For this rewarded, tiger-drawn
Rode Bacchus, reining necks before
Untamed; for this War’s horses bore
Quirinus up from Acheron,
When in heav’n’s conclave Juno said,
Thrice welcomed: “Troy is in the dust;
Troy, by a judge accursed, unjust,
And that strange woman prostrated.
“The day Laomedon ignored
His god-pledged word, resigned to me
And Pallas ever-pure, was she,
Her people, and their traitor lord.
“No more the Greek girl’s guilty guest
Sits splendour-girt: Priam’s perjured sons
Find not against the mighty ones
Of Greece a shield in Hector’s breast:
“And, long drawn out by private jars,
The war sleeps. Lo! my wrath is o’er:
And him the Trojan vestal bore
(Sprung of that hated line) to Mars,
“To Mars restore I. His be rest
In halls of light: by him be drained
The nectar-bowl, his place obtained
In the calm companies of the blest.
“While betwixt Rome and Ilion raves
A length of ocean, where they will
Rise empires for the exiles still:
While Paris’s and Priam’s graves
“Are hoof-trod, and the she-wolf breeds
Securely there, unharmed shall stand
Rome’s lustrous Capitol, her hand
Impose proud laws on trampled Medes.
“Wide-feared, to far-off climes be borne
Her story; where the central main
Europe and Libya parts in twain,
Where full Nile laves a land of corn:
“The buried secret of the mine,
(Best left there) resolute to spurn,
And not to man’s base uses turn
With hand that spares not things divine.