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Much favoured of the queen, who strove
With, earnest zeal to speed his love:
But prodigies with dire alarms
Deny the maiden to his arms.
Within the palace' centre bred
An ancient tree of laurel stood:
Long years of reverential dread
Had gathered round its sacred wood:
Men say 'twas by Latinus found
When first he traced the castle's bound:
He reared it from its native sod,
Devoted to the Delphian god,
And taught his settlers thence to claim
For their new town Laurentum's name.
To its high top a swarm of bees
Came warping on the summer breeze:
And, linking feet with feet, they sway
In pendent cluster from the spray.
'A stranger comes' exclaimed the seer
'A foreign host: I see them near:
The same the quarter of their flight,
The same the region where they light:
E'en now in plenitude of power
They hold the city's topmost tower.'
Then too, as standing by her sire
Lavinia tends the altar-fire,
Her tresses—prodigy untold—
Catch the fierce flame with eager hold,
And on her beauteous head-tire preys
The crackling stream of torrent blaze.
Her royal locks are all alight,
Her coronal, with jewels bright:
Till, wrapt in smoke and glare, she showers
Live sparkles through the palace bowers.
With mingled wonder and affright
The boding seers proclaimed the sight: