With swords the barbarous natives set
On my poor life, my gear to touch.
Now o’er the ocean am I blown,
Or tossed on shore from stone to stone.
O, by the genial light of day,
By those soft airs on earth that play,
By your loved sire I make my prayer,
By the sweet promise of your heir,
Respect our friendship: give relief
From these my ills, unconquered chief:
And either heap, as well you can,
Some earth upon a wretched man—
’Twill cost you but to measure back
To Velia’s port your watery track—
Or if perchance some way be known,
Some path by your blest mother shown,
For not unhelped of heaven, I trow,
O’er those dread floods you hope to go,
Vouchsafe the pledge my misery craves,
And take me with you o’er the waves,
That so in resting-place of peace
My wandering life at length may cease.’
His piteous plaint was scarcely done
When thus the prophetess begun:
‘Whence, Palinure, this wild desire?
What, still unburied, you aspire
To see the stream that Furies guard,
And tread, unbid, the bank’s pale sward?
No longer dream that human prayer
The will of fate can overbear.
Yet take and in your memory store
This cordial for your sorrow sore.
For know, that cruel countryside,
Alarmed by portents far and wide,
Shall lay your spirit, raise a mound,
And send down offerings underground:
And all the coast, while time endures,
Shall link its name with Palinure’s.’
He hears, and feels his grief no more,
But glories in the namesake shore.
And near the stream of sulphurous flow.
Whom when the gloomy boatman saw
Still nigher through the forest draw
And touch the bank, with warning tone
He hails the visitants unknown:
‘Whoe’er you are that sword in hand
Our Stygian flood approach,
Your errand speak from where you stand,
Nor further dare encroach.
These climes the spectres hold of right,
The home of Sleep and slumberous Night;
My laws forbid me to convey
Substantial forms of breathing clay.
’Twas no good hour that made me take
Alcides o’er the nether lake,
Nor found I more auspicious freight
In Theseus and his daring mate;
Yet all were Heaven’s undoubted heirs,
And prowess more than man’s was theirs.
That from our monarch’s footstool dragged
The infernal watchdog, bound and gagged:
These strove to force from Pluto’s side
Our mistress, his imperial bride.’
Then briefly thus the Amphrysian seer:
‘No lurking stratagems are here;
Dismiss your qualms: the sword we draw
Imports no breach of Stygian law:
Still let your porter from his den
Scare bloodless shades that once were men
With baying loud and deep:
Let virtuous Proserpine maintain
Her uncle’s bed untouched by stain,
And still his threshold keep.
’Tis Troy’s Æneas, brave and good,
To see his sire would cross the flood.
If nought it soften you to see
Such pure heroic piety,
This branch at least’—and here she showed
The branch within her raiment stowed—
‘You needs must own.’ At once the swell
Of anger in his bosom fell.
He answers not, but eyes the sheen
Of the blest bough, so long unseen,
Turns round the vessel, dark as ink,
And brings it to the river’s brink;
Then bids the shadowy spectres flit
That up and down the benches sit,
Frees from its load the bark’s deep womb,
And gives the great Æneas room.
Groans the strained craft of cobbled skin,
And through rent seams the ooze drinks in.
At length wise seer and hero brave
Are safely ferried o’er the wave,
And landed on the further bank,
’Mid formless slime and marshweed dank.
Makes all the region ring,
Stretched out along the cavern dark
That fronts their entering.
The seer perceived his monstrous head
All bristling o’er with snakes uproused,
And toward him flings a sop of bread
With poppy-seed and honey drowsed.
He with his triple jaws dispread
Snaps up the morsel as it falls,
Relaxes his huge frame as dead,
And o’er the cave extended sprawls.
The sentry thus in slumber drowned,
Æneas takes the vacant ground,
And quickly passes from the side
Of the irremeable tide.
And wailing great and sore,
The souls of infants uttering cries
At ingress of the door,
Whom, portionless of life’s sweet bliss,
From mother’s breast untimely torn,
The black day hurried to the abyss
And plunged in darkness soon as born.
Next those are placed whom slander’s breath
By false arraignment did to death.
Nor lacks e’en here the law’s appeal,
Nor sits no judge the lots to deal.
Sage Minos shakes the impartial urn,
And calls a court of those below,
The life of each intent to learn,
And what the cause that wrought them woe.
Next comes their portion in the gloom
Who guiltless sent themselves to doom,
And all for loathing of the day
In madness threw their lives away:
How gladly now in upper air
Contempt and beggary would they bear,
And labour’s sorest pain!
Fate bars the way: around their keep
The slow unlovely waters creep
And bind with ninefold chain.
Here those whose being tyrant love
With slow consumption has devoured
Dwell in secluded paths, embowered
By shade of myrtle grove.
Not e’en in death may they forget
Their pleasing pain, their fond regret.
Phædra and
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