Aeneid

Virgil

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

  1. After these things Aeneas was aware
  2. Of solemn groves in one deep, distant vale,
  3. Where trees were whispering, and forever flowed
  4. The river Lethe, through its land of calm.
  5. Nations unnumbered roved and haunted there:
  6. As when, upon a windless summer morn,
  7. The bees afield among the rainbow flowers
  8. Alight and sip, or round the lilies pure
  9. Pour forth in busy swarm, while far diffused
  10. Their murmured songs from all the meadows rise.
  11. Aeneas in amaze the wonder views,
  12. And fearfully inquires of whence and why;
  13. What yonder rivers be; what people press,
  14. Line after line, on those dim shores along.
  15. Said Sire Anchises: “Yonder thronging souls
  16. To reincarnate shape predestined move.
  17. Here, at the river Lethe's wave, they quaff
  18. Care-quelling floods, and long oblivion.
  19. Of these I shall discourse, and to thy soul
  20. Make visible the number and array
  21. Of my posterity; so shall thy heart
  22. In Italy, thy new-found home, rejoice.”
  23. “0 father,” said Aeneas, “must I deem
  24. That from this region souls exalted rise
  25. To upper air, and shall once more return
  26. To cumbering flesh? 0, wherefore do they feel,
  27. Unhappy ones, such fatal lust to live?”
  28. “I speak, my son, nor make thee longer doubt,”
  29. Anchises said, and thus the truth set forth,
  30. In ordered words from point to point unfolding: