Aeneid (Conington 1866)/Book 6
BOOK VI.
So cries he while the tears run down,
And gives his fleet the rein,
Till, sailing on, the Euboic town
Of Cumæ they attain:
Toward the sea they turn their prores;
Each weary bark the anchor moors:
The crooked sterns[errata 1] invest the shores.
With buoyant hearts the youthful band
Leap out upon the Hesperian strand;
Some seek the fiery sparkles, sown
Deep in the veins of cold flint-stone:
Some fell the silvan-haunted woods,
And point with joy to new-found floods.
But to the height Æneas hies
Where Phœbus holds his seat,
And seeks the cave of wondrous size,
The Sibyl's dread retreat,
The Sibyl, whom the Delian seer
Inspires to see the future clear,
And fills with frenzy's heat:
The grove they enter, and behold
Above their heads the roof of gold.
Sage Dædalus, so runs the tale,
From Minos bent to fly,
On feathery pinions dared to sail
Along the untravelled sky,
Flies northward through the polar heights,
Nor stays till he on Cumæ lights.
First landed here, he consecrates
The wings whereon he flew
To Phœbus' power, and dedicates
A fane of stately view.
Androgeos' death the gates portray:
Then Cecrops' sons appear,
Condemned the price of blood to pay,
Seven children year by year;
There, standing by the urn they wait
The drawing of the lots of fate.
Emergent on the other side
The isle of Gnossus crests the tide;
Pasiphae shows her sculptured face,
And Minotaur, of mingled race,
Memorial of her foul disgrace.
There too develops to the gaze
The all inextricable maze;
But Dædalus, with pity moved
For her who desperately loved,
Himself his own dark riddle read,
And gave a clue to guide the tread.
Thou too, poor Icarus, there hadst filled
No narrow room, if grief had willed:
Twice strove the sire thy tale to tell:
Twice the raised hands grew slack and fell.
So had they viewed the sculptures o'er,
But now Achates, sent before,
Returned, his errand done,
And at his side Deiphobe,
Phœbus and Dian's priestess she,
Who thus her speech begun:
'Not this the time, like idle folk,
The hungry gaze to feed:
Haste, doom ye to the victim-stroke
Seven bulls, unconscious of the yoke,
Seven ewes of choicest breed.'
This to Æneas; nor his band
Neglects the priestess' high command;
And now she bids the Teucrian train
Attend her to the lofty fane.
Within the mountain's hollow side
A cavern stretches high and wide:
A hundred entries thither lead;
A hundred voices thence proceed,
Each uttering forth the Sibyl's rede.
The sacred threshold now they trod:
'Pray for an answer! pray! the God,'
She cries, 'the God is nigh!'
And as before the doors in view
She stands, her visage pales its hue,
Her locks dishevelled fly,
Her breath comes thick, her wild heart glows,
Dilating as the madness grows,
Her form looks larger to the eye,
Unearthly peals her deep-toned cry,
As breathing nearer and more near
The God comes rushing on his seer.
'So slack' cries she 'at work divine?
Pray, Trojan, pray! not else the shrine
Its spell-bound silence breaks.'
A shudder through the Dardans stole:
Their chieftain from his inmost soul
His supplication makes:
'Phœbus, who ever hadst a heart
For Ilium's woe to feel,
Who guided Paris' Dardan dart
True to Achilles' heel,
So many seas round shores spread wide
Beneath thy conduct have I tried,
Massylian tribes, the ends of earth,
And climes which Libyan sands engirth;
Now scarce at last we lay our hand
On Italy's receding land:
Suffice it, Troy's malignant star
Has followed on our path thus far!
You too, ye Gods, may now forbear
And these our hapless relics spare,
Whom Ilium in her prosperous hour
Affronted with o'er-weening power.
And thou, dread maiden, who canst see
The vision of the things to be,
Vouchsafe the boon for which I sue—
My fates demand no lighter due—
That Troy and Troy's lorn gods may find
In Latium rest from wave and wind.
Then to thy patron gods a fane
Of solid marble's purest grain
My hand shall build, and festal days
Preserve in life Apollo's praise.
Thee too in that my promised state
August observances await:
For there thy words I will enshrine
Delivered to my race and line,
And chosen ministers ordain,
Custodians of the sacred strain.
But O commit not, I implore,
To faithless leaves thy precious lore,
Lest by the wind's wild eddies tost
Abroad they fly, their sequence lost.
Thyself the prophecy declare.'
He said, and speaking closed his prayer.
The seer, impatient of control,
Raves in the cavern vast,
And madly struggles from her soul
The incumbent power to cast:
He, mighty Master, plies the more
Her foaming mouth, all chafed and sore,
Tames her wild heart with plastic hand,
And makes her docile to command.
Now, all untouched, the hundred gates
Fly open, and proclaim the fates:
'O freed at length from toils by sea!
But worse on land remain.
The warrior-sons of Dardany
Lavinium's realm shall gain;
That fear dismiss; but fortune cross
Shall make them wish their gain were loss.
War, dreadful war, and Tiber flood
I see incarnadined with blood.
Simois and Xanthus and the plain
Where Greece encamped shall rise again:
A new Achilles, goddess born,
The destinies provide,
And Juno, like a rankling thorn,
Shall never quit your side,
While you, distressed and desolate,
Go knocking at each city's gate.
The old, old cause shall stir the strife,
A stranger bed, a foreign wife.
Yet still despond not, but proceed
Along the path where Fate may lead.
The first faint gleam that gilds your skies
Shall from a Grecian city rise.'
Such mystic oracles divine
Shrills forth the priestess from her shrine,
And wraps her truth in mystery round,
While all the cave returns the sound;
Still the fierce power her hard mouth wrings,
And deep and deeper plants his stings.
Soon as the frenzy-fit was o'er,
And foamed the savage lips no more,
The chief begins: 'No cloud can rise
Unlooked for to Æneas' eyes:
My prescient soul has all forecast,
And seen the future as the past.
One boon I crave: since here, 'tis said,
The path leads downward to the dead,
Where Acheron's brimming waters spread,
There let me go, and see the face
Of him, the father of my love;
Thyself the dubious journey trace,
And the dread gates remove.
Him through the fire these shoulders bore,
And from the heart of battle tore:
He shared my travel, braved with me
The menaces of every sea,
The ocean's roar, the tempest's rage,
With feeble strength transcending age.
Nay, 'twas his voice that bade me seek
Thy presence, and thine aid bespeak.
O pity son and father both,
Blest maid! for naught to thee is hard,
Nor vainly sworn was Dian's oath
That placed thee here, these shades to guard.
If Orpheus back to light and life
Could summon his departed wife,
Albeit he owned no other spell
Than the soft breathings of his shell;
If Pollux ransomed from the tomb
His brother's shade, and halved his doom,
And trod and trod again the way—
Why talk of Theseus? why
Of great Alcides? I, as they,
Descend from Jove most high.'
So spoke he, hand on altar laid:
The priestess took the word, and said:
'Inheritor of blood divine,
Preserver of Anchises' line,
The journey down to the abyss
Is prosperous and light:
The palace-gates of gloomy Dis
Stand open day and night:
But upward to retrace the way
And pass into the light of day,
There comes the stress of labour; this
May task a hero's might.
A few, whom heaven has marked for love
Or glowing worth has throned above,
Themselves of seed divine conceived,
The desperate venture have achieved.
Besides, the interval of ground
Is clothed with thickest wood,
And broad Cocytus winds around
Its dark and sinuous flood.
But still should passionate desire
Stir in your soul so fierce a fire,
Twice o'er the Stygian pool to swim,
Twice look on Tartarus' horrors dim,
If naught will quench your madman's thirst,
Then learn what duties claim you first.
Deep in a mass of leafy growth,
Its stem and foliage golden both,
A precious bough there lurks unseen,
Held sacred to the infernal queen:
Around it bends the whole dark grove,
And hides from view the treasure-trove.
Yet none may reach the shades without
The passport of that golden sprout:
For so has Proserpine decreed
That this should be her beauty's meed.
One plucked, another fills its room,
And burgeons with like precious bloom.
Go, then, the shrinking treasure track,
And pluck it with your hand:
Itself will follow, nothing slack,
Should Fate the deed command:
If not, no weapon man can wield
Will make its dull reluctance yield.
Then too, your comrade's breathless clay
(Alas! you know not) taints the day
And poisons all your fleet,
While on our threshold still you stay
And Heaven's response entreat.
Him to his parent earth return
Observant, and his bones inurn.
Lead to the shrine black cattle: they
Will cleanse whate'er would else pollute:
Thus shall you Acheron's banks survey,
Where never living soul found way.'
She ended, and was mute.
With downcast visage, sad and grave,
Æneas turns him from the cave,
And ponders o'er his woe:
Still by his side Achates moves,
Companion to the chief he loves,
As thoughtful and as slow.
Much talked they on their onward way,
Debating whose the senseless clay
That claims a comrade's tomb;
When on the naked shore, behold,
They see Misenus, dead and cold,
Destroyed by ruthless doom;
The son of Æolus, than who
None ere more skilled the trumpet blew,
To animate the warrior crew
And martial fire relume.
Once Hector's comrade, in the fray
He mingled, proud the sword to sway
Or bid the clarion sound:
When Hector 'neath the conqueror died,
He joined him to Æneas' side,
Nor worse allegiance found.
Now, as he sounds along the waves
His shell, and Heaven to conflict braves,
'Tis said that Triton heard his boast
And 'mid the billows on the coast
Sunk low his drowning head.
So all the train with cries of grief
Assailed the skies, Æneas chief:
Then, as the Sibyl bade, they ply
Their mournful task, and heap on high
With timber rising to the sky
The altar of the dead.
First to the forest they repair,
The silvan prowler's leafy lair:
The pitch-tree falls beneath the stroke;
The sharp axe rings upon the oak:
Through beechen core the wedge goes deep:
The ash comes rolling down the steep.
Æneas stirs his comrades' zeal,
And foremost wields the workman steel.
In moody silence he surveys
The boundless grove: at last he prays:
'Ah! would some God but show me now
In all that wood the golden bough!
My poor, poor friend! in thee, alas,
The Sibyl's words have come to pass.'
Scarce had he said, when lo! there flew
Two snow-white doves before his view,
And on the sward took rest;
His mother's birds the hero knew,
And joyful prayer addrest:
'Hail, gentle guides! before me fly,
And mark my pathway on the sky:
So lead me where the bough of gold
Glooms rich above its parent mould.
And thou, my mother, aid my quest,
Nor leave me doubtful and distrest.'
He stayed his steps, intent to know
What signs they give, which way they go.
By turns they feed, by turns they fly,
Just in the range of human eye;
Till when they scent the noisome gale
Which dark Avernus' jaws exhale
Aloft they rise in rapid flight:
Then on the tree at once alight
Where flashing through the leaves is seen
The golden bough's contrasted sheen.
As in the depth of winter's snow
The parasitic mistletoe
Bursts with fresh bloom, and clothes anew
The smooth bare stems with saffron hue:
So 'mid the oak's umbrageous green
The gleam of leafy gold was seen:
So 'mid the sounds of whispering trees
The thin foil tinkled in the breeze.
At once Æneas grasps the spray:
His haste o'ercomes its coy delay,
And laden with the new-won prize
Beneath the Sibyl's roof he hies.
Nor less meanwhile the Trojans pay
To dead Misenus' thankless clay
The last memorial rite:
And first a giant pile they raise
With oak and fir to feed the blaze,
With dark-leaved boughs its sides enlace,
Sad cypresses before it place,
And deck with armour bright.
Some fix the caldron, heat the wave,
And oil the corpse which first they lave.
Loud wails are heard: then on his bed,
The weeping done, they stretch the dead,
And heap above, the cold limbs o'er,
The purple robes the living wore:
Some lend their shoulders to the bier,
A ministration sad and drear,
And, as their fathers wont, apply
The firebrands with averted eye:
While streaming oil and offered spice
Blaze up with flesh of sacrifice.
And now, when sank the embers down,
And ceased the flame to burn,
The smouldering heap with wine they drown,
And Corynæus from the pyre
Collects the bones, charred white by fire,
And stores in brazen urn:
Then to his comrades thrice he gave
Lustration from the flowing wave,
With showery dew and olive bough
Besprinkling each polluted brow,
And spoke the last acclaim.
But good Æneas bids arise
A funeral mound of mighty size;
There plants the arms the warrior bore,
The trumpet and the shapely oar,
Beneath a mountain high in air,
Which bears, and evermore shall bear
From him Misenus' name.
