Aeneid

Virgil

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

  1. Now felt the Queen the sharp, slow-gathering pangs
  2. of love; and out of every pulsing vein
  3. nourished the wound and fed its viewless fire.
  4. Her hero's virtues and his lordly line
  5. keep calling to her soul; his words, his glance,
  6. cling to her heart like lingering, barbed steel,
  7. and rest and peace from her vexed body fly.
  8. A new day's dawn with Phoebus' lamp divine
  9. lit up all lands, and from the vaulted heaven
  10. Aurora had dispelled the dark and dew;
  11. when thus unto the ever-answering heart
  12. of her dear sister spoke the stricken Queen:
  13. “Anna, my sister, what disturbing dreams
  14. perplex me and alarm? What guest is this
  15. new-welcomed to our house? How proud his mien!
  16. What dauntless courage and exploits of war!
  17. Sooth, I receive it for no idle tale
  18. that of the gods he sprang. 'T is cowardice
  19. betrays the base-born soul. Ah me! How fate
  20. has smitten him with storms! What dire extremes
  21. of war and horror in his tale he told!
  22. O, were it not immutably resolved
  23. in my fixed heart, that to no shape of man
  24. I would be wed again (since my first love
  25. left me by death abandoned and betrayed);
  26. loathed I not so the marriage torch and train,
  27. I could—who knows?—to this one weakness yield.
  28. Anna, I hide it not! But since the doom
  29. of my ill-starred Sichaeus, when our shrines
  30. were by a brother's murder dabbled o'er,
  31. this man alone has moved me; he alone
  32. has shaken my weak will. I seem to feel
  33. the motions of love's lost, familiar fire.
  34. But may the earth gape open where I tread,
  35. and may almighty Jove with thunder-scourge
  36. hurl me to Erebus' abysmal shade,
  37. to pallid ghosts and midnight fathomless,
  38. before, O Chastity! I shall offend
  39. thy holy power, or cast thy bonds away!
  40. He who first mingled his dear life with mine
  41. took with him all my heart. 'T is his alone —
  42. o, let it rest beside him in the grave!”
  43. She spoke: the bursting tears her breast o'erflowed.