother's fiery hand that bears the serpent's rage,
While there the avenging Dreadful Ones upon the threshold sit.

But when she gave the horror birth, and, grief-worn, cherished it,
And doomed her death, then with herself she planned its time and guise,
And to her sister sorrowing sore spake word in such a wise,
Covering her end with cheerful face and calm and hopeful brow:
"Kinswoman, I have found a way, (joy with thy sister now!)
Whereby to bring him back to me or let me loose from him.
Adown beside the setting sun, hard on the ocean's rim,480
Lies the last world of Æthiops, where Atlas mightiest grown
Upon his shoulder turns the pole with burning stars bestrown.
A priestess thence I met erewhile, come of Massylian seed,
The warden of the West-maid's fane, and wont the worm to feed,
Mingling for him the honey-juice with poppies bearing sleep,
Whereby she maketh shift on tree the hallowed bough to keep.
She by enchantment takes in hand to loose what hearts she will,
But other ones at need will she with heavy sorrows fill;
And she hath craft to turn the stars and back the waters beat,
Call up the ghosts that fare by night, make earth beneath thy feet490
Cry out, and ancient ash-trees draw the mountain-side adown.
Dear heart, I swear upon the Gods, I swear on thee, mine own
And thy dear head, that I am loath with magic craft to play.
But privily amid the house a bale for burning lay
'Neath the bare heaven, and pile on it the arms that evil one
Left in the chamber: all he wore, the bridal bed whereon
My days were lost: for so 'tis good: the priestess showeth me
All tokens of the wicked man must perish utterly."

No more she spake, but with the word her face grew deadly white.
But Anna sees not how she veiled her death with new-found rite,500
Nor any thought of such a deed her heart encompasseth;
Nor fears she heavier things to come than at Sychæus' death.
Wherefore she takes the charge in hand.

But now the Queen, that bale being built amid the inner house
'Neath the bare heavens, piled high with fir and cloven oak enow,
Hangeth the garlands round the place, and crowns the bale with bough
That dead men use: the weed he wore, his very effigy,
His sword, she lays upon the bed, well knowing what shall be.
There stand the altars, there the maid, wild with her scattered hair,
Calls Chaos, Erebus, and those three hundred godheads there,510
And Hecate triply fashionèd to maiden Dian's look;
Water she scattered, would-be wave of dark Avernus' brook;
And herbs she brought, by brazen shears 'neath moonlight harvested,
All downy-young, though inky milk of venomed ill they shed.
She brings the love-charm snatched away from brow of new-born foal
Ere yet the mother snatcheth it.
Dido herself the altars nigh, meal in her hallowed hands,
With one foot of its bindings bare, and ungirt raiment stands,
And dying calls upon the Gods, and stars that fateful fare;
And then if any godhead is, mindful and just to care520
For unloved lovers, unto that she sendeth up the prayer.

Now night it was, and everything on earth had won the grace
Of quiet sleep: the woods had rest, the wildered waters' face:
It was the tide when stars roll on amid their courses due,
And all the tilth is hushed, and beasts, and birds of many a hue;
And all that is in waters wide, and what the waste doth keep
In thicket rough, amid the hush of night-tide lay asleep,
And slipping off the load of care forgat their toilsome part.
But ne'er might that Phœnician Queen, that most unhappy heart,
Sink into sleep, or take the night unto her eyes and breast:530
Her sorrows grow, and love again swells up with all unrest,
And ever midst her troubled wrath rolls on a mighty tide;
And thus she broods and turns it o'er and o'er on every side.

"Ah, whither now? Shall I bemocked my early lovers try,
And go Numidian wedlock now on bended knee to buy:
I, who so often scorned to take their bridal-bearing hands?
Or shall I, following Ilian ships, bear uttermost commands
Of Teucrian men, because my help their lightened hearts makes kind;
Because the thank for deed I did lies ever on their mind?
But if I would, who giveth leave, or takes on scornful keel540
The hated thing? Thou knowest not, lost wretch, thou may'st not feel,
What treason of Laomedon that folk for ever bears.
What then? and shall I follow lone the joyous mariners?
Or, hedged with all my Tyrian host, upon them shall I bear,
Driving again across the sea those whom I scarce might tear
From Sidon's city, forcing them to spread their sails abroad?
Nay, stay thy grief with steel, and die, and reap thy due reward!
Thou, sister, conquered by my tears, wert first this bane to lay
On my mad soul, and cast my heart in that destroyer's way.
Why was I not allowed to live without the bridal bed,550
Sackless and free as beasts afield, with no woes wearièd?
Why kept I not the faith of old to my Sychæus sworn?"
Such wailing of unhappy words from out her breast was torn.

Æneas on the lofty deck meanwhile, assured of flight,
Was winning sleep, since every need of his was duly dight;
When lo! amid the dreams of sleep that shape of God come back,
Seemed once again to warn him thus: nor yet the face did lack
Nor anything of Mercury; both voice and hue was there,
And loveliness of youthful limbs and length of yellow hair:559
"O Goddess-born, and canst thou sleep through such a tide as this?
And seest thou not how round about the peril gathered is?
And, witless, hear'st not Zephyr blow with gentle, happy wind?
For treason now and dreadful deed she turneth in her mind,
Assured of death; and diversely the tide of wrath sets in.
Why fleest thou not in haste away, while haste is yet to win?
Thou shalt behold the sea beat up with oar-blade, and the brand
Gleam dire against thee, and one flame shall run adown the strand,
If thee tomorrow's dawn shall take still lingering on this shore.
Up! tarry not! for woman's heart is shifting evermore."

So saying, amid the mirk of night he mingled and was lost.570
And therewithal Æneas, feared by sudden-flitting ghost,
Snatching his body forth from sleep, stirs up his folk at need:
"Wake ye, and hurry now, O men! get to the thwarts with speed,
And bustle to unfurl the sails! here sent from heaven again
A God hath spurred us on to flight, and biddeth hew atwain
The hempen twine. O holy God, we follow on thy way,
Whatso thou art; and glad once more thy bidding we obey.
O be with us! give gracious aid; set stars the heaven about
To bless our ways!"
And from the sheath his lightning sword flew out
E'en as he spake: with naked blade he smote the hawser through,580
And all are kindled at his flame; they hurry and they do.
The shore is left, with crowd of keels the sight of sea is dim;
Eager they whirl the spray aloft, as o'er the blue they skim.

