Page:Aeneid (Conington 1866).djvu/266

For thee, heaven's monarch may not hear
That longer thou in upper air
Shouldst ply thine errant wing.
Give place: if further chance betide,
Myself the circumstance will guide.'
Saturnia spoke: the Fury spread
Her serpent wings for flight,
Dives to the regions of the dead,
And leaves the upper light.
In mid Italia lies a place
Retiring 'neath a mountain's base,
Amsanctus' vale, pent in between
Two wooded slopes of dusky green,
While in the midst a torrent raves,
As 'twixt the rocks it winds its waves.
An awful cavern there men show,
The very gorge of Dis below,
And gulfs whence Acheron bursts to sight
Ope jaws of pestilential night:
There plunged the hateful fiend beneath,
And earth and sky again took breath.

Juno takes up the unfinished plan
And perfects what the fiend began.
Straight to the city from the plain
The shepherds speed, and bear the slain,
Young Almo in his comely grace
And old Galæsus' mangled face,
Make street and home with clamour ring,
Implore the gods, adjure the king.
Fierce Turnus takes the tide at flood:
His loud voice swells the cry for blood
That blazes up to heaven:
'Strange slips defile the royal stem:
The Phrygians share the diadem,
Himself from Latium driven.'