Then, unsheathing the sword, she plunged it into her bosom and fell down upon the pyre.
Her handmaidens, seeing her fall, rent the air with their cries. And Anna, rushing in, raised her dying sister in her arms, striving in vain to stanch the flowing blood, and crying with tears: "Oh, sister, was it for this that you bade me raise the pyre? Ah, would that you had let me be your companion in death!"
But the last words of Dido, Queen of Carthage, had been spoken.
Far out at sea, Æneas saw a great smoke rising from Carthage, as it were from a funeral pyre. And a sore pang smote him, and bitterly he divined what had passed. But he held upon his destined way, nor looked he back again, but turned his eyes towards the promised land of Latium.
ÆNEAS IN HADES
BY V. C. TURNBULL
"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 labor—this
May task a hero's might."