And stains with blood the shivered steel.
Now, as Orodes strides before,
He deigns not to shed out his gore
By javelin’s covert blow;
He heads, and meets him front to front,
Not by base stealth but strength’s sheer brunt
Prevailing o’er his foe.
Then, planting on the fallen his tread
To free his spear, the conqueror said:
‘See, gallants, great Orodes slain!
Our foes have lost a limb!’
And at the word his joyous train
Raise high the pæan hymn.
The chief replies: ‘Whate’er thy name,
Not long shall be thy hour of pride:
The same dark powers thy presence claim,
And soon shall stretch thee at my side.’
Mezentius answers, smiling stern:
‘Die thou: my fate is Jove’s concern.’
This said, the javelin from the wound
He plucked with main and might:
A heavy slumber iron-bound
Seals the dull eyes in rest profound:
They close in endless night.
Hydaspes’ life Sacrator spills,
And Orses and Parthenius feel
The unbated edge of Rapo’s steel:
And Lycaonian Ericete
And Clonius to Messapus yield,
This fallen beneath his horse’s feet,
That foot to foot o’erthrown in field.
Proud Agis pranced along the ground,
But Valerus like his sires renowned
The haughty Lycian slays:
Salius had stricken Thronius low,
But quickly finds a deadlier foe,
Nealces, skilled the dart to throw
Or send the arrow from the bow
Through unsuspected ways.
The God of war with heavy hand
Impartial deals to either band
The horrors of the fight:
By turns they fall, by turns they strike,
Conquered and conquering, each alike
Intolerant of flight.
In Jove’s high courts the Gods afar
Look sadly on the unending war,
And sigh that men to death decreed
Should idly slaughter, idly bleed.
There Venus sits the fray to see,
Saturnian Juno here:
Down in the field Tisiphone
Spreads havoe far and near.
Mezentius makes renewed advance:
Huge as Orion’s frame appears,
What time on foot he strides
Through Nereus’ watery realm, and rears
His shoulder o’er the tides,
Or when, with ashen trunk in hand
Uptorn from mountain high,
He plants his footstep on the land,
His forehead in the sky:
So towering high in steel array
Mezentius marches to the fray.
Æneas marks him far away
And hastes his mighty foe to meet:
Firm stands the foe without dismay,
Like column rooted to its seat:
Then nicely measures with his eye
The distance due for lance to fly.
‘Now hear my prayer, my spear steel-tipped,
And thou, my good right hand:
A votive trophy, all equipped
With spoils from yon false pirate stripped,
To-day, shall Lausus stand:’
He spoke, and forth his javelin threw:
From the broad shield apart it flew,
And piercing deep ’twixt side and flank
In brave Antores’ frame it sank,—
Antores, who, from Argos sped,
Once followed where Alcides led,
Then to Evander’s fortunes clave,
And took the home his patron gave:
Now, prostrate by an unmeant wound,
In death he welters on the ground,
And gazing on Italian skies
Of his loved Argos dreams, and dies.
His javelin then Æneas cast;
Through triple plate of bronze it passed,
Thick quilt, and hide threefold,
Till in the groin it lodged at last,
But might not further hold.
Æneas sees with glistening eye
The Tuscan’s life-blood flow,
Plucks forth the falchion from his thigh,
And threats the wounded foe.
A heart-fetched groan he drew:
Hot tears within his eyelids swelled,
And trickled down in dew.
Now let me, glorious youth, relate
Your gallant act, your piteous fate:
Perchance antiquity may plead
For credence of so bright a deed.
The sire, encumbered and unstrung,
Moves backward o’er the field,
And trails the spear the Trojan flung
Still dangling from his shield.
Forth sprang the generous youth betwixt
And fearless with the combat mixed:
E’en as Æneas aimed a stroke
With upraised arm, its force he broke,
Himself sustained the lifted blade,
And, shield in hand, the conqueror stayed.
Loud clamouring, the confederate train
Protect the sire’s retreat,
And on the foe at distance rain
Their driving arrowy sleet.
With gathering wrath Æneas glows,
And, cased in armour, shuns the blows.
As when the hail’s chill stores descend
In tempest from the skies,
Each swain that wont the plough to tend
To speedy covert flies,
The traveller hides his fenceless head
In caverned rock or torrent’s bed,
Till parting clouds restore the sun,
And man resumes the day begun:
So stands Æneas ’neath the blast
Of wintry war, till all be past,
And chiding, threatening, seeks to stay
Young Lausus from his bold essay:
‘Fond youth! why rush so fast on fate,
And spend your strength on task too great?
Love blinds you to impending ill’—
In vain; the fond youth rages still.
And now more fierce the passions rise
That lighten from the Trojan’s eyes,
And Lausus’ miserable thread
The hand of Fate at length must shred:
Lo! with full force Æneas drives
The weapon, and his bosom rives.
Through the light shield that made him bold,
The vest his mother wove with gold,
The blade held on: his breast runs o’er
With gurgling rivulets of gore;
While to the phantom world away
Flits the sad soul and leaves the clay.
But when Anchises’ son surveyed
The fair, fair face, so ghastly made,
He groaned, by tenderness unmanned,
And stretched the sympathising hand,
As reproduced he sees once more
The love that to
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