This done, he hastens to fulfil
The dictates of the Sibyl's will.
Before his eyes a monstrous cave
Expands its yawning womb,
Protected by the lake's dark wave
And forest's leafy gloom:
O'er that dread space no flying thing
Unjeopardied could ply its wing;
Such noisome exhalations rise
From out its darkness to the skies.
Here first the priestess sets in view
Four goodly bulls of sable hue,
And 'twixt their horns pours forth the wine:
The topmost hairs she next plucks out,
That bristling on the forehead sprout,
An offering to the flame divine;
On Hecate the while she cries,
The Mighty One of shades and skies.
Some 'neath the throat thrust in the knife
And catch in cups the stream of life.
To Earth, and Night, the Furies' dam,
Æneas slays a black ewe-lamb,
And bids a barren heifer bleed,
For thee, dread Proserpine, decreed.
To Pluto then he sets alight
High altars, flaming through the night,
And on the embers lays
Whole bulls, denuded of their hide,
Still pouring oil in copious tide
To feed the surging blaze.
When lo, as morning's orient red
Just brightens o'er the sky,
The firm ground bellows 'neath their tread,
The wooded summits rock and sway,
And through the shade the hell-hounds' bay
Proclaims the goddess nigh.
'Back, ye unhallowed' shrieks the seer
'And leave the whole wide forest clear:
Come, great Æneas, tread the way,
And keep your falchion bared:
Now for a heart that scorns dismay:
Now for a soul prepared.'
This said, with madness in her face
She plunged into the cave:
He with her lengthening stride keeps pace,
As fearless and as brave.
Eternal Powers, whose sway controls
The empire of departed souls,
Ye too, throughout whose wide domain
Blank Night and grisly Silence reign,
Hoar Chaos, awful Phlegethon,
What ear has heard let tongue make known:
Vouchsafe your sanction, nor forbid
To utter things in darkness hid.
Along the illimitable shade
Darkling and lone their way they made,
Through the vast kingdom of the dead,
An empty void, though tenanted:
So travellers in a forest move
With but the uncertain moon above,
Beneath her niggard light,
When Jupiter has hid from view
The heaven, and Nature's every hue
Is lost in blinding night.
At Orcus' portals hold their lair
Wild Sorrow and avenging Care;
And pale Diseases cluster there,
And pleasureless Decay,
Foul Penury, and Fears that kill,
And Hunger, counsellor of ill,
A ghastly presence they:
Suffering and Death the threshold keep,
And with them Death's blood-brother, Sleep:
Ill Joys with their seducing spells
And deadly War are at the door;
The Furies couch in iron cells,
And Discord maddens and rebels;
Her snake-locks hiss, her wreaths drip gore.
Full in the midst an aged elm
Broods darkly o'er the shadowy realm:
There dream-land phantoms rest the wing,
Men say, and 'neath its foliage cling.
And many monstrous shapes beside
Within the infernal gates abide;
There Centaurs, Scyllas, fish and maid,
There Briareus' hundred-handed shade,
Chimæra armed with flame,
Gorgons and Harpies make their den,
With the foul pest of Lerna's fen,
And Geryon's triple frame.
Alarmed, Æneas grasps his brand
And points it at the advancing band;
And were no Sibyl there
To warn him that the goblin swarm
Are empty shades of hollow form,
He would be rushing on the foe,
And cleaving with an idle blow
The unsubstantial air.
The threshold passed, the road leads on
To Tartarus and to Acheron.
At distance rolls the infernal flood,
Seething and swollen with turbid mud,
And into dark Cocytus pours
The burden of its oozy stores.
Grim, squalid, foul, with aspect dire,
His eye-balls each a globe of fire,
The watery passage Charon keeps,
Sole warden of those murky deeps:
A sordid mantle round him thrown
Girds breast and shoulder like a zone.
He plies the pole with dexterous ease,
Or sets the sail to catch the breeze,
Ferrying the legions of the dead
In bark of dusky iron-red,
Now marked with age; but heavenly powers
Have fresher, greener eld than ours.
Towards the ferry and the shore
The multitudinous phantoms pour;
Matrons, and men, and heroes dead,
And boys and maidens, yet unwed,
And youths who funeral fires have fed
Before their parents'[errata 2] eye:
Dense as the leaves that from the treen
Float down when autumn first is keen,
Or as the birds that thickly massed
Fly landward from the ocean vast,
Driven over sea by wintry blast
To seek a sunnier sky.
Each in pathetic suppliance stands,
So may he first be ferried o'er,
And stretches out his helpless hands
In yearning for the further shore:
The ferryman, austere and stern,
Takes these and those in varying turn,
While other some he scatters wide,
And chases from the river side.
Æneas, startled at the scene,
Cries, 'Tell me, priestess, what may mean
This concourse to the shore?
What cause can shade from shade divide
That these should leave the river side,
Those sweep the dull waves o'er?'
The ancient seer made brief reply:
'Anchises' seed, of those on high
The undisputed heir,
Cocytus' pool and Styx you see,
The stream by whose dread majesty
No God will falsely swear.
A helpless and unburied crew
Is this that swarms before your view:
The boatman, Charon: whom the wave
Is carrying, these have found their grave.
For never man may travel o'er
That dark and dreadful flood, before
His bones are in the urn.
E'en till a hundred years are told
They wander shivering in the cold:
At length admitted they behold
The stream for which they yearn.'
In deep thought paused Anchises' seed
And pondered o'er their cruel need.
Tombless and sad, there meet his view
Leucaspis and Orontes true
Who Lycia's navy led:
With him they left their Eastern home;
The southwind whelmed them 'neath the foam,
And men and bark were sped.
Lo! pilot Palinurus' ghost
Was wandering restlessly,
Who, voyaging that fatal night,
While on the stars he bent his sight,
Was tumbled headlong from his post
And flung upon the sea.
Scarce in the gloom the godlike man
His lost friend knew; then thus began:
'Ah Palinure! what God was he
That snatched you from my fleet and me
And plunged you in the deeps?
Apollo, true in all beside,
Here only has his word belied;
He promised you should 'scape and reach
In safety the Ausonian beach;
Lo! thus his faith he keeps!'
Then he: 'Nor false was Phœbus' shrine,
Nor godhead whelmed me in the brine.
