Aeneid

Virgil

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

Then wretched Dido, by her doom appalled,
asks only death. It wearies her to see
the sun in heaven. Yet that she might hold fast
her dread resolve to quit the light of day,
behold, when on an incense-breathing shrine
her offering was laid—O fearful tale!—
the pure libation blackened, and the wine
flowed like polluting gore. She told the sight
to none, not even to her sister's ear.
A second sign was given: for in her house
a marble altar to her husband's shade,
with garlands bright and snowy fleeces dressed,
had fervent worship; here strange cries were heard
as if her dead spouse called while midnight reigned,
and round her towers its inhuman song
the lone owl sang, complaining o'er and o'er
with lamentation and long shriek of woe.
Forgotten oracles by wizards told
whisper old omens dire. In dreams she feels
cruel Aeneas goad her madness on,
and ever seems she, friendless and alone,
some lengthening path to travel, or to seek
her Tyrians through wide wastes of barren lands.
Thus frantic Pentheus flees the stern array
of the Eumenides, and thinks to see
two noonday lights blaze oer his doubled Thebes;
or murdered Agamemnon's haunted son,
Orestes, flees his mother's phantom scourge
of flames and serpents foul, while at his door
avenging horrors wait. Now sorrow-crazed
and by her grief undone, resolved on death,
the manner and the time her secret soul
prepares, and, speaking to her sister sad,
she masks in cheerful calm her fatal will:
“I know a way—O, wish thy sister joy!—
to bring him back to Iove, or set me free.
On Ocean's bound and next the setting sun
lies the last Aethiop land, where Atlas tall
lifts on his shoulder the wide wheel of heaven,
studded with burning stars. From thence is come
a witch, a priestess, a Numidian crone,
who guards the shrine of the Hesperides
and feeds the dragon; she protects the fruit
of that enchanting tree, and scatters there
her slumb'rous poppies mixed with honey-dew.
Her spells and magic promise to set free
what hearts she will, or visit cruel woes
on men afar. She stops the downward flow
of rivers, and turns back the rolling stars;
on midnight ghosts she calls: her vot'ries hear
earth bellowing loud below, while from the hills
the ash-trees travel down. But, sister mine,
thou knowest, and the gods their witness give,
how little mind have I to don the garb
of sorcery. Depart in secret, thou,
and bid them build a lofty funeral pyre
inside our palalce-wall, and heap thereon
the hero's arms, which that blasphemer hung
within my chamber; every relic bring,
and chiefly that ill-omened nuptial bed,
my death and ruin! For I must blot out
all sight and token of this husband vile.
'T is what the witch commands.” She spoke no more,
and pallid was her brow. Yet Anna's mind
knew not what web of death her sister wove
by these strange rites, nor what such frenzy dares;
nor feared she worse than when Sichaeus died,
but tried her forth the errand to fulfil.

Soon as the funeral pyre was builded high
in a sequestered garden, Iooming huge
with boughs of pine and faggots of cleft oak,
the queen herself enwreathed it with sad flowers
and boughs of mournful shade; and crowning all
she laid on nuptial bed the robes and sword
by him abandoned; and stretched out thereon
a mock Aeneas;—but her doom she knew.
Altars were there; and with loose locks unbound
the priestess with a voice of thunder called
three hundred gods, Hell, Chaos, the three shapes
of triple Hecate, the faces three
of virgin Dian. She aspersed a stream
from dark Avernus drawn, she said; soft herbs
were cut by moonlight with a blade of bronze,
oozing black poison-sap; and she had plucked
that philter from the forehead of new foal
before its dam devours. Dido herself,
sprinkling the salt meal, at the altar stands;
one foot unsandalled, and with cincture free,
on all the gods and fate-instructed stars,
foreseeing death, she calls. But if there be
some just and not oblivious power on high,
who heeds when lovers plight unequal vow,
to that god first her supplications rise.