The Trojans take their homeward ways,
And, mounted as they ride, report
A friendly welcome from the court.
The consort of the almighty King,
O’er far Pachynus as she flies,
Looks down in prospect from the skies:
She sees them in their hour of joy,
Æneas and the crews of Troy:
Already at their walls they toil,
And trust them to the friendly soil,
And leave the fleet behind:
She halts, by keenest anguish stung,
Shakes her dark brows, and thus gives tongue
To her infuriate mind:
‘O thrice abhorred, accursed brood!
O Phrygian fates, with mine at feud!
And fell they on Sigean plain
Those all innumerable slain?
And were the captives truly ta’en,
And were the bondmen bound?
The flame that fell on Ilium’s tower,
Say, could it Ilium’s sons devour?
Through circling fires and steely shower
Their passage have they found.
Ay, sooth, my arts have spent their strength;
My hate, full gorged, has slept at length—
I, who could hound them o’er the foam
When tossed and shaken from their home:
On every sea, ’neath every sky,
Where’er they turned them, there was I.
The armouries of air and main
Were loosed on Troy, and loosed in vain.
What vantaged me those powers of hurt,
Charybdis, Scylla, and the Syrt?
In Tiber’s port they ride at ease
And laugh at Juno and her seas.
Yet Mars could sweep from earth’s wide face
All vestige of the Lapith race:
Old Calydon the eternal Sire
Surrendered to Diana’s ire:
What sin so grievous had they done,
The Lapith race or Calydon?
But I, the Thunderer’s awful bride,
Who left, poor wretch, no art untried,
Who dared a thousand arms to wield,
Must yield, and to Æneas yield.
If strength like mine be yet too weak,
I care not whose the aid I seek:
What choice ’twixt under and above?
If Heaven be firm, the shades shall move.
Grant that I cannot bar the way
That leads him to his Latian sway,
That fixed in destiny must stand
The promise of Lavinia’s hand;
Yet just it were events so great
For slow accomplishment should wait;
Yet may I make the monarchs twain
Each mourner for a nation slain.
So let them give and take them wives,
The wedding’s cost their people’s lives.
Behold your marriage dower, fair maid!
In Latium’s blood, and Troy’s ’tis paid:
Bellona at the appointed hour
Shall light you to your bridal bower.
Not Hecuba the only dame
Whose womb was quick with nuptial flame:
In the dear son that Venus bore
Paris shall come to life once more,
A torch rekindled to destroy
E’en now the second birth of Troy.’
From heaven to earth the Goddess flies,
And from the Furies’ Stygian halls
Alecto’s baleful presence calls,
To whom grim war and jealous strife
And treacheries are the breath of life.
E’en Pluto hates his offspring, e’en
Her sister fiends the monster dread,
So multiform her hideous mien,
So thick the serpents round her head.
Whom Juno then for aid entreats
With words that kindle fiercer heats:
‘Vouchsafe me, virgin child of Night,
This boon for my peculiar right,
A service all thine own,
Lest Juno’s praise and worship fall
From their exalted pedestal,
Should Troy Italia’s bounds beset
And weave her hymenæal net
About Latinus’ throne.
Thou canst in hostile arms array
Two brothers of one will,
With rancorous hate and burning fray
A peaceful homestead fill:
Scourges are thine and funeral flames:
Thou gloriest in a thousand names,
A thousand means of ill.
Stir up thy breast, with malice rife,
Break the formed league, sow seeds of strife:
Let youth and age with one accord
Desire, demand, and seize the sword.’
Then, steeped in venom’s direst gall,
Alecto spreads her wing
For Latium and the stately hall
Of the Laurentian king,
Alights, and sits her down before
Amata’s silent chamber-door:
Who, musing on the new-come host
And Turnus’ hopes malignly crossed,
Was seething o’er, unhappy queen,
With woman’s passion, woman’s spleen.
The Goddess snatched a serpent, bred
’Mid the dark ringlets of her head,
And hurled it at the dame,
That she, made frantic by the smart
Deep working in her inmost heart,
Might set the house on flame.
In glides the snake, unfelt, unseen,
Thin robe and ivory breast between,
And breathing in its poisonous breath,
Enwraps her in a dream of death:
Now with her golden necklace blends,
Now from her fillet’s length depends,
With serpent gold her tresses binds,
And smoothly round her person winds.
So, when the viperous influence
Is first distilling o’er the sense,
Nor yet the soul has caught entire
The fever of contagious fire,
Gently, as mother might, she speaks,
The hot tears rolling down her cheeks,
Tears for her hapless daughter shed
And Phrygia’s hated bridal bed:
‘And shall a Dardan fugitive,
O father, with Lavinia wive?
And will you not compassion take
For daughter’s, sire’s, or mother’s sake?
Ay, well I know, the first fair gale
Shall see the faithless pirate sail,
And bear from home the weeping maid,
The prize of his triumphant raid.
Not thus, forsooth, the Phrygian swain
Made stealthy progress o’er the main,
To Sparta won his way, and bore
Fair Helen to the Idæan shore.
Where now your sacred promise? where
The love you wont your own to bear,
Or where that hand, whose friendly grasp
The hand of Turnus oft would clasp?
If nought will serve for Latium’s need
But bridegroom sprung from foreign seed,
And father Faunus’ solemn hest
Sits heavy on your anxious breast,
All climes that own
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