This to a tyrant master sold
His native land for cursed gold,
Made laws for lucre and unmade:
That dared his daughter’s bed to climb:
All, all essayed some monstrous crime,
And perfected the crime essayed.
No, had I e’en a hundred tongues,
A hundred mouths, and iron lungs,
Those types of guilt I could not show,
Nor tell the forms of penal woe.’
‘Now to the task for which we came:
Come, make we speed,’ she cries:
‘I see the work of Cyclop race:
The archway fronts us, face to face,
Where custom wills that we should place
Our precious golden prize.’
She ended: side by side they pace
Along the region drear,
Pass swiftly o’er the mediate space,
And to the gate draw near.
Æneas takes the entrance-way,
Grasps eagerly the lustral spray,
With pure dew sprinkles limbs and brow,
And on the door sets up the bough.
They reach the realms of tranquil bliss,
Green spaces, folded in with trees,
A paradise of pleasances.
Around the champaign mantles bright
The fulness of purpureal light;
Another sun and stars they know,
That shine like ours, but shine below.
In wrestling and palæstral games,
Strive on the grassy sward, or stand
Contending on the yellow sand:
Some ply the dance with eager feet
And chant responsive to its beat.
The priest of Thrace in loose attire
Makes music on his seven-stringed lyre;
The sweet notes ’neath his fingers trill,
Or tremble ’neath his ivory quill.
Here dwell the chiefs from Teucer sprung,
Brave heroes, born when earth was young,
Ilus, Assaracus, and he
Who gave his name to Dardany.
Marvelling, Æneas sees from far
The ghostly arms, the shadowy car.
Their spears are planted in the mead:
Free o’er the plain their horses feed:
Whate’er the living found of charms
In chariot and refulgent arms,
Whate’er their care to tend and groom
Their glossy steeds, outlives the tomb.
Others along the sward he sees
Reclined, and feasting at their ease,
With chanted Pæans, blessed souls,
Amid a fragrant bay-tree grove,
Whence rising in the world above
Eridanus ’twixt bowering-trees
His breadth of water rolls.
Who fighting for their country bled;
Priests, who while earthly life remained
Preserved that life unsoiled, unstained;
Blest bards, transparent souls and clear,
Whose song was worthy Phœbus’ ear;
Inventors, who by arts refined
The common life of human kind,
With all who grateful memory won
By services to others done:
A goodly brotherhood, bedight
With coronals of virgin white.
There as they stream along the plain
The Sibyl thus accosts the train,
Musæus o’er the rest, for he
Stands midmost in that company,
His stately head and shoulders tall
O’ertopping and admired of all:
‘Say, happy souls, and thou, blest seer,
In what retreat Anchises bides:
To look on him we journey here,
Across the dread Avernian tides.’
And answer to her quest in brief
Thus made the venerable chief;
‘No several home has each assigned;
We dwell where forest pathways wind,
Haunt velvet banks ’neath shady treen,
And meads with rivulets fresh and green.
But climb with me this ridgy hill,
You path shall take you where you will.’
He said, and led the way, and showed
The fields of dazzling light:
They gladly choose the downward road,
And issue from the height.
Was calmly scanning at his will
The souls unborn now prisoned there,
One day to pass to upper air;
There as he stood, his wistful eye
Marked all his future progeny,
Their fortunes and their fates assigned,
The shape, the mien, the hand, the mind.
Soon as along the green he spied
Æneas hastening to his side,
With eager act both hands he spread,
And bathed his cheeks with tears, and said:
‘At last! and are you come at last?
Has filial tenderness o’erpast
Hard toil and peril sore?
And may I hear that well-known tone,
And speak in accents of my own,
And see that face once more?
Ah yes! I knew the hour would come:
I pondered o’er the days’ long sum,
Till anxious care the future knew:
And now completion proves it true.
What lands, what oceans have you crossed!
By what a sea of perils tossed!
How oft I feared the fatal charm
Of Libya’s realm might work you harm!’
But he: ‘Your shade, your mournful shade,
Appearing oft, my purpose swayed
To visit this far place:
My ships are moored by Tyrrhene brine:
O father, link your hand with mine,
Nor fly your son’s embrace!’
He said, and sorrow, as he spoke,
In torrents from his eyelids broke.
Thrice strove the son his sire to clasp;
Thrice the vain phantom mocked his grasp,
No vision of the drowsy night,
No airy current, half so light.
A sheltered forest sees,
Deep woodlands, where the evening gale
Goes whispering through the trees,
And Lethe river, which flows by
Those dwellings of tranquillity.
Nations and tribes, in
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