And now Aurora left alone Tithonus' saffron bed,
And first light of another day across the world she shed.
But when the Queen from tower aloft beheld the dawn grow white,
And saw the ships upon their way with fair sails trimmed aright,
And all the haven shipless left, and reach of empty strand,
Then thrice and o'er again she smote her fair breast with her hand,
And rent her yellow hair, and cried, "Ah, Jove! and is he gone?590
And shall a very stranger mock the lordship I have won?
Why arm they not? Why gather not from all the town in chase?
Ho ye! why run ye not the ships down from their standing-place?
Quick, bring the fire! shake out the sails! hard on the oars to sea!
—What words are these, or where am I? What madness changeth me?
Unhappy Dido! now at last thine evil deed strikes home.
Ah, better when thou mad'st him lord—lo whereunto are come
His faith and troth who erst, they say, his country's house-gods held
The while he took upon his back his father spent with eld?599
Why! might I not have shred him up, and scattered him piecemeal
About the sea, and slain his friends, his very son, with steel,
Ascanius on his father's board for dainty meat to lay?
But doubtful, say ye, were the fate of battle? Yea, O yea!
What might I fear, who was to die?—if I had borne the fire
Among their camp, and filled his decks with flame, and son and sire
Quenched with their whole folk, and myself had cast upon it all!
—O Sun, whose flames on every deed earth doeth ever fall,
O Juno, setter-forth and seer of these our many woes,
Hecate, whose name howled out a-nights o'er city crossway goes,
Avenging Dread Ones, Gods that guard Elissa perishing,610
O hearken! turn your might most meet against the evil thing!
O hearken these our prayers! and if the doom must surely stand,
And he, the wicked head, must gain the port and swim aland,
If Jove demand such fixèd fate and every change doth bar,
Yet let him faint mid weapon-strife and hardy folk of war!
And let him, exiled from his house, torn from Iulus, wend,
Beseeching help mid wretched death of many and many a friend.
And when at last he yieldeth him to pact of grinding peace,
Then short-lived let his lordship be, and lovèd life's increase.
And let him fall before his day, unburied on the shore!620
Lo this I pray, this last of words forth with my blood I pour.
And ye, O Tyrians, 'gainst his race that is, and is to be,
Feed full your hate! When I am dead send down this gift to me:
No love betwixt the peoples twain, no troth for anything!
And thou, Avenger of my wrongs, from my dead bones outspring,
To bear the fire and the sword o'er Dardan-peopled earth
Now or hereafter; whensoe'er the day brings might to birth.
I pray the shore against the shore, the sea against the sea,
The sword 'gainst sword—fight ye that are, and ye that are to be!"

So sayeth she, and everywise she turns about her mind630
How ending of the loathèd light she speediest now may find.
And few words unto Barce spake, Sychæus' nurse of yore;
For the black ashes held her own upon the ancient shore:
"Dear nurse, my sister Anna now bring hither to my need,
And bid her for my sprinkling-tide the running water speed;
And bid her have the hosts with her, and due atoning things:
So let her come; but thou, thine head bind with the holy strings;
For I am minded now to end what I have set afoot,
And worship duly Stygian Jove and all my cares uproot;
Setting the flame beneath the bale of that Dardanian head."640

She spake; with hurrying of eld the nurse her footsteps sped.
But Dido, trembling, wild at heart with her most dread intent,
Rolling her blood-shot eyes about, her quivering cheeks besprent
With burning flecks, and otherwhere dead white with death drawn nigh
Burst through the inner doorways there and clomb the bale on high,
Fulfilled with utter madness now, and bared the Dardan blade,
Gift given not for such a work, for no such ending made.
There, when upon the Ilian gear her eyen had been set,
And bed well known, 'twixt tears and thoughts awhile she lingered yet;
Then brooding low upon the bed her latest word she spake:650

"O raiment dear to me while Gods and fate allowed, now take
This soul of mine and let me loose from all my woes at last!
I, I have lived, and down the way fate showed to me have passed;
And now a mighty shade of me shall go beneath the earth!
A glorious city have I raised, and brought my walls to birth,
Avenged my husband, made my foe, my brother, pay the pain:
Happy, ah, happy overmuch were all my life-days' gain,
If never those Dardanian keels had drawn our shores anigh."

She spake: her lips lay on the bed: "Ah, unavenged to die!
But let me die! Thus, thus 'tis good to go into the night!660
Now let the cruel Dardan eyes drink in the bale-fire's light,
And bear for sign across the sea this token of my death."

Her speech had end: but on the steel, amid the last word's breath,
They see her fallen; along the blade they see her blood foam out,
And all her hands besprent therewith: wild fly the shrieks about
The lofty halls, and Rumour runs mad through the smitten town.
The houses sound with women's wails and lamentable groan;
The mighty clamour of their grief rings through the upper skies.
'Twas e'en as if all Carthage fell mid flood of enemies,
Or mighty Tyre of ancient days,—as if the wildfire ran670
Rolling about the roof of God and dwelling-place of man.

Half dead her sister heard, and rushed distraught and trembling there,
With nail and fist befouling all her face and bosom fair:
She thrust amidst them, and by name called on the dying Queen:
"O was it this my sister, then! guile in thy word hath been!
And this was what the bale, the fire, the altars wrought for me!
Where shall I turn so left alone? Ah, scorned was I to be
For death-fellow! thou shouldst have called me too thy way to wend.
One sword-pang should have been for both, one hour to make an end.
Built I with hands, on Father-Gods with crying did I cry680
To be away, a cruel heart, from thee laid down to die?
O sister, me and thee, thy folk, the fathers of the land,
Thy city hast thou slain——O give, give water to my hand,
And let me wash the wound, and if some last breath linger there,
Let my mouth catch it!"
Saying so she reached the topmost stair,
And to her breast the dying one she fondled, groaning sore,
And with her raiment strove to staunch the black and flowing gore.
Then Dido strove her heavy lids to lift, but back again
They sank, and deep within her breast whispered the deadly bane:
Three times on elbow struggling up a little did she rise,690
And thrice fell back upon the bed, and sought with wandering eyes
The light of heaven aloft, and moaned when it was found at last.

