With taint of carnage newly spilt.
Such be the hymenæal ties
That Venus’ son shall solemnise
With Latium’s easy king!
For thee, heaven’s monarch may not bear
That longer thou in upper air
Shouldst ply thine errant wing.
Give place: if further chance betide,
Myself the circumstance will guide.’
Saturnia spoke: the Fury spread
Her serpent wings for flight,
Dives to the regions of the dead,
And leaves the upper light.
In mid Italia lies a place
Retiring ’neath a mountain’s base,
Amsanctus’ vale, pent in between
Two wooded slopes of dusky green,
While in the midst a torrent raves,
As ’twixt the rocks it winds its waves.
An awful cavern there men show,
The very gorge of Dis below,
And gulfs whence Acheron bursts to sight
Ope jaws of pestilential night:
There plunged the hateful fiend beneath,
And earth and sky again took breath.
And perfects what the fiend began.
Straight to the city from the plain
The shepherds speed, and bear the slain:
Young Almo in his comely grace
And old Galæsus’ mangled face,
Make street and home with clamour ring,
Implore the gods, adjure the king.
Fierce Turnus takes the tide at flood:
His loud voice swells the cry for blood
That blazes up to heaven:
‘Strange slips defile the royal stem:
The Phrygians share the diadem,
Himself from Latium driven.’
Then they whose dames are footing still
In Bacchic frenzy wood and hill
(Such power is in Amata’s name)
Come forth, and fan the martial flame.
’Gainst omens flashed before their eyes,
’Gainst warnings thundered from the skies,
They cry for war, and early and late
Besiege Latinus’ palace gate.
Like rock engirdled by the sea,
Like rock immovable is he
Before the roaring tide:
The wild waves bark about its base:
Its mass sustains it still in place:
Crags echo round: it gives no heed:
And scattered foam and rent seaweed
Fall from its rugged side.
Powerless at length their rage to check,
As things whirl on at Juno’s beck,
Appealing oft to soulless skies
And deaf dumb gods, the father cries:
‘Alas! the destinies prevail:
We drift and drift before the gale:
Ah, wretched children! yours the guilt,
And yours the blood must needs be spilt.
Thee, Turnus, thee the grim fiends wait:
Thine agonising vows too late
Shall knock at heaven’s relentless gate.
For me, my rest is all assured,
My bark within the haven moored:
The shock that parts my aged breath
But robs me of a happy death.’
He speaks, and in his chamber hides,
While from his hand the sceptre slides.
An ancient rule of yore had sway;
To Alba’s cities thence it passed;
Now Rome, earth’s mistress, holds it fast,
Whether ’gainst Thrace they turn their spears,
Or bring the Arab blood and tears,
Or, following on the daystar’s track,
From Parthia claim the standards back.
Two gates there stand of War—’twas so
Our fathers named them long ago—
The war-god’s terrors round them spread
An atmosphere of sacred dread.
A hundred bolts the entrance guard,
And Janus there keeps watch and ward.
These, when his peers on war decide,
The consul, all in antique pride
Of Gabine cincture deftly tied
And purple-striped attire,
With grating noise himself unbars,
And calls aloud on Father Mars:
The warrior train takes up the cry,
And horns with brazen symphony
Their hoarse assent conspire.
’Twas thus they bade the king proclaim
Fierce war against the Trojan name,
And ope the gates of doom:
The good old sire with hand and eye
Shrank from the hated ministry
And deeper plunged in gloom.
When lo! in person from above
Descends the imperial spouse of Jove,
Smote the barred gates, and backward rolled
On jarring hinge each bursten fold.
Ausonia, all inert before,
Takes fire and blazes to the core:
And some on foot their march essay,
Some, mounted, storm along the way;
To arms! cry one and all:
With unctuous lard their shields they clean
And make their javelins bright and sheen,
Their axes on the whetstone grind;
Look how that banner takes the wind!
Hark to yon trumpet’s call!
Five mighty towns, with anvils set,
In emulous haste their weapons whet:
Crustumium, Tibur the renowned,
And strong Atina there are found,
And Ardea, and Antemnæ crowned
With turrets round her wall.
Steel caps they frame their brows to fit,
And osier twigs for bucklers knit:
Or twist the hauberk’s brazen mail
And mould them greaves of silver pale:
To these has passed the homage paid
Erewhile to ploughshare, scythe, and spade:
Each brings his father’s battered blade
And smelts in fire anew:
And now the clarions pierce the skies:
From rank to rank the watchword flies:
This tears his helmet from the wall,
That drags his war-horse from the stall,
Dons three-piled mail and ample shield,
And girds him for the embattled field
With falchion tried and true.
The gates of song unfold,
What chiefs, what tribes to war came on
In those dim days of old,
What sons were then Italia’s pride,
And what the arms that blazed so wide:
For ye are
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