And oaks of hardest grain:
No arts were theirs: they knew not how
To couple oxen to the plough,
To store their treasured goods or spare:
The teeming boughs supplied their fare
And beasts in hunting slain.
Then from Olympus’ height came down
Good Saturn, exiled from his crown
By Jove, his mightier heir:
He brought the race to union first,
Erewhile on mountain-tops dispersed,
And gave them statutes to obey,
And willed the land wherein he lay
Should Latium’s title bear.
That was the storied age of gold,
So peacefully, serenely rolled
The years beneath his reign;
At length stole on a baser age,
And war’s indomitable rage,
And greedy lust of gain.
Ausonians and Sicanians came,
And Saturn’s land oft changed her name:
Came too the monarchs, Tibris grim,
The royal giant, large of limb,
Whose name thenceforth the river bore,
And Albula was known no more.
Myself, an exile from my home,
Went wandering far along the foam,
Till mighty chance and destined doom
Constrained my errant choice:
So came I to these regions, driven
By warning from my mother given
And Phœbus’ awful voice.’
Then, as they take their onward ways,
A gate and altar he displays,
Rome’s own Carmental gate:
In after years such honour found
Evander’s mother, nymph renowned,
Carmentis, first of seers who sung
The heroes from Æneas sprung
And Pallanteum’s fate.
Next at the grove their feet are stayed
Which Romulus the Asylum made:
Lupercal’s gelid cave they see,
Named from the god of Arcady.
Then shows he Argiletum’s wood,
Appealing to the scene of blood,
And tells the tale of Argus’ end,
Perfidious Argus, once his friend.
Then to Tarpeia’s dread abode
And Capitol he points the road.
Now all is golden; then ’twas all
O’ergrown with trees and brushwood tall.
E’en then rude hinds the spot revered:
E’en then the wood, the rock they feared.
‘Here in this grove, these wooded steeps
Some god unknown his mansion keeps:
Arcadia’s children deem
Their eyes have looked on Jove’s own form,
When oft he summons cloud and storm,
And seen his ægis gleam.
See you yon towers in hoar decay,
The relics and memorials grey
Of old ancestral fame?
This Janus, that king Saturn walled,
And this Janiculum was called,
That bore Saturnia’s name.’
So talking on, at length they come
To poor Evander’s lowly home:
There, where Carinæ’s mansions shine,
Where spreads the Forum, lowed the kine.
The palace reached, ‘These gates,’ he cried,
‘Alcides entered in his pride,
This house the god contained:
Thou too take courage, wealth despise,
And fit thee to ascend the skies,
Nor be a poor man’s courtesies
Rejected or disdained.’
He spoke, and through the narrow door
The great Æneas led,
And heaped a couch upon the floor
With leaves and bear-skin spread.
Are folded in her sable wings.
But Venus, with a mother’s dread
At Latium’s wild alarm,
To Vulcan on the golden bed
Spoke, breathing on each word she said
Sweet love’s enticing charm:
‘When Greece was labouring to destroy
The fated battlements of Troy,
No arms from thee I cared to ask
For Troy’s unhappy race,
Nor chose, dear love, in vain to task
Thy labour or thy grace,
Though much to Priam’s sons I owed,
And oft my tears of pity flowed
For my Æneas’ case.
And now his foot, by Jove’s command,
Is planted on Rutulian land.
Thus then behold me suppliant here,
Low at those knees I most revere:
Behold a tender mother plead:
Arms are the boon, her son’s the need.
Not vainly Nereus’ daugther pled:
Not vain the tears Aurora shed.
What nations, see, what towns combine,
To draw the sword ’gainst me and mine!’
She ceased: her snowy arms enwound
Her faltering husband round and round.
The wonted fire at once he feels:
Through all his veins the passion steals,
Swift as the lightning’s fiery glare
Runs glimmering through the thunderous air.
His spouse in conscious beauty smiled
To see his heart by love beguiled.
Smit to the core with heavenly fire,
In fondling tone returns the sire:
‘Why stray so far thy pleas to seek?
Has trust in Vulcan grown so weak?
Had such, my queen, been then thy bent,
E’en then to Troy had arms been lent,
Nor Jove nor Fate refused to give
To Priam ten more years to live.
And now, if war be in the air
And battle’s need thy present care,
What molten gold or iron can
With fire to fuse and winds to fan,
All shall be thine: thy power confess,
Nor seek by prayers to feign it less.’
He said, and to his bosom pressed
His beauteous queen, and sank to rest.
And sleep’s first fading bloom had driven
The slumber from men’s eyes;
E’en at the hour when prudent wife,
Who day by day, to eke out life,
Minerva’s distaff plies,
Relumes her fire, o’erreaching night,
And tasks her maidens by its light,
To keep her husband’s bed from stain
And for their babes a pittance gain;
So, nor less swift, at labour’s claim
Springs from his couch the Lord of flame
Fast by Æolian Lipare
And fair Sicania’s coast
An island rises from the sea
With smoking rocks embossed;
Beneath, a cavern drear and vast,
Hollowed by Cyclopëan blast,
Rings with unearthly sound;
Bruised anvils clang their thunder-peal,
Hot hissing glows the Chalyb steel,
And fiery vapour fierce and fast
Pants up from underground;
The centre this of Vulcan’s toil,
And Vulcan’s name adorns the soil.
Here finds he, as he makes descent,
The Cyclops o’er their labour bent:
Brontes and Steropes are there,
And gaunt Pyracmon, stripped and bare.
The
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