Then on her long-drawn agony did Juno pity cast,
Her hard departing; Iris then she sent from heaven on high,
And bade her from the knitted limbs the struggling soul untie.
For since by fate she perished not, nor waited death-doom given,
But hapless died before her day by sudden fury driven,
Not yet the tress of yellow hair had Proserpine off-shred,
Nor unto Stygian Orcus yet had doomed her wandering head.
So Iris ran adown the sky on wings of saffron dew,700
And colours shifting thousandfold against the sun she drew,
And overhead she hung: "So bid, from off thee this I bear,
Hallowed to Dis, and charge thee now from out thy body fare."

She spake and sheared the tress away; then failed the life-heat spent
And forth away upon the wind the spirit of her went.

BOOK V.

ARGUMENT.

ÆNEAS MAKING FOR ITALY IS STAYED BY CONTRARY WINDS, WHEREFORE HE SAILETH TO SICILY, AND, COMING TO THE TOMB OF HIS FATHER ANCHISES, HOLDETH SOLEMN GAMES THEREAT, AND IN THE END GOETH HIS WAY TO ITALY AGAIN.

Meanwhile Æneas with his ships the mid-sea way did hold
Steadfast, and cut the dusky waves before the north wind rolled,
Still looking back upon the walls now litten by the flame
Of hapless Dido: though indeed whence so great burning came
They knew not; but the thought of grief that comes of love defiled
How great it is, what deed may come of woman waxen wild,
Through woeful boding of the sooth the Teucrians' bosoms bore.

But when the ships the main sea held, nor had they any more
The land in sight, but sea around and sky around was spread,
A coal-blue cloud drew up to them, that hanging overhead10
Bore night and storm: feared 'neath the dark the waters trembling lie.
Then called the helmsman Palinure from lofty deck on high:
"Ah, wherefore doth such cloud of storm gird all the heavens about?
What will ye, Father Neptune, now?"
Therewith he crieth out
To gather all the tackling in, and hard on oars to lay,
And slopeth sail across the wind; and so such word doth say:
"Great-souled Æneas, e'en if Jove my borrow now should be,
'Neath such a sky I might not hope to make our Italy:
The changed winds roar athwart our course, and from the west grown black
They rise; while o'er the face of heaven gathers the cloudy rack.20
Nor have we might to draw a-head, nor e'en to hold our own.
Wherefore since Fortune hath prevailed, by way that she hath shown,
Whither she calleth, let us turn: methinks the way but short
To brother-land of Eryx leal and safe Sicanian port,
If I may read the stars aright that erst I bare in mind."

Quoth good Æneas: "Now for long that suchwise would the wind
I saw, and how thou heldest head against it all in vain:
Shift sail and go about; what land may sweeter be to gain,
Or whither would I liefer turn my keels from beat of sea,
Than that which yet the Dardan lord Acestes holds for me,30
That holds my very father's bones, Anchises, in its breast?"

They seek the haven therewithal, and fair and happy west
Swelleth the sails: o'er whirl of waves full speedily they wend,
And glad to that familiar sand they turn them in the end:
But there Acestes meeteth them, who from a mountain high
All wondering had seen afar the friendly ships draw nigh.
With darts he bristled, and was clad in fell of Libyan bear.
Him erst unto Crimisus' flood a Trojan mother fair
Brought forth: and now, forgetting nought his mother's folk of old,
He welcomes them come back again with wealth of field and fold,40
And solaces the weary men with plenteous friendly cheer.

But when the stars in first of dawn fled from the morrow clear,
Æneas called upon the shore assembly of his folk,
And standing high aloft on mound such words to tell he spoke:
"O mighty Dardan men, O folk from blood of Godhead born,
The yearly round is all fulfilled, with lapse of months outworn,
Since when my godlike father's husk and bones of him we laid
Amid the mould, and heavy sad the hallowed altars made:
And now meseems the day is here, for evermore to me
A bitter day, a worshipped day.—So God would have it be!50
Yea should it find me outcast man on great Getulia's sand,
Or take me in the Argive sea, or mid Mycenæ's land,
Yet yearly vows, and pomps that come in due recurring while,
Still should I pay, and gifts most meet upon the altar pile.
Now to my father's bones, indeed, and ashes are we brought
By chance; yet not, meseems, without the Godhead's will and thought
Are we come here, to lie in peace within a friendly bay.
So come, and let all worship here the glory of the day;
Pray we the winds, that year by year this worship may be done
In temples dedicate to him within my city won.60
Troy-born Acestes giveth you two head of hornèd beasts
For every ship; so see ye bid the House-gods to your feasts,
Both them of Troy and them our host Acestes loveth here.
Moreover, if the ninth dawn hence Aurora shall uprear
For health of men, and with her rays earth's coverlit shall lift,
For Teucrians will I fast set forth the race for galleys swift:
Then whosoe'er is fleet of foot, or bold of might and main,
Or with the dart or eager shaft a better prize may gain,
Or whoso hath the heart to play in fight-glove of raw hide,
Let all be there, and victory's palm and guerdon due abide.70
Clean be all mouths! and gird with leaves the temple of the head."

His mother's bush he did on brow e'en as the word he said;
The like did Helymus, the like Acestes ripe of eld,
The like the boy Ascanius, yea, and all that manner held.
Then from that council to the tomb that duke of men did pass;
Mid many thousands, he the heart of all that concourse was.
There, worshipping, on earth he pours in such wise as was good
Two cups of mere wine, two of milk, and two of holy blood,
And scatters purple flowers around; and then such words he said:
"Hail, holy father! hail once more! hail, ashes visited80
Once more for nought! hail, father-shade and spirit sweet in vain!
Forbid with me that Italy to seek, that fated plain,
With me Ausonian Tiber-flood, whereso it be, to seek."

He spake: but from the lowest mound a mighty serpent sleek
Drew seven great circles o'er the earth, and glided sevenfold,
Passing in peace the tomb around, and o'er the altars rolled:
Blue stripèd was the back of him, and all his scales did glow
With glitter of fine flecks of gold; e'en as the cloud-hung bow
A thousand shifting colours fair back from the sun he cast.
Æneas wondered at the sight; but on the serpent passed,90
And 'twixt the bowls and smoothèd cups his long array he wound,
Tasting the hallowed things; and so he gat him underground
Beneath the tomb again, and left the altars pastured o'er.

Heartened hereby, his father's soul Æneas worshipped more,
And, doubtful, deemeth it to be Anchises' guardian ghost
Or godhead of the place: so there he slayeth double host,
As custom would; two black-backed steers, and e'en as many swine,
And calleth on his father's soul with pouring of the wine,
On great Anchises' glorious ghost from Acheron set free.
From out their plenty therewithal his fellows joyfully100
Give gifts, and load the altar-stead, and smite the steers adown.
While others serve the seething brass, and o'er the herbage strown
Set coaly morsels 'neath the spit, and roast the inner meat.

