The Æneids of Virgil, Done into English Verse

by Virgil

Long had their eyes read o'er
Such matters, but Achates, now, sent on a while before,
Was come with that Deïphobe, the Glaucus' child, the maid
Of Phœbus and of Trivia, and such a word she said:
"The hour will have no tarrying o'er fair shows for idle eyes;
'Twere better from an unyoked herd seven steers to sacrifice,
And e'en so many hosts of ewes in manner due culled out."

She spake; her holy bidding then the warriors go about,40
Nor tarry: into temple high she calls the Teucrian men,
Where the huge side of Cumæ's rock is carven in a den,
Where are an hundred doors to come, an hundred mouths to go,
Whence e'en so many awful sounds, the Sibyl's answers flow.
But at the threshold cried the maid: "Now is the hour awake
For asking—Ah, the God, the God!"
And as the word she spake
Within the door, all suddenly her visage and her hue
Were changed, and all her sleekèd hair, and gasping breath she drew,
And with the rage her wild heart swelled, and greater was she grown,
Nor mortal-voiced; for breath of God upon her heart was blown50
As He drew nigher:
"Art thou dumb of vows and prayers, forsooth,
Trojan Æneas, art thou dumb? unprayed, the mighty mouth
Of awe-mazed house shall open not."
Even such a word she said,
Then hushed: through hardened Teucrian bones swift ran the chilly dread,
And straight the king from inmost heart the flood of prayers doth pour:
"Phœbus, who all the woe of Troy hast pitied evermore,
Who Dardan shaft and Paris' hands in time agone didst speed
Against Achilles' body there, who me withal didst lead
Over the seas that go about so many a mighty land,
Through those Massylian folks remote, and length of Syrtes' sand,60
Till now I hold that Italy that ever drew aback;
And now perchance a Trojan fate we, even we may lack.
Ye now, O Gods and Goddesses, to whom a stumbling-stone
Was Ilium in the days of old, and Dardan folk's renown,
May spare the folk of Pergamus. But thou, O holiest,
O Maid that knowest things to come, grant thou the Latin rest
To Teucrian men, and Gods of Troy, the straying way-worn powers!
For surely now no realm I ask but such as Fate makes ours.
To Phœbus and to Trivia then a temple will I raise,
A marble world; in Phœbus' name will hallow festal days:70
Thee also in our realm to be full mighty shrines await,
There will I set thine holy lots and hidden words of fate
Said to my folk, and hallow there well-chosen men for thee,
O Holy One: But give thou not thy songs to leaf of tree,
Lest made a sport to hurrying gales confusedly they wend;
But sing them thou thyself, I pray!"
Therewith his words had end.
Meanwhile the Seer-maid, not yet tamed to Phœbus, raves about
The cave, still striving from her breast to cast the godhead out;
But yet the more the mighty God her mouth bewildered wears,
Taming her wild heart, fashioning her soul with weight of fears.80
At last the hundred mighty doors fly open, touched of none,
And on the air the answer floats of that foreseeing one:

"O Thou, who dangers of the sea hast throughly worn away,
Abides thee heavier toil of earth: the Dardans on a day
Shall come to that Lavinian land,—leave fear thereof afar:
Yet of their coming shall they rue. Lo, war, war, dreadful war!
And Tiber bearing plenteous blood upon his foaming back.
Nor Simoïs there, nor Xanthus' stream, nor Dorian camp shall lack:
Yea, once again in Latin land Achilles is brought forth,
God-born no less: nor evermore shall mighty Juno's wrath90
Fail Teucrian men. Ah, how shalt thou, fallen on evil days,
To all Italian lands and folks thine hands beseeching raise!
Lo, once again a stranger bride brings woeful days on Troy,
Once more the wedding of a foe.
But thou, yield not to any ill, but set thy face, and wend
The bolder where thy fortune leads; the dawn of perils' end,
Whence least thou mightest look for it, from Greekish folk shall come."

