This waving high his faithful sword,
And front to front resume the game
That drains the breath and racks the frame.
Addressed his queenly bride,
As from a yellow cloud above
The warring chiefs she eyed:
‘What now the end, fair consort, say?
What latest stake remains to play?
Long since you knew, and owned you knew,
Æneas to the skies is due,
A nation’s hero: Fate’s own power
Uplifts him to the starry tower.
What plan you now? what hopes o’erbold
Thus keep you throned aloft in cold?
Think you ’twas right a God decreed
By mortal treachery should bleed,
Or Turnus—for apart from you
What mischief could Juturna do?—
Receive his long-lost sword again,
And strength be waked in vanquished men?
’Tis Jove entreats: at length give way;
Permit my prayers your will to sway;
Nor brood in silent grief, nor vent
From those sweet lips your ill-content.
The end is reached. By land and main
I let you vex the Dardan train,
Stir guilty war, a home o’ercloud,
And bridal joys with mourning shroud.
Attempt no further.’ Jove’s fair queen
Bespoke her spouse with duteous mien:
Dread lord, that Juno now withdraws
From Turnus and the fight;
You would not see me else in air
Content to sit resigned and bear:
No; armed with torches should I stand
In battle, and with red right hand
My Trojan foemen smite.
I roused, I own, Juturna’s zeal
To venture for her brother’s weal:
Yet bade I not to launch the steel
Or bend the deadly bow:
By Styx’ dire fountain I make oath,
The sole dread form of solemn troth
Olympus’ tenants know.
And now in truth behold me yield
And quit for aye the accursed field.
Vouchsafe me yet one act of grace
For Latium’s sake, our sire’s own race:
No ordinance of fate withstands
The boon a nation’s pride demands.
When treaty, ay, and love’s blest rite
The warring hosts in peace unite,
Respect the ancient stock, nor make
The Latian tribes their style forsake,
Nor Troy’s nor Teucer’s surname take,
Nor garb nor language let them change
For foreign speech and vesture strange,
But still abide the same:
Let Latium prosper as she will,
Their thrones let Alban monarchs fill;
Let Rome be glorious on the earth,
The centre of Italian worth;
But fallen Troy be fallen still,
The nation and the name.’
The world’s Creator made reply:
‘There Jove’s own sister spoke indeed,
Our father Saturn’s other seed,
So vast the waves of wrath that roll
In that indomitable soul!
But come, let baffled rage give way:
I grant your prayer, and yield the day.
Ausonia shall abide the same,
Unchanged in customs, speech, and name:
The sons of Troy, unseen though felt,
In fusion with the mass shall melt:
Myself will give them rites, and all
Still by the name of Latins call.
The blended race that thence shall rise
Of mixed Ausonian blood
Shall soar alike o’er earth and skies,
So pious, just, and good:
Nor evermore shall nation pay
Such homage to your shrine as they.’
Saturnia hears with altered mind,
Triumphant now and proud:
The sky meantime she leaves behind,
And quits her chilly cloud.
New counsels ponders o’er,
To force Juturna to depart
Nor help her brother more.
Two fiends there are of evil fame,
The Diræ their ill-omened name,
Whom at a birth unkindly Night
With dark Megæra brought to light,
With serpent-spires their tresses twined,
And gave them wings to cleave the wind.
On Jove’s high threshold they appear
Before his throne, and lash to fear
Mankind’s unhappy brood,
When grisly death the Sire prepares
And sickness, or with battle scares
A guilty multitude.
Such pest as this the Thunderer sent
Down from the Olympian sky,
And bade it, for an omen meant,
Across Juturna fly.
Down swoops the portent, fierce and fast,
With swiftness of a whirling blast:
Not swifter bounds from off the string
The dart that with envenomed sting
The Parthian launches on the wing,
The Parthian or the Crete;
Death-laden past the cure of art
Flies through the shade the hurtling dart,
So secret and so fleet.
E’en thus the deadly child of Night
Shot from the sky with earthward flight.
Soon as the armies and the town
Descending she descries,
She dwarfs her huge proportions down
To bird of puny size,
Which perched on tombs or desert towers
Hoots long and lone through darkling hours:
In such disguise, the monster wheeled
Round Turnus’ head, and ’gainst his shield
Unceasing flapped her wings:
Strange chilly dread his limbs unstrung:
Upstands his hair: his voiceless tongue
To his parched palate clings.
But when from far Juturna heard
The whirring flight of that foul bird,
She rent her hair as sister mote,
Her cheeks she tore, her breast she smote:
‘Ah Turnus! what can sister now?
How other prove than cruel? how
Prolong your forfeit life?
Can Goddess meet with fearless brow
A pest like this? At length I bow
And part me from the strife.
Nay, spare to aggravate my fear,
Ye birds of evil wing!
I know the sounds that stun mine ear:
That
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