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Fair town! her sons of high degree,
Though not unmixed their blood.
Three races swell the mingled stream:
Four states from each derive their birth;
Herself among them sits supreme,
Her Tuscan blood her chiefest worth.
Five hundred thence Mezentius draws,
Sworn foes to his unrighteous cause,
A helmed and shielded train:
And Mincius, whom Benacus breeds,
In grey apparailment of reeds
Their vengeful barks to battle leads,
And launches on the main.

There huge Aulestes ploughs the deep
With all his hundred oars:
Thrown upward by the enormous sweep
The billow foams and roars.
A Triton on the vessel stood
And blew defiance to the flood:
His face a man's and half his side,
A fish's all the rest:
With giant force he stems the tide,
And rears his savage breast.

So many chiefs, a nation's flower,
Across the sea conveyed
In thirty ships their friendly power,
And brought the Trojans aid.

The day had vanished from on high,
And Phœbe o'er the middle sky
Impelled her chariot pale:
Æneas, robbed by care of rest,
The vessel's course as helmsman dressed,
And trimmed the shifting sail.