Suchwise the Seer of Cumæ sang from out her inner home
The dreadful double words, wherewith the cavern moans again,
As sooth amid the mirk she winds: Apollo shakes the rein100
Over the maddened one, and stirs the strings about her breast;
But when her fury lulled awhile and maddened mouth had rest,
Hero Æneas thus began:
"No face of any care,
O maiden, can arise on me in any wise unware:
Yea, all have I forecast; my mind hath worn through everything.
One prayer I pray, since this they call the gateway of the King
Of Nether-earth, and Acheron's o'erflow this mirky mere:
O let me meet the eyes and mouth of my dead father dear;
O open me the holy gate, and teach me where to go!
I bore him on these shoulders once from midmost of the foe,110
From flame and weapons thousandfold against our goings bent;
My yoke-fellow upon the road o'er every sea he went,
'Gainst every threat of sea and sky a hardy heart he held,
Though worn and feeble past decay and feebleness of eld.
Yea, he it was who bade me wend, a suppliant, to thy door,
And seek thee out: O holy one, cast thou thy pity o'er
Father and son! All things thou canst, nor yet hath Hecaté
Set thee to rule Avernus' woods an empty Queen to be.
Yea, Orpheus wrought with Thracian harp and strings of tuneful might
To draw away his perished love from midmost of the night.120
Yea, Pollux, dying turn for turn, his brother borrowed well,
And went and came the road full oft—Of Theseus shall I tell?
Or great Alcides? Ah, I too from highest Jove am sprung."

Such were the words he prayed withal and round the altars clung:
Then she fell speaking:
"Man of Troy, from blood of Godhead grown,
Anchises' child, Avernus' road is easy faring down;
All day and night is open wide the door of Dis the black;
But thence to gain the upper air, and win the footsteps back,
This is the deed, this is the toil: Some few have had the might,
Beloved by Jove the just, upborne to heaven by valour's light,130
The Sons of God. 'Twixt it and us great thicket fills the place
That slow Cocytus' mirky folds all round about embrace;
But if such love be in thine heart, such yearning in thee lie,
To swim twice o'er the Stygian mere and twice to see with eye
Black Tartarus, and thou must needs this idle labour win,
Hearken what first there is to do: the dusky tree within
Lurks the gold bough with golden leaves and limber twigs of gold,
To nether Juno consecrate; this all these woods enfold,
Dim shadowy places cover it amid the hollow dale;
To come unto the under-world none living may avail140
Till he that growth of golden locks from off the tree hath shorn;
For this fair Proserpine ordained should evermore be borne
Her very gift: but, plucked away, still faileth not the thing,
Another golden stem instead hath leafy tide of spring.
So throughly search with eyes: thine hand aright upon it lay
When thou hast found: for easily 'twill yield and come away
If the Fates call thee: otherwise no might may overbear
Its will, nor with the hardened steel the marvel mayst thou shear.

—Ah! further,—of thy perished friend as yet thou nothing know'st,
Whose body lying dead and cold defileth all thine host,150
While thou beseechest answering words, and hangest on our door:
Go, bring him to his own abode and heap the grave mound o'er;
Bring forth the black-wooled ewes to be first bringing back of grace:
So shalt thou see the Stygian groves, so shalt thou see the place
That hath no road for living men."
So hushed her mouth shut close:
But sad-faced and with downcast eyes therefrom Æneas goes,
And leaves the cave, still turning o'er those coming things, so dim,
So dark to see. Achates fares nigh fellow unto him,
And ever 'neath like load of cares he lets his footsteps fall:
And many diverse words they cast each unto each withal,160
What was the dead friend and the grave whereof the seer did teach.
But when they gat them down at last upon the barren beach,
They saw Misenus lying dead by death but lightly earned;
Misenus, son of Æolus; no man more nobly learned
In waking up the war with brass and singing Mars alight.
Great Hector's fellow was he erst, with Hector through the fight
He thrust, by horn made glorious, made glorious by the spear.
But when from Hector life and all Achilles' hand did tear,
Dardan Æneas' man became that mightiest under shield,
Nor unto any worser lord his fellowship would yield.170
Now while by chance through hollow shell he blew across the sea,
And witless called the very Gods his singing-foes to be,
The envious Triton caught him up, if ye the tale may trow,
And sank the hero 'twixt the rocks in foaming waters' flow.
Wherefore about him weeping sore were gathered all the men,
And good Æneas chief of all: the Sibyl's bidding then
Weeping they speed, and loiter not, but heap the tree-boughs high
Upon the altar of the dead to raise it to the sky:
Then to the ancient wood they fare, high dwelling of wild things;
They fell the pine, and 'neath the axe the smitten holm-oak rings;180
With wedge they cleave the ashen logs, and knitted oaken bole,
Full fain to split; and mighty elms down from the mountains roll.

Amid the work Æneas is, who hearteneth on his folk,
As with such very tools as they he girds him for the stroke;
But through the sorrow of his heart such thought as this there strays,
And looking toward the waste of wood such word as this he prays:
"O if that very golden bough would show upon the tree,
In such a thicket and so great; since all she told of thee,
The seer-maid, O Misenus lost, was true and overtrue!"

But scarcely had he spoken thus, when lo, from heaven there flew190
Two doves before his very eyes, who settled fluttering
On the green grass: and therewithal that mightiest battle-king
Knoweth his mother's birds new-come, and joyful poureth prayer:
"O, if a way there be at all, lead ye amid the air,
Lead on unto the thicket place where o'er the wealthy soil
The rich bough casteth shadow down! Fail not my eyeless toil,
O Goddess-mother!"
So he saith, and stays his feet to heed
What token they may bring to him, and whitherward they speed.
So on they flutter pasturing, with such a space between,
As they by eyes of following folk may scantly well be seen;200
But when Avernus' jaws at last, the noisome place, they reach,
They rise aloft and skim the air, and settle each by each
Upon the very wished-for place, yea high amid the tree,
Where the changed light through twigs of gold shines forth diversedly;
As in the woods mid winter's chill puts forth the mistletoe,
And bloometh with a leafage strange his own tree ne'er did sow,
And with his yellow children hath the rounded trunk in hold,
So in the dusky holm-oak seemed that bough of leafy gold,
As through the tinkling shaken foil the gentle wind went by:
Then straight Æneas caught and culled the tough stem greedily,210
And to the Sibyl's dwelling-place the gift in hand he bore.

Nor less meanwhile the Teucrians weep Misenus on the shore,
And do last service to the dead that hath no thanks to pay.
And first fat fagots of the fir and oaken logs they lay,
And pile a mighty bale and rich, and weave the dusk-leaved trees
Between its sides, and set before the funeral cypresses,
And over all in seemly wise the gleaming weapons pile:
But some speed fire bewavèd brass and water's warmth meanwhile,
And wash all o'er and sleek with oil the cold corpse of the dead:
Goes up the wail; the limbs bewept they streak upon the bed,220
And cast thereon the purple cloths, the well-known noble gear.
Then some of them, they shoulder up the mighty-fashioned bier,
Sad service! and put forth the torch with faces from him turned,
In fashion of the fathers old: there the heaped offerings burned,
The frankincense, the dainty meats, the bowls o'erflowed with oil.
But when the ashes were sunk down and fire had rest from toil,
The relics and the thirsty ash with unmixed wine they wet.
Then the gleaned bones in brazen urn doth Corynæus set,
Who thrice about the gathered folk the stainless water bore.
As from the fruitful olive-bough light dew he sprinkled o'er,230
And cleansed the men, and spake withal last farewell to the dead.
But good Æneas raised a tomb, a mound huge fashionèd,
And laid thereon the hero's arms and oar and battle-horn,
Beneath an airy hill that thence Misenus' name hath borne,
And still shall bear it, not to die till time hath faded out.

This done, those deeds the Sibyl bade he setteth swift about:
A deep den is there, pebble-piled, with mouth that gapeth wide;
Black mere and thicket shadowy-mirk the secret of it hide.
And over it no fowl there is may wend upon the wing
And 'scape the bane; its blackened jaws bring forth such venoming.240
Such is the breath it bears aloft unto the hollow heaven;
So to the place the Greekish folk have name of Fowl-less given.