With might and main the artillery ply,
So true their patriot flame:
Make truncheons seared and knotty wood
For lack of steel do service good,
And ’mid the first would shed their blood
To save their walls from shame.
Sad Acca has her news conveyed,
Confusion great and sore;
The Volscian troops are disarrayed,
Camilla lives no more;
On like a torrent comes the foe:
Nought stands before their wasting flow;
Their terrors townward pour.
He, all on flame—so Jove requires—
From ambushed slope and wood retires.
Scarce out of sight he touched the plains,
The unguarded pass Æneas gains,
Surmounts the ridge with scant delay,
And through the forest wins his way.
So both make speed the walls to reach,
Nor long the space ’twixt each and each:
At once Æneas sees from far
The rising dust of Latium’s war,
And Turnus knows Æneas near,
As tramp and neigh assail his ear.
Then had they clashed that hour in fray
And tried the fortune of the day,
But Phœbus in the Hiberian seas
Bathes his tired steeds, and sunlight flees:
So by the walls they pitch their tents,
And guard their mounded battlements.
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