And partners in a common woe,
Be knit together, heart and soul,
In one fair Troy, one patriot whole:
Such be the legacy we leave,
Such bond for sons unborn to weave!’
Beneath Ceraunian steeps,
Where lies the way to Italy,
The shortest o’er the deeps.
The sun comes down, and every height
Is darkened by advancing night.
On earth we stretch us by the tide,
His several oar at each one’s side,
Then take our cheer: and slumberous dews
Descend upon our weary crews.
Night had not climbed heaven’s topmost steep,
When Palinurus starts from sleep,
Observes each wind with anxious care,
And questions all that stirs in air:
Each star that roams the ethereal plain
His eye has noted and explored,
Arcturus, Hyads, and the Wain,
And bright Orion’s golden sword:
He sees all calm, without a cloud;
Then from the stern he signals loud.
We shift our camp, attempt the way,
And to the breeze our vans display.
Now the red morning from the sky
Had chased the starry host,
When from afar dim hills we spy,
Italia’s lowly coast:
‘Italia!’ cries Achates first:
‘Italia!’ peals the joyous burst
Of welcome from each crew:
My sire Anchises wreathes with flowers
A brimming cup, and calls the powers,
Full on the stern in view:
‘Gods of the sea, the land, the air,
Waft our smooth course with breezes fair.’
The winds blow freshly o’er the sky:
The port grows wider to the eye,
And on the cliff in prospect plain
Is seen Minerva’s hallowed fane.
My comrades furl their sails, and stand,
Still rowing onward, for the land.
The port is hollowed in a bay,
Concealed by crags that, lashed with spray,
Confront the billows’ roar:
On each side runs a rocky line
With arm extended, and the shrine
Moves backward from the shore.
First token of our fate, we see
Four snow-white horses pasturing free:
‘War is thy portance, stranger soil,
War,’ cries my sire, ‘the charger’s toil,
’Tis war these grazers threat:
Yet may e’en such one day submit
To bear the yoke and champ the bit:
Ay, peace may bless us yet.’
Then martial Pallas we adore,
The first who welcomes us to shore,
And standing at the altars spread
A Phrygian covering o’er our head:
And mindful of the great command
By Helenus expressly given,
We burn the oblations of our hand
To Argive Juno, queen of heaven.
We turn the vessels’ head,
And leave the Grecian colony,
The land of doubt and dread.
Thy bay, Tarentum, next we view,
Herculean town, if fame say true:
Against it on the steep is seen
Lacinium’s venerable queen,
And lofty Caulon’s towers appear,
And Scylaceum, sailors’ fear.
Then distant darkening on the sky
Trinacrian Ætna meets the eye:
We hear the sea’s stupendous roar
And broken voices on the shore:
The waters from the deep upboil,
And surf and sand the depth turmoil.
‘Charybdis!’ cries my sire, ‘behold
The rocks that Helenus foretold!
Haste, haste, my friends, together ply
Your oars, and from destruction fly.’
So said, so done: each heeds and hears:
First Palinure to southward steers,
And southward, southward all the rest
With sail and oar their flight addressed.
Now to the sky mounts up the ship,
Now to the very shades we dip.
Thrice in the depth we feel the shock
Of billows thundering on the rock,
Thrice see the spray upheaved in mist,
And dewy stars by foam-drops kissed.
At last, bereft of wind and sun,
Upon the Cyclops’ shore we run.
Its compass unconfined and vast:
But Ætna with her voice of fear
In weltering chaos thunders near.
Now pitchy clouds she belches forth
Of cinders red and vapour swarth,
And from her caverns lifts on high
Live balls of flame that lick the sky:
Now with more dire convulsion flings
Disploded rocks, her heart’s rent strings,
And lava torrents hurls to day,
A burning gulf of fiery spray.
’Tis said Enceladus’ huge frame,
Heart-stricken by the avenging flame,
Is prisoned here, and underneath
Gasps through each vent his sulphurous breath:
And still as his tired side shifts round
Trinacria echoes to the sound
Through all its length, while clouds of smoke
The living soul of ether choke.
All night, by forest branches screened,
We writhe as ’neath some torturing fiend,
Nor know the horror’s cause:
For stars were none, nor welkin bright
With heavenly fires, but blank black night
The stormy moon withdraws.
Had drawn from heaven the veil of dew:
When from the wood, all ghastly wan,
A stranger form, resembling man,
Comes running forth, and takes its way
With suppliant gesture to the bay.
We turn, and look on limbs besmeared
With direst filth, a length of beard,
A dress with thorns held tight:
In all beside, a Greek his style,
Who in his country’s arms erewhile
Had sailed at Troy to fight.
Soon as our Dardan arms he saw,
Brief space he stood in wildering awe
And checked his speed: then toward the shore
With cries and weeping onward bore:
‘By heaven and heaven’s blest powers, I pray,
And life’s pure breath, this light of day,
Receive me, Trojans: o’er the seas
Transport me wheresoe’er you please.
I ask no further. Ay, ’tis true,
I once was of the Danaan crew,
And levied war on Troy:
If all too deep that
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