And I shall meet whate’er betide
By such assurance fortified.’
With sympathy and tender grief
All melt in tears, Iulus chief,
As filial love in other shown
Recalled the semblance of his own:
And, ‘Tell your doubting heart,’ he cries,
‘All blessings wait your high emprise:
I take your mother for my own,
Creusa, save in name alone,
Nor lightly deem the affection due
To her who bore a child like you.
Come what come may, I plight my troth
By this my head, my father’s oath,
The bounty to yourself decreed
Should favouring Gods your journey speed,
The same shall in your line endure,
To parent and to kin made sure.’
He spoke, and weeping still, untied
A gilded falchion from his side,
Lycaon’s work, the man of Crete,
With sheath of ivory complete:
Brave Mnestheus gives for Nisus’ wear
A lion’s hide with shaggy hair;
Aletes, old in danger grown,
His helmet takes, and gives his own.
Then to the gates, as forth they fare,
The band of chiefs with many a prayer
The gallant twain attends:
Iulus, manlier than his years,
Oft whispering, for his father’s ears
Full many a message sends:
But be it message, be it prayer,
Alike ’tis lost, dispersed in air.
The hostile camp they near:
Yet many a foe shall meet his doom
Or ere that hour appear.
There see they bodies stretched supine,
O’ercome with slumber and with wine;
The cars, unhorsed, are drawn up high;
’Twixt wheels and harness warriors lie,
With arms and goblets on the grass
In undistinguishable mass.
‘Now,’ Nisus cries, ‘for hearts and hands:
This, this the hour our force demands.
Here pass we: yours the rear to mind,
Lest hostile arm be raised behind;
Myself will go before and slay,
While carnage opes a broad highway.’
So whispers he with bated breath,
And straight begins the work of death
On Rhamnes, haughty lord:
On rugs he lay, in gorgeous heap,
From all his bosom breathing sleep,
A royal seer, by Turnus loved:
But all too weak his seer-craft proved
To stay the rushing sword.
Three servants next the weapon found
Stretched ’mid their armour on the ground:
Then Remus’ charioteer he spies
Beneath the coursers as he lies,
And lops his downdropt head:
The ill-starred master next he leaves,
A headless trunk that gasps and heaves:
Forth spouts the blood from every vein,
And deluges with crimson rain
Green earth and broidered bed.
Then Lamyrus and Lamus died,
Serranus too, in youth’s fair pride:
That night had seen him long at play:
Now by the dream-god tamed he lay:
Ah! had his play but matched the night,
Nor ended till the dawn of light!
So famished lion uncontrolled
Makes havoc through the teeming fold,
As frantic hunger craves;
Mangling and harrying far and near
The meek mild victims, mute with fear,
With gory jaws he raves.
Nor less Euryalus performs:
The thirst of blood his bosom warms;
’Mid nameless multitudes he storms,
Herbesus, Fadus, Abaris kills
Slumbering and witless of their ills,
While Rhœtus wakes and sees the whole,
But hides behind a massy bowl.
There, as to rise the trembler strove,
Deep in his breast the sword he drove,
And bathed in death withdrew.
The lips disgorge the life’s red flood,
A mingled stream of wine and blood:
He plies his blade anew.
Now turns he to Messapus’ band,
For there the fires he sees
Burnt out, while coursers hard at hand
Are browsing at their ease,
When Nisus marks the excess of zeal,
The maddening fever of the steel,
And checks him thus with brief appeal:
‘Forbear we now; ’twill soon be day:
Our wrath is slaked, and hewn our way.’
Full many a spoil they leave behind
Of solid silver thrice refined,
Armour and bowls of costliest mould
And rugs in rich confusion rolled.
A belt Euryalus puts on
With golden knobs, from Rhamnes won:
Of old by Cædicus ’twas sent,
An absent friendship to cement,
To Remulus, fair Tiber’s lord,
Who, dying, to his grandson left
The shining prize: the Rutule sword
In after days the trophy reft.
Athwart his manly chest in vain
He binds these trappings of the slain;
Then ’neath his chin in triumph laced
Messapus’ helm with plumage graced.
The camp at length they leave behind,
And round the lake securely wind.
From Latium’s city sped,
An offshoot from the host that lay
Along the plain in close array,
Three hundred horsemen, sent to bring
A message back to Turnus king,
With Volscens at their head.
Now to the camp they draw them nigh,
Beneath the rampart’s height,
When from afar the twain they spy,
Still steering from the right;
The helmet through the glimmering shade
At once the unwary boy betrayed,
Seen in the moon’s full light.
Not lost the sight on jealous eyes:
‘Ho! stand! who are ye?’ Volscens cries;
‘Whence come, or whither tend?’
No movement deign they of reply,
But swifter to the forest fly,
And make the night their friend.
With fatal speed the mountain foes
Each avenue as with network close,
And every outlet bar.
It was a forest bristling grim
With shade of ilex, dense and dim:
Thick brushwood all the ground o’ergrew:
The tangled ways a path ran through,
Faint glimmering like a star.
The darkling boughs, the cumbering prey
Euryalus’s flight delay:
His courage fails, his footsteps stray:
But Nisus onward flees;
No thought he takes, till now at last
The enemy is all o’erpast,
E’en at the grove, since Alban called
Where then Latinus’ herds were stalled:
Sudden he pauses, looks behind
In eager hope his friend to find:
In vain; no
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