Phæacia’s heights from view we hide,
And coast along Epirot lands:
Then in Chaonia’s harbour ride
Nigh where Buthrotum’s city stands.
A Grecian crown on Trojan brows:
They tell me Helenus is king
Of Pyrrhus’ realm with Pyrrhus’ spouse,
And sad Andromache restored
Once more to a compatriot lord.
At once I burn with strong desire
To greet them, and the tale enquire;
So from the port I take my way,
And leave my vessels in the bay.
Andromache, it chanced to fall,
There in a grove without the wall
Beside a mimic Simois’ wave
Was making funeral festival
At Hector’s counterfeited grave,
Raised by her hands, a grassy heap,
With altars twain, whereat to weep.
When as she saw my near advance
And marked our Trojan cognizance,
A while distracted and amazed
She stood, and stiffened as she gazed:
The life-blood leaves her cheeks:
She faints: at last from earth upraised,
In faltering tones she speaks:
‘Real, is it real, the face I view,
A harbinger of tidings true?
Say, are you living? or if dead,
Then where is Hector?’ so she said,
And tears in copious torrents shed,
And filled the air with cries:
Thus, as her tide of passion flows,
Few broken words I interpose:
‘Ay, I am living, living still
Through all extremity of ill:
No dream your sense belies.
But say, alas! what new estate
Receives you, fallen from such a mate?
What fortune matches the degree
Of Hector’s own Andromache?
Still wear you Pyrrhus’ nuptial yoke?’
She dropped her voice, and softly spoke
With lowly downcast eyes:
‘O happy more than all beside,
The Priameian maid,
Who for her dead foe’s pleasure died
Beneath her city’s shade,
Not drawn for servitude, nor led
A captive to a conqueror’s bed,
While we, our country laid in dust,
To exile dragged o’er many a wave,
Have stooped to Pyrrhus’ haughty lust,
His infant’s mother and his slave!
A Spartan marriage tempts the youth:
He plights Hermione his truth;
Cast off, to Helenus I fall,
So wills our master, thrall to thrall.
But soon Orestes, mad with crime,
And wroth to lose his promised bride,
Smote Pyrrhus in unguarded time,
And at the altar-fire he died.
On Helenus, the tyrant slain,
Devolves a portion of his reign:
Who calls the realm beneath his hand
From Chaon’s name Chaonian land,
And crowns the hill, in sign of power,
With Pergamus, our Dardan tower.
But you—what destiny from heaven,
What stress of wind your bark has driven
Unknowing on our coast?
And lives he yet, whom once at Troy—
Ascanius? dwells there in the boy
Grief for his mother lost?
Feels he the hereditary flame
His growing spirit fire
At Hector’s and Æneas’ name,
His uncle and his sire?’
So poured she her impassioned wail,
Still weeping on without avail,
When girt with royal retinue,
King Helenus appears in view,
Acknowledges his friends of Troy,
And leads us to his home with joy,
And as our fainting hearts he cheers,
With words of welcome mixes tears.
I see a mimic Trojan state,
A Pergamus that apes the great,
A dried-up Xanthus’ channel trace,
And other Scæan gates embrace.
Nor less my Trojan comrades share
The monarch’s hospitable care:
In spacious cloisters entertained
’Neath the hall’s roof the wine they drained,
And goblets for libation hold,
While the rich banquet gleams in gold.
Invites the fleet and swells the sail:
Bent on departure, I accost
With words like these our sacred host:
‘True son of Troy, whose heaven-taught skill
Perceives the signs of Phœbus’ will,
The tripods, and the Clarian bays,
The secret of night’s starry maze,
And birds, their voices and their ways,
Speak—for the accordant sense of Heaven
Fair presage for my course has given;
Each God has charged me to explore
In far-off seas Italia’s shore;
Celæno’s harpy voice alone
Makes prodigies and vengeance known
And famine’s foulest horror—say,
What perils first beset my way?
What counsel following may I cope
With toils so great in manful hope?’
Then Helenus with slaughtered kine
Appeases first the powers divine,
The fillets from his head
Unbinds, and to Apollo’s fane
Conducts me, while in every vein
I feel the presence dread:
And thus from his prophetic tongue
The message of the future rung:
‘O Goddess-born!—for broad and clear
The augury of your proud career,
So lie the lots in Jove’s dark urn:
So the dread Three their spindles turn—
Now listen, while, to give you ease
In wandering o’er yon stranger seas
And help you to the port you seek,
A fragment of your fate I speak:
Unknown to Helenus the rest,
Or Juno locks it in his breast.
Learn first that Italy, which seems
So near, you grasp it in your dreams,
And think to anchor in its bay,
As though within your ken it lay,
A pathless path o’er leagues of foam
Divides from this our distant home.
First in Trinacrian water plied,
Your oar must tug against the tide,
First must your weary galleys keep
Long vigils on the Ausonian deep,
Must pass the lurid lake of ghosts
And skirt Ææan Circe’s coasts,
Ere, free from danger, you may found
Your city on the destined ground.
Now hear the tokens I impart,
And store them up within your heart.
When, as you roam in anxious mood
Beside a still sequestered flood,
’Neath fringing holms before your eye
A thirty-farrowed sow shall lie,
Her white length stretching o’er the ground,
Her young, as white, her teats around:
That spot shall see the promised town,
Shall see Troy’s heavy load
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