So saying to the helm he clung, nor ever left his hold,
And all the while the stars above his eyen toward them drew.
But lo, the God brought forth a bough wet with Lethean dew,
And sleepy with the might of Styx, and shook it therewithal
Over his brow, and loosed his lids delaying still to fall:
But scarce in first of stealthy sleep his limbs all loosened lay,
When, weighing on him, did he tear a space of stern away,
And rolled him, helm and wrack and all, into the flowing wave
Headlong, and crying oft in vain for fellowship to save:860
Then Sleep himself amid thin air flew, borne upon the wing.
No less the ship-host sails the sea, its safe way following
Untroubled 'neath the plighted word of Father Neptune's mouth.
So to the Sirens' rocks they draw, a dangerous pass forsooth
In yore agone, now white with bones of many a perished man.
Thence ever roared the salt sea now as on the rocks it ran;
And there the Father felt the ship fare wild and fitfully,
Her helmsman lost; so he himself steered o'er the night-tide sea,
Sore weeping; for his fellow's end his inmost heart did touch:
"O Palinure, that trowed the sky and soft seas overmuch,870
Now naked on an unknown shore thy resting-place shall be!"
BOOK VI.
ARGUMENT.
ÆNEAS COMETH TO THE SIBYL OF CUMÆ, AND BY HER IS LED INTO THE UNDER-WORLD, AND THERE BEHOLDETH MANY STRANGE THINGS, AND IN THE END MEETETH HIS FATHER, ANCHISES, WHO TELLETH HIM OF THE DAYS TO COME.
So spake he weeping, and his host let loose from every band,
Until at last they draw anigh Cumæ's Euboean strand.
They turn the bows from off the main; the toothèd anchors' grip
Makes fast the keels; the shore is hid by many a curvèd ship.
Hot-heart the youthful company leaps on the Westland's shore;
Part falleth on to seek them out the seed of fiery store
That flint-veins hide; part runneth through the dwellings of the deer,
The thicket steads, and each to each the hidden streams they bare.
But good Æneas seeks the house where King Apollo bides,
The mighty den, the secret place set far apart, that hides10
The awful Sibyl, whose great soul and heart he seeketh home,
The Seer of Delos, showing her the hidden things to come:
And so the groves of Trivia and golden house they gain.
Now Dædalus, as tells the tale, fleeing from Minos' reign,
Durst trust himself to heaven on wings swift hastening, and swim forth
Along the road ne'er tried before unto the chilly north;
So light at last o'er Chalcis' towers he hung amid the air,
Then, come adown to earth once more, to thee he hallowed here,
O Phœbus, all his wingèd oars, and built thee mighty fane:
Androgeus' death was on the doors; then paying of the pain20
By those Cecropians; bid, alas, each year to give in turn
Seven bodies of their sons;—lo there, the lots drawn from the urn.
But facing this the Gnosian land draws up amid the sea:
There is the cruel bull-lust wrought, and there Pasiphaë
Embraced by guile: the blended babe is there, the twiformed thing,
The Minotaur, that evil sign of Venus' cherishing;
And there the tangled house and toil that ne'er should be undone:
But ruth of Dædalus himself a queen's love-sorrow won,
And he himself undid the snare and winding wilderment.
Guiding the blind feet with the thread. Thou, Icarus, wert blent30
Full oft with such a work be sure, if grief forbade it not;
But twice he tried to shape in gold the picture of thy lot,
And twice the father's hands fell down.