So read I Fate, are foreign land.
And Turnus, if inquiry trace
The first beginnings of his race,
Counts with his grandsires Argive kings,
And from Mycenæ’s midmost springs.’
Latinus proof against her pleas,
And now the deadly poison thrills
Her veins, and all the woman fills,
Then, maddened with its furious heats,
She rages through the crowded streets,
Like top that whirling ’neath the thong
Is scourged by eager boys along
Bent on their gamesome strife:
With eddying motion it careers
Round empty courts in circling spheres;
The beardless troop in strange amaze
Upon the winged boxwood gaze;
The lashes lend it life.
So wildly, furiously she flies
Through peopled towns ’neath wolfish eyes.
Nay more, with fiercer frenzy spurred,
She feigns herself by Bacchus stirred,
Betakes her to the woods, and hides
The maid in leafy mountain-sides,
To balk the Trojans and delay
The dreaded hymenæal day:
And ‘Evoe Bacchus! thou alone’
(So shrills her wild ecstatic tone)
‘Art worthy of the fair:
For thee she wields the ivied wand,
For thee leads forth the dancers’ band,
For thee she tends her hair.’
Swift flies the heraldry of fame,
And many another frenzied dame
Comes forth, her spirit all on flame
A new abode to seek:
Their ancient homes they leave behind,
Spread hair and shoulders to the wind,
Or clad in skins from fawns new doffed
Their vine-branch javelins raise aloft,
With shrill ear-piercing shriek.
She in the midst with frantic hand
Uplifts a blazing pine-wood brand,
And hymns aloud in solemn lay
Her child and Turnus’ marriage day;
Then rolling red her bloodshot eyes,
‘Ho, Latian mothers!’ fierce she cries,
‘Give ear, where’er ye be:
If, still to poor Amata kind,
A mother’s wrongs ye bear in mind,
The fillet from your brows unbind,
And rove the woods with me.’
Thus, armed with Bacchus’ handspears keen,
Alecto goads the ill-starred queen,
And drives her far from home of men,
’Mid silvan haunt and wild-beast’s den.
Have thriven obedient to her will,
The royal house, the royal thought,
Alike to dire confusion brought,
On dusky wings the Goddess flies
Where the bold Daunian’s ramparts rise,
The town which Danae built of yore,
By headlong tempest blown ashore.
Ardea the name that bygone race
Bestowed upon their dwelling-place,
And Ardea’s name is honoured yet,
But Ardea’s sun in gloom is set.
There in his home at midnight deep
Was Turnus lying wrapped in sleep.
At once the crafty fiend lays by
All signs of baleful deity:
No Fury now, she makes her own
The likeness of a wrinkled crone,
Binds with a fillet tresses grey,
And twines them round with olive spray:
She stands transformed to Calybe,
Priestess of Juno’s temple she,
And thus in simulated guise
Presents her to the warrior’s eyes:
‘Can Turnus rest and see his pain,
His generous toil bestowed in vain?
Lie still and see his kingly sway
To Dardan settlers signed away?
Latinus robs you of the fair,
Withholds perforce her blood-bought dower,
And searches out a foreign heir
To throne him in the seat of power.
Go, fight your fights that win no thanks,
Seek scorn amid the embattled field;
Go, mow them down, the Tuscan ranks,
And Latium’s tribes with safety shield.
These words Saturnia bade me shrill
In your drowsed ear when all was still.
Come, sound the glad alarm, and call
The youth to arms without the wall;
Consume the Phrygian ships, that ride
At anchor in our pleasant tide:
’Tis Heaven’s high will that gives command,
And prompts to fight your ready hand.
Nay, let Latinus’ self, if yet
He grudge the fair, nor own his debt,
From late experience learn, and feel
The might of Turnus, sheathed in steel.’
The haughty youth thus made reply:
‘The fleet arrived in Tiber’s stream
Has not escaped me, as you deem:
Why feign these terrors? well I ween
Turnus is watched by Juno queen:
’Tis you, good dame, effete and old,
Whom purblind age, o’ergrown with mould,
Bemocks with visions of alarms
Amid the clang of monarchs’ arms.
Yours is the task to tend the shrine
And make your image look divine;
But leave to men, whose care they are,
The mysteries of peace and war.’
The furnace of Alecto’s ire.
Or ere he ceased, a trembling takes
His frame; his eyes are fixed as stone;
So dire the hissing of her snakes,
So ghastly grim the features shown;
She thrusts him back with angry glare
As, faltering, further speech he tries,
Uprears two serpents from her hair,
And cracks her scorpion whip, and cries:
‘Behold the dame, grown o’er with mould,
Whom dotage, impotent and old,
Bemocks with visions of alarms
Amid the clang of monarchs’ arms!
My home is with the infernal king,
And death and war in hand I bring.’
Lodged in his breast the pinewood glows
With lurid light and dim:
A giant terror breaks his sleep,
And, bursting forth, big sweat-drops steep
His body, bone and limb.
‘My sword! my sword!’ he madly shrieks;
His sword he through the chamber seeks
And all the mansion o’er:
Burns
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