And now the looked-for day was come with simple light and sweet,
And Phaeton's horses shining bright the ninth dawn in did bear.
Fame and the name Acestes had the neighbouring people stir
To fill the shore with joyful throng, Æneas' folk to see:
But some were dight amid the games their strife-fellows to be.
There first before the eyes of men the gifts to come they lay
Amid the course; as hallowed bowls, and garlands of green bay,110
And palms, the prize of victory, weapons, and raiment rolled
In purple, and a talent's weight of silver and of gold;
Then blast of horn from midst the mound the great games halloweth in:
Four ships from all the fleet picked out will first the race begin
With heavy oars; well matched are they for speed and rowers' tale:
Hereof did Mnestheus' eager oars drive on the speedy Whale,
Mnestheus to be of Italy, whence cometh Memmius' name.
The huge Chimæra's mountain mass was Gyas set to tame;
There on that city of a ship threesome its rowing plies
The Dardan youth; the banks of oars in threefold order rise.120
Sergestus next, the name whereof the Sergian house yet bears,
Is ferried by the Centaur great: last in blue Scylla steers
Cloanthus, whence the name of thee, Cluentius, man of Rome.

Far mid the sea a rock there is, facing the shore-line's foam,
Which, beat by overtoppling waves, is drowned and hidden oft,
What time the stormy North-west hides the stars in heaven aloft:
But otherwhiles it lies in peace when nought the sea doth move,
And riseth up a meadow fair that sunning sea-gulls love.
There a green goal Æneas raised, dight of a leafy oak,
To be a sign of turning back to that sea-faring folk,130
That fetching compass round the same their long course they might turn.

So then by lot they take their place: there on the deck they burn.
The captains, goodly from afar in gold and purple show:
The other lads with poplar-leaf have garlanded the brow,
And with the oil poured over them their naked shoulders shine.
They man the thwarts; with hearts a-stretch they hearken for the sign,
With arms a-stretch upon the oars; hard tugs the pulse of fear
About their bounding hearts, hard strains the lust of glory dear.
But when the clear horn gives the sound, forthwith from where they lie
They leap away; the seamen's shouts smite up against the sky,140
The upturned waters froth about as home the arms are borne:
So timely they the furrows cut, and all the sea uptorn
Is cloven by the sweep of oars and bows' three-headed push.
—Nay, nought so swift in twi-yoke race forth from the barriers rush
The scattered headlong chariots on to wear the space of plain,
Nor eager so the charioteers shake waves along the rein
Above the hurrying yoke, as hung over the lash they go.
—Then with the shouts and praise of men, and hope cast to and fro,
Rings all the grove; the cliff-walled shore rolleth great voice around,
And beating 'gainst the mountain-side the shattering shouts rebound.150

Before the others Gyas flies, and first the waves doth skim
Betwixt the throng and roar, but hard Cloanthus presseth him;
Who, better manned, is held aback by sluggish weight of pine.
'Twixt Whale and Centaur after these the edge of strife is fine,
And hard they struggle each with each to win the foremost place.
Now the Whale hath it; beaten now is foregone in the race
By the huge Centaur; head and head now follow on the two,
As the long keel of either one the salt sea furrows through.

But now they drew anigh the holm, the goal close on them gave,
When Gyas first and conquering there amid the whirl of wave160
Unto the helmsman of his ship, Menœtes, cries command:
"And why so far unto the right? turn hither to this hand!
Hug thou the shore; let the blades graze the very rocks a-lee.
Let others hold the deep!"
No less unto the wavy sea
Menœtes, fearing hidden rocks, still turns away the bow:
Gyas would shout him back again: "Menœtes, whither now?
Steer for the rocks!"
And therewithal, as back his eyes he cast.
He sees Cloanthus hard at heel and gaining on him fast;
Who, grazing on this hand and that the rocks and Gyas' ship,
Now suddenly by leeward course a-head of all doth slip,170
And leaving clear the goal behind hath open water's gain.
Then unto Gyas' very bones deep burns the wrathful pain;
Nor did his cheeks lack tears indeed: forgetting honour's trust,
Forgetting all his fellows' weal, Menœtes doth he thrust
Headlong from off the lofty deck into the sea adown,
And takes the tiller, helmsman now and steering-master grown;
He cheers his men, and toward the shore the rudder wresteth round.
Menœtes, heavy, hardly won up from the ocean's ground,
(For he was old, and floods enow fulfilled his dripping gear,)
Made for the holm and sat him down upon the dry rock there:180
The Teucrians laughed to see him fall, and laughed to see him swim,
And laugh to see him spue the brine back from the heart of him.

Now Mnestheus' and Sergestus' hope began anew to spring,
That they might outgo Gyas yet amid his tarrying:
Of whom Sergestus draws ahead and nears the rocky holm;
But not by all his keel indeed the other did o'ercome,
But by the half; the eager Whale amidships held her place,
Where Mnestheus midst the men themselves now to and fro did pace,
Egging them on: "Now, now!" he cries; "up, up, on oar-heft high!
Fellows of Hector, whom I chose when Troy last threw the die!190
Now put ye forth your ancient heart, put forth the might of yore,
Wherewith amid Getulian sand, Ionian sea ye bore;
The heart and might ye had amidst Malea's following wave!
I, Mnestheus, seek not victory now, nor foremost place to save.
—Yet, O my heart! but let them win to whom thou giv'st the crown,
O Neptune!—but the shameful last! O townsmen, beat it down.
And ban such horror!"
Hard on oars they lie mid utter throes,
And quivereth all the brazen ship beneath their mighty blows;
The sea's floor slippeth under them; the ceaseless pantings shake199
Their limbs and parchèd mouths, and still the sweat-streams never slake.
But very chance those strivers gave the prize they struggled for,
Since now Sergestus, hot at heart, while to the stony shore
He clingeth innerward, is come into the treacherous strait,
And hapless driveth on the rocks thrust forth for such a fate:
The cliffs are shaken and the oars against the flinty spikes
Snap crashing, and the prow thrust up yet hangeth where it strikes:
Up start the seafarers, and raise great hubbub tarrying;
Then sprits all iron-shod and poles sharp-ended forth they bring
To bear her off, and gather oars a-floating in the wash.

But Mnestheus, whetted by his luck, joyful, with hurrying dash210
Of timely-beating oars, speeds forth, and praying breezes on,
O'er waters' slope adown the sea's all open way doth run:
—E'en as a pigeon in a cave stirred suddenly from rest,
Who in the shady pumice-rock hath house and happy nest;
Scared 'neath the roof she beateth forth with mighty flap of wings,
And flieth, borne adown the fields, till in soft air she swings,
And floateth on the flowing way, nor scarce a wing doth move;
—So Mnestheus, so the Whale herself, the latter waters clove,
So with the way erst made on her she flew on swift and soft;
And first Sergestus doth she leave stayed on the rock aloft,220
Striving in shallows' tanglement, calling for help in vain,
And learning with his broken oars a little way to gain.
Then Gyas and Chimæra's bulk he holdeth hard in chase,
Who, from her lack of helmsman lost, must presently give place.
And now at very end of all Cloanthus is the last
With whom to deal: his most he strives, and presseth on him fast.
Then verily shout thrusts on shout, and all with all goodwill
Cry on the chase; their echoing noise the very lift doth fill.
These, thinking shame of letting fall their hardly-gotten gain
Of glory's meed, to buy the praise with very life are fain;230
Those, fed on good-hap, all things may, because they deem they may:
The twain, perchance, head laid to head, had won the prize that day,
But if Cloanthus both his palms had stretched to seaward there,
And called upon the Gods to aid and poured forth eager prayer:

"O Gods, whose lordship is the sea, whose waters I run o'er,
Now glad will I, your debtor bound, by altars on the shore
Bring forth for you a snow-white bull, and cast amid the brine
His inner meat, and pour abroad a flowing of fair wine."

He spake, and all the Nereids' choir hearkened the words he said
Down 'neath the waves, and Phorcus' folk, and Panopea the maid;240
Yea, and the sire Portunus thrust the keel with mighty hand
Upon its way, and arrow-swift it flew on toward the land,
Swift as the South, and there at rest in haven deep it lies.

But now Anchises' seed, all men being summoned in due wise,
Proclaims Cloanthus victor there by loud-voiced herald's shout,
And with green garland of the bay he does his brows about;
Then biddeth them to choose the gifts, for every ship three steers,
And wine, and every crew therewith great weight of silver bears.
And glorious gifts he adds withal to every duke of man:
A gold-wrought cloak the victor hath, about whose rim there ran250
A plenteous double wavy stream of Melibœan shell,
And leafy Ida's kingly boy thereon was pictured well.
A-following up the fleeing hart with spear and running fleet;
Eager he seemed as one who pants; then him with hookèd feet
Jove's shield-bearer hath caught, and up with him from Ida flies,
And there the ancient masters stretch vain palms unto the skies,
While bark of staring hunting-hound beats fierce at upper air.

Then next for him who second place of might and valour bare
A mail-coat wove of polished rings with threefold wire of gold,
Which from Demoleos the King had stripped in days of old,260
A conqueror then by Simoïs swift beneath high-builded Troy,
He giveth now that lord to have a safeguard and a joy;
Its many folds his serving-men, Phegeus and Sagaris,
Scarce bore on toiling shoulders joined, yet clad in nought but this
Swift ran Demoleos following on the Trojans disarrayed.

A third gift then he setteth forth, twin cauldrons brazen made,
And silver bowls with picturing fret and wrought with utter pain.

And now when all had gotten gifts, and glorying in their gain,
Were wending with the filleting of purple round the brow,
Lo, gotten from the cruel rock with craft and toil enow,270
With missing oars, and all one board unhandy and foredone,
His ship inglorious and bemocked, Sergestus driveth on.
—As with an adder oft it haps caught on the highway's crown,
Aslant by brazen tire of wheel, or heavy pebble thrown
By wayfarer, hath left him torn and nigh unto his end:
Who writhings wrought for helpless flight through all his length doth send,
And one half fierce with burning eyes uprears a hissing crest,
The other half, with wounds all halt, still holding back the rest;
He knitteth him in many a knot and on himself doth slip.
—E'en such the crawling of the oars that drave the tarrying ship.280
But they hoist sail on her, and so the harbour-mouth make shift
To win: and there Æneas gives Sergestus promised gift,
Blithe at his saving of the ship, and fellows brought aback:
A maid he hath, who not a whit of Pallas' art doth lack.
Of Crete she is, and Pholoë called, and twins at breast she bears.

Now all that strife being overpast, the good Æneas fares
To grassy meads girt all about by hollow wooded hills,
Where theatre-wise the racing-course the midmost valley fills.
Thereto the hero, very heart of many a thousand men,
Now wendeth, and on seat high-piled he sits him down again.290
There whosoever may have will to strive in speedy race
He hearteneth on with hope of gift, and shows the prize and grace.
So from all sides Sicilians throng, and Trojan fellowship.
Euryalus and Nisus first.
Euryalus for goodliness and youth's first blossom famed,
Nisus for fair love of the youth; then after these are named
Diores, of the blood of kings from Priam's glorious race;
Salius and Patron next; the one of Acarnanian place,
The other from Arcadian blood of Tegeæa outsprung:
Then two Trinacrians, Helymus and Panopes the young,300
In woodcraft skilled, who ever went by old Acestes' side;
And many others else there were whom rumour dimmed doth hide.

And now amidmost of all these suchwise Æneas spake:
"Now hearken; let your merry hearts heed of my saying take:
No man of all the tale of you shall henceforth giftless go;
Two Gnosian spears to each I give with polished steel aglow,
An axe to carry in the war with silver wrought therein.
This honour is for one and all: the three first prize shall win,
And round about their heads shall do the olive dusky-grey.
A noble horse with trappings dight the first shall bear away;310
A quiver of the Amazons with Thracian arrows stored
The second hath; about it goes a gold belt broidered broad,
With gem-wrought buckle delicate to clasp it at the end.
But gladdened with this Argive helm content the third shall wend."

All said, they take their places due, and when the sign they hear,
Forthwith they leave the bar behind and o'er the course they bear,
Like drift of storm-cloud; on the goal all set their eager eyes:
But far before all shapes of man shows Nisus, and outflies
The very whistling of the winds or lightning on the wing.
Then, though the space be long betwixt, comes Salius following;320
And after Salius again another space is left,
And then Euryalus is third;
And after him is Helymus: but lo, how hard on heel
Diores scuds! foot on his foot doth Helymus nigh feel,
Shoulder on shoulder: yea, and if the course held longer out,
He would slip by him and be first, or leave the thing in doubt.

Now, spent, unto the utmost reach and very end of all
They came, when in the slippery blood doth luckless Nisus fall,
E'en where the ground was all a-slop with bullocks slain that day,
And all the topmost of the grass be-puddled with it lay:330
There, as he went the victor now, exulting, failed his feet
From off the earth, and forth he fell face foremost down to meet
The midst of all the filthy slime blent with the holy gore:
Yet for Euryalus his love forgat he none the more,
For rising from the slippery place in Salius' way he thrust,
Who, rolling over, lay along amid the thickened dust.
Forth flies Euryalus, and flies to fame and foremost place,
His own friend's gift, mid beat of hands and shouts that bear him grace.
Next came in Helymus, and next the palm Diores bore.
But over all the concourse set in hollow dale, and o'er340
The heads of those first father-lords goes Salius' clamouring speech,
Who for his glory reft away by guile doth still beseech.
But safe goodwill and goodly tears Euryalus do bear,
And lovelier seemeth valour set in body wrought so fair.
Him too Diores backeth now, and crieth out on high,
Whose palm of praise and third-won place shall fail and pass him by,
If the first glory once again at Salius' bidding shift.

Then sayeth Father Æneas: "O fellows, every gift
Shall bide unmoved: the palm of praise shall no man now displace.
Yet for my sackless friend's mishap give me some pity's grace."350

He spake, and unto Salius gave a mighty lion's hide,
Getulian born, with weight of hair and golden claws beside:
Then Nisus spake: "If such great gifts are toward for beaten men,
And thou must pity those that fall, what gift is worthy then
Of Nisus? I, who should have gained the very victory's crown,
If me, as Salius, Fate my foe had never overthrown."

And even as he speaks the word he showeth face and limb
Foul with the mud. The kindest lord, the Father, laughed on him,
And bade them bring a buckler forth, wrought of Didymaon,
Spoil of the Greeks, from Neptune's house and holy doors undone;360
And there unto the noble youth he gives that noble thing.
But now, the race all overpassed and all the gift-giving,
Quoth he: "If any valour hath, or heart that may withstand,
Let him come forth to raise his arm with hide-begirded hand."

So saying, for the fight to come he sets forth glories twain;
A steer gilt-horned and garlanded the conquering man should gain,
A sword and noble helm should stay the vanquished in his woe.
No tarrying was there: Dares straight his face to all doth show,
And riseth in his mighty strength amidst the murmur great:
He who alone of all men erst with Paris held debate,370
And he who at the mound wherein that mightiest Hector lay,
Had smitten Butes' body huge, the winner of the day,
Who called him come of Amycus and that Bebrycian land:
But Dares stretched him dying there upon the yellow sand.
Such was the Dares that upreared his head against the fight,
And showed his shoulders' breadth and drave his fists to left and right,
With arms cast forth, as heavy strokes he laid upon the air.
But when they sought a man for him, midst all the concourse there
Was none durst meet him: not a hand the fighting-glove would don:
Wherefore, high-hearted, deeming now the prize from all was won,380
He stood before Æneas' feet nor longer tarrièd,
But with his left hand took the steer about the horn and said:
"O Goddess-born, if no man dares to trust him in the play,
What end shall be of standing here; must I abide all day?
Bid them bring forth the gifts."
Therewith they cried out one and all,
The Dardan folk, to give the gifts that due to him did fall.
But with hard words Acestes now Entellus falls to chide,
As on the bank of grassy green they sat there side by side,
"Entellus, bravest hero once of all men, and for nought,
If thou wilt let them bear away without a battle fought390
Such gifts as these. And where is he, thy master then, that God,
That Eryx, told of oft in vain? where is thy fame sown broad
Through all Trinacria, where the spoils hung up beneath thy roof?"

"Nay," said he, "neither love of fame nor glory holds aloof
Beaten by fear, but cold I grow with eld that holdeth back.
My blood is dull, my might gone dry with all my body's lack.
Ah, had I that which once I had, that which the rascal there
Trusts in with idle triumphing, the days of youth the dear,
Then had I come into the fight by no gift-giving led,
No goodly steer: nought heed I gifts."400
And with the last word said,
His fighting gloves of fearful weight amidst of them he cast,
Wherewith the eager Eryx' hands amid the play had passed
Full oft; with hardened hide of them his arms he used to bind.
Men's hearts were mazed; such seven bull-hides each other in them lined,
So stiff they were with lead sewn in and iron laid thereby;
And chief of all was Dares mazed, and drew back utterly.
But the great-souled Anchises' seed that weight of gauntlets weighed,
And here and there he turned about their mighty folds o'erlaid.
Then drew the elder from his breast words that were like to these:

"Ah, had ye seen the gloves that armed the very Hercules,410
And that sad battle foughten out upon this country shore!
For these are arms indeed that erst thy kinsmen Eryx bore:
Lo, ye may see them even now flecked with the blood and brain.
With these Alcides he withstood; with these I too was fain
Of war, while mightier blood gave might, nor envious eld as yet
On either temple of my head the hoary hairs had set.
But if this Dares out of Troy refuse our weapons still,
And good Æneas doom it so, and so Acestes will,
My fight-lord; make the weapons like: these gloves of Eryx here
I take aback: be not afraid, but doff thy Trojan gear."420

He spake, and from his back he cast his twifold cloak adown,
And naked his most mighty limbs and shoulders huge were shown,
And on the midmost of the sand a giant there he stood.
Wherewith Anchises' seed brought forth gloves even-matched and good,
And so at last with gear alike the arms of each he bound,
Then straightway each one stretched aloft on tip-toe from the ground:
They cast their mighty arms abroad, nor any fear they know,
The while their lofty heads they draw abackward from the blow:
And so they mingle hands with hands and fall to wake the fight.
The one a-trusting in his youth and nimbler feet and light;430
The other's bulk of all avail, but, trembling, ever shrank
His heavy knees, and breathing short for ever shook his flank.
Full many a stroke those mighty men cast each at each in vain;
Thick fall they on the hollow sides; the breasts ring out again
With mighty sound; and eager-swift the hands full often stray
Round ears and temples; crack the jaws beneath that heavy play:
In one set strain, not moving aught, heavy Entellus stands,
By body's sway and watchful eye shunning the dart of hands:
But Dares is as one who brings the gin 'gainst high-built town,
Or round about some mountain-hold the leaguer setteth down:440
Now here now there he falleth on, and putteth art to pain
At every place, and holds them strait with onset all in vain.
Entellus, rising to the work, his right hand now doth show
Upreared; but he, the nimble one, foresaw the falling blow
Above him, and his body swift writhed skew-wise from the fall.
Entellus spends his stroke on air, and, overborne withal,
A heavy thing, falls heavily to earth, a mighty weight:
As whiles a hollow-eaten pine on Erymanthus great,
Or mighty Ida, rooted up, to earthward toppling goes.
Then Teucrian and Trinacrian folk with wondrous longing rose,450
And shouts went skyward: thither first the King Acestes ran,
And pitying his like-aged friend raised up the fallen man;
Who neither slackened by his fall, nor smit by any fear,
Gets back the eagerer to the fight, for anger strength doth stir,
And shame and conscious valour lights his ancient power again.
In headlong flight his fiery wrath drives Dares o'er the plain,
And whiles his right hand showereth strokes, his left hand raineth whiles.
No tarrying and no rest there is; as hail-storm on the tiles
Rattleth, so swift with either hand the eager hero now
Beats on and batters Dares down, and blow is laid on blow.460

But now the Father Æneas no longer might abide
Entellus' bitter rage of soul or lengthening anger's tide,
But laid an end upon the fight therewith, and caught away
Dares foredone, and soothing words in such wise did he say:
"Unhappy man, what madness then hath hold upon thine heart?
Feel'st not another might than man's, and Heaven upon his part?
Yield to the Gods!"
So 'neath his word the battle sank to peace.
But Dares his true fellows took, trailing his feeble knees,
Lolling his head from side to side, the while his sick mouth sent
The clotted blood from out of it wherewith the teeth were blent.470
They lead him to the ships; then, called, they take the helm and sword,
But leave Entellus' bull and palm, the victory's due reward;
Who, high of heart, proud in the beast his conquering hand did earn,
"O Goddess-born," he said, "and ye, O Teucrians, look, and learn
What might was in my body once, ere youth it had to lack,
And what the death whence Dares saved e'en now ye draw aback."

He spake, and at the great bull's head straightway he took his stand,
As there it bode the prize of fight, and drawing back his hand
Rose to the blow, and 'twixt the horns sent forth the hardened glove,
And back upon his very brain the shattered skull he drove.480
Down fell the beast and on the earth lay quivering, outstretched, dead,
While over him from his inmost breast such words Entellus said:
"Eryx, this soul, a better thing, for Dares doomed to die,
I give thee, and victorious here my gloves and craft lay by."

Forth now Æneas biddeth all who have a mind to strive
At speeding of the arrow swift, and gifts thereto doth give,
And with his mighty hand the mast from out Serestus' keel
Uprears; and there a fluttering dove, mark for the flying steel,
Tied to a string he hangeth up athwart the lofty mast.
Then meet the men; a brazen helm catches the lots down cast:490
And, as from out their favouring folk ariseth up the shout,
Hippocoon, son of Hyrtacus, before the rest leaps out;
Then Mnestheus, who was victor erst in ship upon the sea,
Comes after: Mnestheus garlanded with olive greenery.
The third-come was Eurytion, thy brother, O renowned,
O Pandarus, who, bidden erst the peace-troth to confound,
Wert first amid Achæan host to send a wingèd thing.
But last, at bottom of the helm, Acestes' name did cling,
Who had the heart to try the toil amid the youthful rout.

Then with their strength of all avail they bend the bows about500
Each for himself: from quiver then the arrows forth they take:
And first from off the twanging string through heaven there went the wake
Of shaft of young Hyrtacides, and clave the flowing air,
And, flying home, amid the mast that stood before it there
It stuck: the mast shook therewithal; the frighted, timorous bird,
Fluttered her wings; and mighty praise all round about was heard.
Then stood forth Mnestheus keen, and drew his bow unto the head,
Aiming aloft; and shaft and eyes alike therewith he sped;
But, worthy of all pitying, the very bird he missed,
But had the hap to shear the knots and lines of hempen twist510
Whereby, all knitted to her foot, she to the mast was tied:
But flying toward the winds of heaven and mirky mist she hied.
Then swift Eurytion, who for long had held his arrow laid
On ready bow-string, vowed, and called his brother unto aid,
And sighted her all joyful now amidst the void of sky,
And smote her as she clapped her wings 'neath the black cloud on high:
Then dead she fell, and mid the stars of heaven her life she left,
And, falling, brought the shaft aback whereby her heart was cleft.

Acestes now was left alone, foiled of the victory's prize.
No less the father sent his shot aloft unto the skies,520
Fain to set forth his archer-craft and loud-resounding bow.
Then to men's eyes all suddenly a portent there did show,
A mighty sign of things to come, the ending showed how great
When seers, the shakers of men's hearts, sang over it too late.
For, flying through the flowing clouds, the swift reed burned about,
And marked its road with flaming wake, and, eaten up, died out
Mid the thin air: as oft the stars fly loose from heaven's roof,
And run adown the space of sky with hair that flies aloof.
Trinacrian men and Teucrian men, staring aghast they stood,
Praying the Gods: but mightiest Æneas held for good530
That tokening, and Acestes takes as one all glad at heart,
And loadeth him with many gifts, and suchwise speaks his part:

"Take them, O father, for indeed by such a sign I wot
Olympus' King will have thee win all honour without lot.
This gift thou hast, Anchises' self, the ancient, had before,
A bowl all stamped with images, which Cisseus once of yore,
The Thracian, to my father gave, that he might bear the same
A very tokening of his love and memory of his name."

So saying, a garland of green bay he doth his brows about,
And victor over all the men Acestes giveth out:540
Nor did the good Eurytion grudge his honour so preferred,
Though he alone from height of heaven had brought adown the bird:
But he came next in gift-giving who sheared the string, and last
Was he who set his wingèd reed amidmost of the mast.

Now had Æneas called to him, ere yet the match was done,
The child of Epytus, the guard, and fellow of his son,
Beardless Iulus, and so spake into his faithful ear:
"Go thou and bid Ascanius straight, if ready dight with gear
He hath that army of the lads, and fair array of steeds,
To bring unto his grandsire now, himself in warlike weeds,550
That host of his."
The lord meanwhile biddeth all folk begone
Who into the long course had poured, and leave the meadow lone.
Then come the lads: in equal ranks before their fathers' eyes
They shine upon their bitted steeds, and wondering murmurs rise
From men of Troy and Sicily as on their ways they fare.
Due crown of well-ordainèd leaves bindeth their flowing hair,
And each a pair of cornel shafts with iron head doth hold;
And some the polished quiver bear at shoulder: limber gold,
Ringing the neck with twisted stem, high on the breast is shown.
Three companies of horse they are by tale, and up and down560
Three captains ride, and twice six lads each leadeth to the war:
In bands of even tale they shine, and like their leaders are.
Their first array all glad at heart doth little Priam lead,
Who from his grandsire had his name, thy well-renowned seed,
Polites, fated to beget Italian folk: him bore
A Thracian piebald flecked with white, whose feet were white before,
And white withal the crest of him that high aloft he flung.
Next Atys came, from whence the stem of Latin Atii sprung;
Young Atys, whom Iulus young most well-beloved did call:
Iulus last, in goodliness so far excelling all,570
Upon a horse of Sidon came, whom that bright Dido gave
To be a token of her love, her memory to save.
On horses of Acestes old, Trinacrian-nurtured beasts,
The others of the youth are borne.

With praise they greet their fluttering hearts and look on them with joy,
Those Dardan folk, who see in them the ancient eyes of Troy.
But after they had fared on steed the concourse all about
Before the faces of their folk, Epytides did shout
The looked-for sign afar to them, and cracked withal his whip:
Then evenly they fall apart, in threesome order slip580
Their cloven ranks; but, called again, aback upon their way
They turn, and threatening levelled spears against each other lay.
Then they to other onset now and other wheeling take,
In bands opposed, and tanglements of ring on ring they make;
So with their weapons every show of very fight they stir,
And now they bare their backs in flight, and now they turn the spear
In hostile wise; now side by side in plighted peace they meet.
—E'en as they tell of Labyrinth that lies in lofty Crete,
A road with blind walls crossed and crossed, an ever-shifting trap
Of thousand ways, where he who seeks upon no sign may hap,590
But midst of error, blind to seize or follow back, 'tis gone.
Not otherwise Troy's little ones the tangle follow on
At top of speed, and interweave the flight and battle's play;
E'en as the dolphins, swimming swift amid the watery way,
Cleave Libyan or Carpathian sea and sport upon the wave.

This guise of riding, such-like play, his folk Ascanius gave
Once more, when round the Long White Stead the walls of war he drew:
Withal the Ancient Latin Folk he taught the games to do,
Suchwise as he a lad had learned with lads from Troy that came:599
That same the Albans taught their sons; most mighty Rome that same
Took to her thence, and honoured so her sires of yore agone:
Now name of Troy and Trojan host the play and boys have won.

Thus far unto the Holy Sire the games were carried through,
When Fortune turned her faith at last and changed her mind anew:
For while the diverse hallowed games about the tomb they spent,
Saturnian Juno Iris fair from heights of heaven hath sent
Unto the Ilian ships, and breathed fair wind behind her ways,
For sore she brooded, nor had spent her wrath of ancient days.
So now the maid sped swift along her thousand-coloured bow,
And swiftly ran adown the path where none beheld her go.610
And there she saw that gathering great, and swept the strand with eye,
And saw the haven void of folk, the ships unheeded lie.
But far away on lonely beach the Trojan women weep
The lost Anchises; and all they look ever on the deep
Amid their weeping: "Woe are we! what waters yet abide!
What ocean-waste for weary folk!" So one and all they cried,
And all they yearn for city's rest: sea-toil is loathsome grown.

So she, not lacking craft of guile, amidst them lighted down,
When she hath put away from her God's raiment and God's mien,
And but as wife of Doryclus, the Tmarian man, is seen,620
Old Beroë, who once had sons and lordly race and name;
Amid the Dardan mother-folk such wise the Goddess came:

"O wretched ones!" she said, "O ye whom armed Achæan hand
Dragged not to death before the walls that stayed your fatherland!
Unhappy folk! and why hath Fate held back your doom till now?
The seventh year is on the turn since Troy-town's overthrow;
And we all seas the while, all lands, all rocks and skies that hate
The name of guest, have wandered o'er, and through the sea o'ergreat
Still chase that fleeing Italy mid wallowing waters tossed.
Lo, here is Eryx' brother-land; Acestes is our host;630
What banneth us to found our walls and lawful cities gain?
O Fatherland! O House-Gods snatched from midst the foe in vain!
Shall no walls more be called of Troy? Shall I see never more
Xanthus or Simoïs, like the streams where Hector dwelt of yore?
Come on, and those unhappy ships burn up with aid of me;
For e'en now mid the dreams of sleep Cassandra did I see,
Who gave me burning brand, and said, 'Here seek your Troy anew:
This is the house that ye shall have.'—And now is time to do!
No tarrying with such tokens toward! Lo, altars four are here
Of Neptune: very God for us heart and the fire doth bear!"640

So saying, first she caught upon the fiery bane, and raised
Her hand aloft, and mightily she whirled it as it blazed
And cast it: but the Ilian wives, their straining hearts are torn,
Their souls bewildered: one of them, yea, and their eldest-born,
Pyrgo, the queenly fosterer of many a Priam's son,
Cried: "Mothers, nay no Beroë, nay no Rhoeteian one,
The wife of Doryclus is this: lo, Godhead's beauty there!
Behold the gleaming of her eyes, note how she breathes the air;
Note ye her countenance and voice, the gait wherewith she goes.
Yea, I myself left Beroë e'en now amidst her woes;650
Sick, sad at heart that she alone must fail from such a deed,
Nor bear unto Anchises' ghost his glory's righteous meed."

Such were the words she spake to them.
But now those mothers, at the first doubtful, with evil eyes
Gazed on the ships awhile between unhappy craving stayed
For land they stood on, and the thought of land that Fortune bade:
When lo! with even spread of wings the Goddess rose to heaven,
And in her flight the cloudy lift with mighty bow was riven.
Then, wildered by such tokens dread, pricked on by maddened hearts,
Shrieking they snatch the hearthstone's fire and brand from inner parts;
While some, they strip the altars there, and flaming leaf and bough661
Cast forth: and Vulcan, let aloose, is swiftly raging now
Along the thwarts, along the oars, and stems of painted fir.