Aeneid

Virgil

Vergil. The Aeneid of Virgil. Williams, Theodore, C, translator. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1910.

  1. What voice divine
  2. such horror can make known? What song declare
  3. the bloodshed manifold, the princes slain,
  4. or flying o'er the field from Turnus' blade,
  5. or from the Trojan King? Did Jove ordain
  6. so vast a shock of arms should interpose
  7. 'twixt nations destined to perpetual bond?
  8. Aeneas met the Rutule Sucro—thus
  9. staying the Trojan charge—and with swift blow
  10. struck at him sidewise, where the way of death
  11. is quickest, cleaving ribs and rounded side
  12. with reeking sword. Turnus met Amycus,
  13. unhorsed him, though himself afoot, and slew
  14. Diores, his fair brother (one was pierced
  15. fronting the spear, the other felled to earth
  16. by strike of sword), and both their severed heads
  17. he hung all dripping to his chariot's rim.
  18. But Talon, Tanais, and Cethegus brave,
  19. three in one onset, unto death went down
  20. at great Aeneas' hand; and he dispatched
  21. ill-starred Onites of Echion's line,
  22. fair Peridia's child. Then Turnus slew
  23. two Lycian brothers unto Phoebus dear,
  24. and young Menoetes, an Arcadian,
  25. who hated war (though vainly) when he plied
  26. his native fisher-craft in Lerna's streams,
  27. where from his mean abode he ne'er went forth
  28. to wait at great men's doors, but with his sire
  29. reaped the scant harvest of a rented glebe.
  30. as from two sides two conflagrations sweep
  31. dry woodlands or full copse of crackling bay,
  32. or as, swift-leaping from the mountain-vales,
  33. two flooded, foaming rivers seaward roar,
  34. each on its path of death, not less uproused,
  35. speed Turnus and Aeneas o'er the field;
  36. now storms their martial rage; now fiercely swells
  37. either indomitable heart; and now
  38. each hero's full strength to the slaughter moves.