I slipped: the helm by which I steered
Still to my tightening grasp adhered,
Broke off, and with me fell.
The ruthless powers of ocean know
'Twas not my fate that feared me so,
As lest your ship, of help forlorn,
Her pilot lost, her helm down-torn,
Should fail in such a swell.
Three long cold nights 'neath southwinds' sweep
I drifted o'er the unmeasured deep:
Scarce on the fourth dim dawn I sight
Italia from the billow's height.
Stroke after stroke I swam to shore;
And peril now was all but o'er,
When, as in cumbering garments wet
I grasped the steep with talon clutch,
With swords the barbarous natives set
On my poor life, my gear to touch.
Now o'er the ocean am I blown,
Or tossed on shore from stone to stone.
O, by the genial light of day,
By those soft airs on earth that play,
By your loved sire I make my prayer,
By the sweet promise of your heir,
Respect our friendship: give relief
From these my ills, unconquered chief:
And either heap, as well you can,
Some earth upon a wretched man—
'Twill cost you but to measure back
To Velia's port your watery track—
Or if perchance some way be known,
Some path by your blest mother shown,
For not unhelped of heaven, I trow,
O'er those dread floods you hope to go,
Vouchsafe the pledge my misery craves,
And take me with you o'er the waves,
That so in resting-place of peace
My wandering life at length may cease.'
His piteous plaint was scarcely done
When thus the prophetess begun:
'Whence, Palinure, this wild desire?
What, still unburied, you aspire
To see the stream that Furies guard,
And tread, unbid, the bank's pale sward?
No longer dream that human prayer
The will of Fate can overbear.
Yet take and in your memory store
This cordial for your sorrow sore.
For know, that cruel country-side,
Alarmed by portents far and wide,
Shall lay your spirit, raise a mound,
And send down offerings underground:
And all the coast, while time endures,
Shall link its name with Palinure's.'
He hears, and feels his grief no more,
But glories in the namesake shore.
Once more upon their way they go
And near the stream of sulphurous flow,
Whom when the gloomy boatman saw
Still nigher through the forest draw
And touch the bank, with warning tone
He hails the visitants unknown:
'Whoe'er you are that sword in hand
Our Stygian flood approach,
Your errand speak from where you stand,
Nor further dare encroach.
These climes the spectres hold of right,
The home of Sleep and slumberous Night;
My laws forbid me to convey
Substantial forms of breathing clay.
'Twas no good hour that made me take
Alcides o'er the nether lake,
Nor found I more auspicious freight
In Theseus and his daring mate;
Yet all were Heaven's undoubted heirs,
And prowess more than man's was theirs.
That from our monarch's footstool dragged
The infernal watchdog, bound and gagged:
These[errata 3] strove to force from Pluto's side
Our mistress, his imperial bride.'
Then briefly thus the Amphrysian seer:
'No lurking stratagems are here;
Dismiss your qualms: the sword we draw
Imports no breach of Stygian law:
Still let your porter from his den
Scare bloodless shades that once were men
With baying loud and deep:
Let virtuous Proserpine maintain
Her uncle's bed untouched by stain,
And still his threshold keep.
'Tis Troy's Æneas, brave and good,
To see his sire would cross the flood.
If nought it soften you to see
Such pure heroic piety,
This branch at least'—and here she showed
The branch within her raiment stowed—
'You needs must own.' At once the swell
Of anger in his bosom fell.
He answers not, but eyes the sheen
Of the blest bough, so long unseen,
Turns round the vessel, dark as ink,
And brings it to the river's brink;
Then bids the shadowy spectres flit
That up and down the benches sit,
Frees from its load the bark's deep womb,
And gives the great Æneas room.
Groans the strained craft of cobbled skin,
And through rent seams the ooze drinks in.
At length wise seer and hero brave
Are safely ferried o'er the wave,
And landed on the further bank,
'Mid formless slime and marshweed dank.
Lo! Cerberus with three-throated bark
Makes all the region ring,
Stretched out along the cavern dark
That fronts their entering
The seer perceived his monstrous head
All bristling o'er with snakes uproused,
And toward him flings a sop of bread
With poppy-seed and honey drowsed.
He with his triple jaws dispread
Snaps up the morsel as it falls,
Relaxes his huge frame as dead,
And o'er the cave extended sprawls.
The sentry thus in slumber drowned,
Æneas takes the vacant ground,
And quickly passes from the side
Of the irremeable tide.
Hark! as they enter, shrieks arise,
And wailing great and sore,
The souls of infants uttering cries
At ingress of the door,
Whom, portionless of life's sweet bliss,
From mother's breast untimely torn,
The black day hurried to the abyss
And plunged in darkness soon as born.
Next those are placed whom slander's breath
By false arraignment did to death.
Nor lacks e'en here the law's appeal,
Nor sits no judge the lots to deal.
Sage Minos shakes the impartial urn,
And calls a court of those below,
The life of each intent to learn
And what the cause that wrought them woe.
Next comes their portion in the gloom
Who guiltless sent themselves to doom,
And all for loathing of the day
In madness threw their lives away:
How gladly now in upper air
Contempt and beggary would they bear,
And labour's sorest pain!
Fate bars the way: around their keep
The slow unlovely waters creep
And bind with ninefold chain.
Next come, wide stretching here and there,
The Mourning Fields: such name they bear.
Here those whose being tyrant love
With slow consumption has devoured
Dwell in secluded paths, embowered
By shade of myrtle grove.
Not e'en in death may they forget
Their pleasing pain, their fond regret.
Phædra and Procris here are seen,
And Eriphyle, hapless queen,
Still pointing to the death-wound made
By her fell son's unbated blade.
Evadne and Pasiphae too
Within that precinct meet the view:
Laodamia there is found,
And Cæneus, woman now, once man,
Condemned by fate's recurrent round
To end where she began.
'Mid these among the branching treen
Sad Dido moved, the Tyrian queen,
Her death-wound ghastly yet and green.
Soon as Æneas caught the view
And through the mist her semblance knew,
Like one who spies or thinks he spies
Through flickering clouds the new moon rise,
The teardrop from his eyelids broke,
And thus in tenderest tones he spoke:
'Ah Dido! rightly then I read
The news that told me you were dead,
Slain by your own rash hand!
Myself the cause of your despair!
Now by the blessed stars I swear,
By heaven, by all that dead men keep
In reverence here 'mid darkness deep,
Against my will, ill-fated fair,
I parted from your land.
The gods, at whose command to-day
Through these dim shades I take my way,
Tread the waste realm of sunless blight,
And penetrate abysmal night,
They drove me forth: nor could I know
My flight would work such cruel woe.
Stay, stay your step awhile, nor fly
So quickly from Æneas' eye.
Whom would you shun? this brief space o'er,
Fate suffers us to meet no more.'
Thus while the briny tears run down
The hero strives to calm her frown,
Still pleading 'gainst disdain:
She on the ground averted kept
Hard eyes that neither smiled nor wept,
Nor bated more of her stern mood
Than if a monument she stood
Of firm Marpesian grain.
At length she tears her from the place
And hies her, still with sullen face,
Into the embowering grove,
Where her first lord, Sychæus, shares
In tender interchange of cares,
And gives her love for love;
Æneas tracks her as she flies,
With bleeding heart and tearful eyes.
Then on his journey he proceeds:
And now they gain the furthest meads,
The place which warriors haunt;
There sees he Tydeus, and the heir
Of the Arcadian nymph, and there
Adrastus pale and gaunt.
There Trojan ghosts in battle slain,
Whoso dirge was loud in upper sky:
The chieftain knows the shadowy train,
And heaves a melancholy sigh:
Glaucus and Medon there they meet,
Antenor's offspring, famed in war,
Thersilochus and Polyphete
Who dwelt in Ceres' hallowed seat,
And old Idæus, holding yet
The armour and the car.
They cluster round their ancient friend;
No single view contents their eye:
They linger, and his steps attend,
And ask him how he came, and why.
But Agamemnon's chivalry,
When gleaming through the shade
The hero and his arms they see,
Are wildered and dismayed:
Some huddle in promiscuous rout
As erst at Troy they sought the fleet:
Some feebly raise the battle-shout;
Their straining throat the thin tones flout,
Unformed and incomplete.
Now Priam's son confronts his sight,
Deiphobus, in piteous plight,
His body gashed and torn,
His hands[errata 4] cut off, his comely face
Seamed o'er with wounds that mar its grace,
Ears lopped, and nostrils shorn.
Him, as he cowered, and would conceal
The ravage of the cruel steel,
The chief scarce knew: then, soon as known,
He hails him thus in friendly tone:
'Deiphobus armipotent,
Of mighty Teucer's high descent,
What foe has had his will so far
Your person thus to maim and mar?
Fame told me that with slaying tired
Upon the night of Troy's last sleep,
You sank exhausted on a heap
Of Grecian carnage, and expired.
Then I upon Rhœtean ground
Upraised an empty funeral mound
And called your shade thrice o'er.
Your name, your arms the spot maintain:
Yourself, poor friend, I sought in vain,
To give you, ere I crossed the main,
A tomb on Ilium's shore.'
'Nay, gentle friend' said Priam's son
'Your duty nought has left undone:
Deiphobus's dues are paid
And satisfied his mournful shade.
No; 't was my fate and the foul crime
Of Sparta's dame that plunged me here:
She bade me bear through after time
These memories of her dalliance dear.
In what a dream of false delight
We Trojans spent our latest night
You know: nor need I idly tell
What recollection minds too well.
When the fell steed with fatal leap
Sprang o'er Troy's wall and scaled the steep,
And brought in its impregnate womb
The armed host that wrought our doom,
An orgie dance she chose to feign,
Led through the streets a matron train,
And from the turret, torch in hand,
Gave signal to the Grecian band.
I, wearied out, had laid my head
On our unhappy bridal bed,
Sunk in a lethargy of sleep,
Most like to death, so calm, so deep.
Meantime my virtuous wife removed
All weapons from the house away;
My sword, so oft in need approved,
She took from where the bolster lay:
Then opes the palace-door, and calls
Her former lord within the walls,
Thinking, forsooth, so fair a prize
Would blind a dazzled lover's eyes,[errata 5]
And patriot zeal might thus efface
The memory of her old disgrace.
Why lengthen out the tale? they burst
The chamber-door, that twain accurst,
Æolides his comrade, still
The ready counsellor of ill.
Ye gods, to Greece the like repay,
If pious are these lips that pray!
But you, what chance, I fain would know,
Has led you living down below?
Come you by ocean-wanderings driven,
Or sent by warning voice from heaven?
What stress of fortune brings you here
Through sunless regions, waste and drear?'
Thus while they talked, day's car on high
Had passed the summit of the sky;
And so perchance had worn away
The period of the travellers' stay,
But the good Sibyl thus in brief,
As comrade might, bespoke the chief:
'Æneas, night approaches near:
While we lament, the hours career.
Here, at the spot where now we stand,
The road divides on either hand;
The right, which skirts the walls of Dis,
Conducts us to the fields of bliss:
The left gives sinners up to pain,
And leads to Tartarus' guilty reign.'
'Dread seer,' Deiphobus replies,
'Forgive, nor let thine anger rise.
The shadowy circle I complete,
And seek again my gloomy seat.
Pass on, proud boast of Ilium's line,
And find a happier fate than mine.'
Thus he; and as the words he said
He turned, and in an instant fled.
Sudden Æneas turns his eyes,
When 'neath the left-hand cliff he spies
The bastions of a broad stronghold,
Engirt with walls of triple fold:
Fierce Phlegethon surrounds the same,
Foaming aloft with torrent flame,
And whirls his roaring rocks:
In front a portal stands displayed,
On adamantine columns stayed:
Nor mortal nor immortal foe
Those massy gates could overthrow
With battle's direst shocks.
An iron tower of equal might
In air uprises steep:
Tisiphone, in red robes dight,
Sits on the threshold day and night
With eyes that know not sleep.
Hark! from within there issue groans,
The cracking of the thong,
The clank of iron o'er the stones
Dragged heavily along.
Æneas halted, and drank in
With startled ear the fiendish din:
'What forms of crime are these?' he cries
'What shapes of penal woe?
What piteous wails assault the skies?
O maid! I fain would know.'
'Brave chief of Troy,' returned the seer,
'No soul from guilt's pollution clear
May yon foul threshold tread:
But me when royal Hecat made
Controller of the Avernian shade,
The realms of torture she displayed,
And through their horrors led.
Stern monarch of these dark domains,
The Gnosian Rhadamanthus reigns:
He hears and judges each deceit,
And makes the soul those crimes declare
Which, glorying in the empty cheat,
It veiled from sight in upper air.
Swift on the guilty, scourge in hand,
Leaps fell Tisiphone, and shakes
Full in their face her loathly snakes,
And calls her sister band.
Then, not till then, the hinges grate,
And slowly opes the infernal gate.
See you who sits that gate to guard?
What presence there keeps watch and ward?
Within, the Hydra's direr shape
Sits with her fifty throats agape.
Then Tartarus with sheer descent
Dips 'neath the ghost-world twice as deep
As towers above earth's continent
The height of heaven's Olympian steep.
'Tis there the eldest born of earth,
The children of Titanic birth,
Hurled headlong by the lightning's blast,
Deep in the lowest gulf are cast.
Aloeus' sons there met my eyes,
Twin monsters of enormous size,
Who stormed the gate of heaven, and strove
From his high seat to pull down Jove.
Salmoneus too I saw in chains,
The victim of relentless pains,
While Jove's own flame he tries to mock
And emulate the thunder-shock.
By four fleet coursers chariot-borne
And scattering brands in impious scorn
Through Elis' streets he rode,
All Greece assisting at the show,
And claimed of fellow-men below
The honours of a God:
Fond fool! to think that thunderous crash
And heaven's inimitable flash
Man's puny craft could counterfeit
With rattling brass and horsehoofs' beat.
Lo! from the sky the Almighty Sire
The levin-bolt's authentic fire
'Mid thickest darkness sped
(No volley his of pine-wood smoke),
And with the inevitable stroke
Despatched him to the dead.
There too is Tityos the accurst,
By earth's all-fostering bosom nurst:
O'er acres nine from end to end
His vast unmeasured limbs extend:
A vulture on his liver preys:
The liver fails not nor decays:
Still o'er that flesh, which breeds new pangs,
With crooked beak the torturer hangs,
Explores its depth with bloody fangs,
And searches for her food;
Still haunts the cavern of his breast,
Nor lets the filaments have rest,
To endless pain renewed.
Why should I name the Lapith race,
Pirithous and Ixion base?
A frowning rock their heads o'ertops,
Which ever nods and almost drops:
Couches where golden pillars shine
Invite them freely to recline,
And banquets smile before their eyne
With kingly splendour proud:
When lo! fell malice in her mien,
Beside them lies the Furies' queen:
From the rich fare she bars their hand,
Thrusts in their face her sulphurous brand,
And thunders hoarse and loud.
Here those who wronged a brother's love,
Assailed a sire's grey hair,
Or for a trustful client wove
A treachery and a snare,
Who wont on hoarded wealth to brood,
In sullen selfish solitude,
Nor called their friends to share the good
(The most in number they),
With those whom vengeance robbed of life
For guilty love of other's wife,
And those who drew the unnatural sword,
Or broke the bond 'twixt slave and lord,
Await the reckoning-day.
Ask not their doom, nor seek to know
What depth receives them there below.
Some roll huge rocks up rising ground,
Or hang, to whirling wheels fast bound:
There in the bottom of the pit
Sits Theseus, and will ever sit:
And Phlegyas warns the ghostly crowd,
Proclaiming through the shades aloud,
'Behold, and learn to practise right,
Nor do the blessed gods despite.'
This to a tyrant master sold
His native land for cursed gold,
Made laws for lucre and unmade:
That dared his daughter's bed to climb:
All, all essayed some monstrous crime,
And perfected the crime essayed.
No—had I e'en a hundred tongues
A hundred mouths, and iron lungs,
Those types of guilt I could not show,
Nor tell the forms of penal woe.'
So spoke the wise Amphrysian dame:
'Now to the task for which we came:
Come, make we speed' she cries:
'I see the work of Cyclop race:
The archway fronts us, face to face,
Where custom wills that we should place
Our precious golden prize.'
She ended: side by side they pace
Along the region drear,
Pass swiftly o'er the mediate space,
And to the gate draw near.
Æneas takes the entrance-way,
Grasps eagerly the lustral spray,
With pure dew sprinkles limbs and brow,
And on the door sets up the bough.
Thus having soothed the queen of Dis,
They reach the realms of tranquil bliss,
Green spaces, folded in with trees,
A paradise of pleasances.
Around the champaign mantles bright
The fulness of purpureal light;
Another sun and stars they know,
That shine like ours, but shine below.
There some disport their manly frames
In wrestling and palæstral games,
Strive on the grassy sward, or stand
Contending on the yellow sand:
Some ply the dance with eager feet
And chant responsive to its beat.
The priest of Thrace in loose attire
Makes music on his seven-stringed lyre;
The sweet notes 'neath his fingers trill,
Or tremble 'neath his ivory quill.
Here dwell the chiefs from Teucer sprung,
Brave heroes, born when earth was young,
Ilus, Assaracus, and he
Who gave his name to Dardany.
Marvelling, Æneas sees from far
The ghostly arms, the shadowy car.
Their spears are planted in the mead:
Free o'er the plain their horses feed:
Whate'er the living found of charms
In chariot and refulgent arms,
Whate'er their care to tend and groom
Their glossy steeds, outlives the tomb.
Others along the sward he sees
Reclined, and feasting at their ease
With chanted Pæans, blessed souls,
Amid a fragrant bay-tree grove,
Whence rising in the world above
Eridanus 'twixt bowering trees
His breadth of water rolls.
Here sees he the illustrious dead
Who fighting for their country bled;
Priests, who while earthly life remained
Preserved that life unsoiled, unstained;
Blest bards, transparent souls and clear,
Whose song was worthy Phœbus' ear;
Inventors, who by arts refined
The common life of human kind,
With all who grateful memory won
By services to others done:
A goodly brotherhood, bedight
With coronals of virgin white.
There as they stream along the plain
The Sibyl thus accosts the train,
Musæus o'er the rest, for he
Stands midmost in that company,
His stately head and shoulders tall
O'ertopping and admired of all:
'Say, happy souls, and thou, blest seer,
In what retreat Anchises bides:
To look on him we journey here,
Across the dread Avernian tides.'
And answer to her quest in brief
Thus made the venerable chief;
'No several home has each assigned;
We dwell where forest pathways wind,
Haunt velvet banks 'neath shady treen,
And meads with rivulets fresh and green.
But climb with me this ridgy hill,
Yon path shall take you where you will.'
He said, and led the way, and showed
The fields of dazzling light:
They gladly choose the downward road,
And issue from the height.
But sire Anchises 'neath the hill
Was calmly scanning at his will
The souls unborn now prisoned there,
One day to pass to upper air;
There as he stood, his wistful eye
Marked all his future progeny,
Their fortunes and their fates assigned,
The shape, the mien, the hand, the mind.
Soon as along the green he spied
Æneas hastening to his side,
With eager act both hands he spread,
And bathed his cheeks with tears, and said:
'At last! and are you come at last?
Has love the perilous road o'erpast,
That love, so tried of yore?
And may I hear that well-known tone,
And speak in accents of my own,
And see that face once more?
Ah yes! I knew the hour would come:
I pondered o'er the days' long sum,
Till anxious care the future knew:
And now completion proves it true.
What lands, what oceans have you crossed!
By what a sea of perils tossed!
How oft I feared the fatal charm
Of Libya's realm might work you harm!'
But he: 'Your shade, your mournful shade,
Appearing oft, my purpose swayed
To visit this far place:
My ships are moored by Tyrrhene brine:
O father, link your hand with mine,
Nor fly your son's embrace!'
He said, and sorrow, as he spoke,
In torrents from his eyelids broke.
Thrice strove the son his sire to clasp;
Thrice the vain phantom mocked his grasp,
No vision of the drowsy night,
No airy current, half so light.
Meantime Æneas in the vale
A sheltered forest sees,
Deep woodlands, where the evening gale
Goes whispering through the trees,
And Lethe river, which flows by
Those dwellings of tranquillity.
Nations and tribes, in countless ranks,
Were crowding to its verdant banks:
As bees afield in summer clear
Beset the flowerets far and near
And round the fair white lilies pour:
The deep hum sounds the champaign o'er.
Æneas, startled at the scene,
Asks wondering what the noise may mean,
What river this, or what the throng:
That crowds so thick its banks along.
His sire replies: 'The souls are they
Whom Fate will reunite to clay:
There stooping down on Lethe's brink
A deep oblivious draught they drink.
Fain would I muster in review
Before your eyes that shadowy crew.
That you, their sire, may joy with me
To think of new-found Italy.'
'O father! and can thought conceive
That happy souls this realm would leave,
And seek the upper sky,
With sluggish clay to reunite?
This direful longing for the light,
Whence comes it, say, and why?'
'Learn then, my son, nor longer pause
In wonder at the hidden cause,'
Replies Anchises, and withdraws
The veil before his eye.
'Know first, the heaven, the earth, the main,
The moon's pale orb, the starry train,
Are nourished by a soul,
A bright intelligence, which darts
Its influence through the several parts
And animates the whole.
Thence souls of men and cattle spring,
And the gay people of the wing,
And those strange shapes that ocean hides
Beneath the smoothness of his tides.
A fiery strength inspires their lives,
An essence that from heaven derives,
Though clogged in part by limbs of clay,
And the dull 'vesture of decay.'
Hence wild desires and grovelling fears,
And human laughter, human tears:
Immured in dungeon-seeming night,
They look abroad, yet see no light.
Nay, when at last the life has fled,
And left the body cold and dead,
E'en then there passes not away
The painful heritage of clay;
Full many a long contracted stain
Perforce must linger deep in grain.
So penal sufferings they endure
For ancient crime, to make them pure:
Some hang aloft in open view
For winds to pierce them through and through,
While others purge their guilt deep-dyed
In burning fire or whelming tide.
Each for himself, we all sustain
The durance of our ghostly pain;
Then to Elysium we repair,
The few, and breathe this blissful air:
Till, many a length of ages past,
The inherent taint is cleansed at last,
And nought remains but ether bright,
The quintessence of heavenly light.
All these, when centuries ten times told
The wheel of destiny have rolled,
The voice divine from far and wide
Calls up to Lethe's river-side,
That earthward they may pass once more
Remembering not the things before,
And with a blind propension yearn
To fleshly bodies to return.'
Anchises spoke, and with him drew
Æneas and the Sibyl too
Amid the shadowy throng,
And mounts a hillock, whence the eye
Might form and countenance descry
As each one passed along.
'Now listen what the future fame
Shall follow the Dardanian name,
What glorious spirits wait
Our progeny to furnish forth:
My tongue shall name each soul of worth,
And show you of your fate.
See you yon gallant youth advance
Leaning upon a headless lance?
He next in upper air holds place,
First offspring of the Italian race
Commixed with ours, your latest child
By Alban name of Silvius styled,
Whom to your eye Lavinia fair
In silvan solitude shall bear,
King, sire of kings, by whom comes down
Through Trojan hands the Alban crown.
Nearest to him see Procas shine,
The glory of Dardania's line,
And Numitor and Capys too,
And one that draws his name from you,
Silvius Æneas, mighty he
Alike in arms and piety,
Should Fate's high pleasure e'er command
The Alban sceptre to his land.
Look how they bloom in youth's fresh flower!
What promise theirs of martial power!
Mark you the civic wreath they wear,
The oaken garland in their hair?
These, these are they, whose hands shall crown
The mountain heights with many a town,
Shall Gabii and Nomentum rear,
There plant Collatia, Cora here,
And leave to after years their stamp
On Bola and on Inuus' camp:
Names that shall then be far renowned,
Now nameless spots of unknown ground.
There to his grandsire's fortune clings
Young Romulus, of Mars' true breed;
From Ilia's womb the warrior springs,
Assaracus' authentic seed.
See on his helm the double crest,
The token by his sire impressed,
That marks him out betimes to share
The heritage of upper air.
Lo! by his fiat called to birth
Imperial Rome shall rise,
Extend her reign to utmost earth,
Her genius to the skies,
And with a wall of girdling stone
Embrace seven hills herself alone—
Blest in an offspring wise and strong:
So through great cities rides along
The mighty Mother, crowned with towers,
Around her knees a numerous line,
A hundred grandsons, all divine,
All tenants of Olympian bowers.
Turn hither now your ranging eye:
Behold a glorious family,
Your sons and sons of Rome:
Lo! Cæsar there and all his seed,
Iulus' progeny, decreed
To pass 'neath heaven's high dome.
This, this is he, so oft the theme
Of your prophetic fancy's dream,
Augustus Cæsar, Jove's own strain;
Restorer of the age of gold
In lands where Saturn ruled of old:
O'er Iud and Garamant extreme
Shall stretch his boundless reign.
Look to that land which lies afar
Beyond the path of sun or star,
Where Atlas on his shoulder rears
The burden of the incumbent spheres.
Egypt e'en now and Caspia hear
The muttered voice of many a seer,
And Nile's seven mouths, disturbed with fear,
Their coming conqueror know:
Alcides in his savage chase
Ne'er travelled o'er so wide a space,
What though the brass-hoofed deer he killed,
And Erymanthus' forest stilled,
And Lerna's depth with terror thrilled
At twanging of his bow:
Nor stretched his conquering march so far,
Who drove his ivy-harnessed car
From Nysa's lofty height, and broke
The tiger's spirit 'neath his yoke.
And shrink we in this glorious hour
From bidding worth assert her power,
Or can our craven hearts recoil
From settling on Ausonian soil?
But who is he at distance seen
With priestly garb and olive green?
That reverend beard, that hoary hair
The royal sage of Rome declare,
Who first shall round the city draw
The limitary lines of law,
Called forth from Cures' petty town
To bear the burden of a crown.
Then he whose voice shall break the rest
That lulled to sleep a nation's breast,
And sound in languid ears the cry
Of Tullus and of victory.
Then Ancus, all too fain to sail
E'en now before a favouring gale.
Say, shall I show you face to face
The monarchs of Tarquinian race,
And vengeful Brutus, proud to wring
The people's fasces from a king?
He first in consul's pomp shall lift
The axe and rods, the freeman's gift,
And call his own rebellious seed
For menaced liberty to bleed.
Unhappy father! howsoe'er
The deed be judged by after days,
His country's love shall all o'erbear,
And unextinguished thirst of praise.
There move the Decii, Drusus here,
Torquatus too with axe severe,
And great Camillus: mark him show
Rome's standards rescued from the foe!
But those who side by side you see
In equal armour bright,
Now twined in bonds of amity
While yet they dwell in night,
Alas! how terrible their strife,
If e'er they win their way to life,
How fierce the shock of war,
This kinsman rushing to the fight
From castellated Alpine height,
That leading his embattled might
From farthest morning star!
Nay, children, nay, your hate unlearn,
Nor 'gainst your country's vitals turn
The valour of her sons:
And thou, do thou the first refrain;
Cast down thy weapons on the plain,
Thou, born of Jove's Olympian strain,
In whom my lifeblood runs!
One, victor in Corinthian war,
Up Capitol shall drive his car,
Proud of Achæans slain:
And one Mycenæ shall o'erthrow,
The city of the Atridan foe.
And e'en Æacides destroy,
Achilles' long-descended boy,
In vengeance for his sires of Troy,
And Pallas' plundered fane.
Who, mighty Cato, Cossus, who
Would keep your names concealed?
The Gracchi, and the Scipios two,
The levins of the field,
Serranus, o'er his furrow bowed,
Or thee, Fabricius, poor yet proud?
Ye Fabii, must your actions done
The speed of panting praise outrun?
Our greatest thou, whose wise delay
Restores the fortune of the day.
Others, I ween, with happier grace
From bronze or stone shall call the face,
Plead doubtful causes, map the skies,
And tell when planets set or rise:
But ye, my Romans, still control
The nations far and wide:
Be this your genius—to impose
The rule of peace on vanquished foes,
Show pity to the humbled soul,
And crush the sons of pride.'
He ceased; and ere their awe was o'er,
Took up his prophecy once more:
'Lo, great Marcellus! see him tower
With kingly spoils, in conquering power,
The warrior host above!
He in a day of dire debate
Shall 'stablish firm the reeling state,
The Carthaginian bands o'erride,
Break down the Gaul's insurgent pride,
And the third trophy dedicate
To Rome's Feretrian Jove.'
Then spoke Æneas, who beheld
Beside the warrior pace
A youth, full-armed, by none excelled
In beauty's manly grace,
But on his brow was nought of mirth,
And his fixed eyes were dropped on earth:—
'Who, father, he, who thus attends
Upon that chief divine?
His son, or other who descends
From his illustrious line?
What whispers in the encircling crowd!
The portance of his steps how proud!
But gloomy night, as of the dead,
Flaps her sad pinions o'er his head.'
The sire replies, while down his cheek
The teardrops roll apace:
'Ah son! compel me not to speak
The sorrows of our race!
That youth the Fates but just display
To earth, nor let him longer stay:
With gifts like these for aye to hold,
Rome's heart had e'en been overbold.
Ah! what a groan from Mars's plain
Shall o'er the city sound!
How wilt thou gaze on that long train,
Old Tiber, rolling to the main
Beside his new-raised mound!
No youth of Ilium's seed inspires
With hope as fair his Latian sires:
Nor Rome shall dandle on her knee
A nursling so adored as he.
O piety! O ancient faith!
O hand untamed in battle scathe!
No foe had lived before his sword,
Stemmed he on foot the war's red tide
Or with relentless rowel gored
His foaming charger's side.
Dear child of pity! shouldst thou burst
The dungeon-bars of Fate accurst,
Our own Marcellus thou!
Bring lilies here, in handfuls bring:
Their lustrous blooms I fain would fling:
Such honour to a grandson's shade
By grandsire hands may well be paid:
Yet O! it 'vails not now!'
'Mid such discourse, at will they range
The mist-clad region, dim and strange.
So when the sire the son had led
Through all the ranks of happy dead,
And stirred his spirit into flame
At thought of centuries of fame,
With prophet power he next relates
The war that in the future waits,
Italia's fated realm describes,
Latinus' town, Laurentum's tribes,
And tells him how to face or fly
Each cloud that darkens o'er his sky.—
Sleep gives his name to portals twain:
One all of horn, they say,
Through which authentic spectres gain
Quick exit into day,
And one which bright with ivory gleams,
Whence Pluto sends delusive dreams.
Conversing still, the sire attends
The travellers on their road,
And through the ivory portal sends
From forth the unseen abode.
The chief betakes him to the fleet,
Well pleased again his crew to meet:
Then for Caieta's port sets sail,
Straight coasting by the strand:
The anchors from the prow they hale:
The sterns are turned to land.
Corrigenda: