From old Acestes’ stalls supplied.
The Dardanids with mingling cheers
Relieve the young aspirants’ fears,
And gaze delighted, as they trace
A parent’s mien in each fair face.
Beneath their kinsfolk’s eyes had past,
Before the assembled crowd,
Epytides shrills forth from far
His signal-shout, as if for war,
And cracks his whip aloud.
In equal parts the bands divide,
And gallop off on either side:
Then wheeling round in full career,
Charge at a call with levelled spear.
Again, again, they come and go
Through adverse spaces to and fro;
Circles in circles interlock,
And, sheathed in arms, the gazers mock
With mimicry of battle-shock.
And now they turn their backs in flight,
Now put their spears in rest,
And now in amity unite,
And ride the field abreast.
E’en as of old the Cretan maze
With blind blank walls its secret hid,
A tangle of a thousand ways,
Which whoso sought by signs to thrid
Went wandering, baffled and involved,
Through paths returnless and unsolved;
Such tangle make the youths of Troy
As o’er the champaign they deploy,
And deftly weave in sportive play
A mingled web of fight and fray,
As dolphins at their sport with ease
The expanse of ocean sweep
’Twixt Libyan and Carpathian seas,
And gambol o’er the deep.
This pageantry of mimic strife
Ascanius called again to life,
What time with wall and rampart strong
He girdled Alba, named the Long,
And to the elder Latins showed
The celebration and the mode
Which erst he practised when a boy,
And, ’neath his lead, the youth of Troy.
Young Alba learned the lesson set:
From Alba queenly Rome
Received the lore, and honours yet
The custom of her home,
And Troy’s hereditary name
Still marks the players and the game.
To blest Anchises’ hallowed shade.
Now Fortune first with wayward guile
Changed for a frown her former smile.
Fell Juno, while before the mound
The games perform their festal round,
Despatches Iris from the sky
And gives her wings of wind to fly,
Deep plotting ill, her ancient pride
Yet festering and unpacified.
Adown her bow of myriad dyes,
Unseen of all, the maiden hies:
The mighty concourse she surveys,
Then turns her to the sea:
A port forsaken meets her gaze,
A fleet from tendence free.
But on a sheltered beach alone
The dames of Troy are making moan
For their lost sire, and as they weep
Look wistful, woful o’er the deep.
O weary, weary length of foam!
O watery waste whereon to roam!
So, one and all, they cry:
A settled city they implore:
’Twere pain and heaviness once more
The ocean’s toils to try.
So now, not ignorant of harm,
The Goddess veils each heavenly charm,
And sudden stands before their eyes
In Beroe’s simulated guise,
Beroe, Doryclus’ aged dame,
Who once had children, place and name:
And thus transfigured she proclaims
Her presence to the assembled dames:
‘O wretches, whom in Ilium’s day
The Argive conqueror spared to slay!
O race long exercised in ill!
For what extreme has Fortune’s will
Preserved you living, suffering still?
Now, since our country was no more,
Seven summers nigh have flown,
And we, still tossing ocean o’er,
’Mid reefs of cold bare stone,
O’erarched by alien stars above,
All homeless and unfriended rove,
While through the billows we pursue
Italia, flying from the view,
And down the tides are blown.
Lo, here is Eryx’ brother coast,
Acestes too, our kingly host:
Why make not here our home, and bless
With city walls the cityless?
O country! O ye home-god powers
Snatched from the foe in vain!
Shall never town of Troy be ours
In all the world again?
Xanthus and Simois’, Hector’s streams,
Shall I behold them but in dreams?
Come, share my counsel, and conspire
To wrap these ill- starred ships in fire.
E’en as I slept last night, methought
New-lighted brands Cassandra brought,
And ‘Here,’ she cried, ‘conclude your quest:
Here find your Troy, your home of rest.’
This hour the deed demands.
Shall man’s supineness mock the skies?
See, altars four to Neptune rise:
The God, the God himself supplies
The fury and the brands.’
Waved it with backdrawn arm, and sped.
With kindling hearts and senses dazed
The mothers of Dardania gazed.
Then one, in reverend years the first,
Pyrgo, who Priam’s sons had nurst:
‘No Beroe, matrons, have you here:
Not this Doryclus’ wife:
See, breathing in her face appear
Signs of celestial life:
Observe her eyes, how bright they shine:
Mien, accent, walk, are all divine.
Beroe herself I left but now
Sick and outworn, with clouded brow,
That she alone should fail to pay
Due reverence to Anchises’ day.
And scan the ships with eyes malign,
Divided ’twixt their present land
And that which beckons o’er the brine,
When lo! her wings the Goddess spread,
And skyward on her rainbow fled.
Then, all as one to madness driven
By portents manifest from heaven,
A shout of loud acclaim they
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