The next place is of woeful ones, who sackless, with their hands
Compassed their death, and weary-sick of light without avail
Cast life away; but now how fain to bear the poor man's bale
Beneath the heaven, the uttermost of weary toil to bear!
But law forbiddeth: the sad wave of that unlovely mere
Is changeless bond; and ninefold Styx compelleth to abide.
Nor far from thence behold the meads far spread on every side,440
The Mourning Meads—in tale have they such very name and sign.
There those whom hard love ate away with cruel wasting pine
Are hidden in the lonely paths with myrtle-groves about,
Nor in the very death itself may wear their trouble out:
Phædra he saw, Procris he saw, and Eriphyle sad.
Baring that cruel offspring's wound her loving body had:
Evadne and Pasiphaë, Laodamia there
He saw, and Cænis, once a youth and then a maiden fair,
And shifted by the deed of fate to his old shape again.
Midst whom Phoenician Dido now, fresh from the iron bane,450
Went wandering in the mighty wood: and when the Trojan man
First dimly knew her standing by amid the glimmer wan
—E'en as in earliest of the month one sees the moon arise,
Or seems to see her at the least in cloudy drift of skies—
He spake, and let the tears fall down by all love's sweetness stirred:
"Unhappy Dido, was it true, that bitter following word,
That thou wert dead, by sword hadst sought the utter end of all?
Was it thy very death I wrought? Ah! on the stars I call,
I call the Gods and whatso faith the nether earth may hold,
To witness that against my will I left thy field and fold!460
But that same bidding of the Gods, whereby e'en now I wend
Through dark, through deserts rusty-rough, through night without an end,
Drave me with doom. Nor held my heart in anywise belief
That my departure from thy land might work thee such a grief.
O stay thy feet! nor tear thyself from my beholding thus.
Whom fleest thou? this word is all that Fate shall give to us."
Such were the words Æneas spake to soothe her as she stood
With stern eyes flaming, while his heart swelled with the woeful flood:
But, turned away, her sick eyes still she fixed upon the earth;
Nor was her face moved any more by all his sad words' birth470
Than if Marpesian crag or flint had held her image so:
At last she flung herself away, and fled, his utter foe,
Unto the shady wood, where he, her husband of old days,
Gives grief for grief, and loving heart beside her loving lays.
Nor less Æneas, smitten sore by her unworthy woes,
With tears and pity followeth her as far away she goes.
But thence the meted way they wear, and reach the outer field,
Where dwell apart renownèd men, the mighty under shield:
There Tydeus meets him; there he sees the great fight-glorious man,
Parthenopæus; there withal Adrastus' image wan;480
And there the Dardans battle-slain, for whom the wailing went
To very heaven: their long array he saw with sad lament:
Glaucus and Medon there he saw, Thersilochus, the three
Antenor-sons, and Polyphoete, by Ceres' mystery
Made holy, and Idæus still in car with armèd hand:
There on the right side and the left the straying spirits stand.
Nor is one sight of him enough; it joyeth them to stay
And pace beside, asking for why he wendeth such a way.
But when the lords of Danaan folk, and Agamemnon's hosts,
Behold the man and gleaming arms amid the dusky ghosts,490
They fall a-quaking full of fear: some turn their back to fly
As erst they ran unto the ships; some raise a quavering cry,
But never from their gaping vain will swell the shout begun.
And now Deïphobus he sees, the glorious Priam's son;
But all his body mangled sore, his face all evilly hacked,
His face and hands; yea, and his head, laid waste, the ear-lobes lacked,
And nostrils cropped unto the root by wicked wound and grim.
Scarcely he knew the trembling man, who strove to hide from him
Those torments dire, but thus at last he spake in voice well known:
"O great in arms, Deïphobus, from Teucer's blood come down,500
Who had the heart to work on thee such bitter wicked bale?
Who had the might to deal thee this? Indeed I heard the tale,
That, tired with slaying of the Greeks on that last night of all,
Upon a heap of mingled death thou didst to slumber fall:
And I myself an empty tomb on that Rhœtean coast
Set up to thee, and thrice aloud cried blessing on thy ghost:
Thy name and arms still keep the place; but thee I found not, friend,
To set thee in thy fathers' earth ere I too needs must wend."
To him the child of Priam spake: "Friend, nought thou left'st undone;
All things thou gav'st Deïphobus, and this dead shadowy one:510
My Fates and that Laconian Bane, the Woman wicked-fair,
Have drowned me in this sea of ills: she set these tokens here.
How midst a lying happiness we wore the last night by
'Thou know'st: yea; overwell belike thou hold'st that memory
Now when the baneful Horse of Fate high Pergamus leapt o'er,
With womb come nigh unto the birth of weaponed men of war,
She, feigning hallowed dance, led on a holy-shouting band
Of Phrygian maids, and midst of them, the bale-fire in her hand,
Called on the Danaan men to come, high on the castle's steep:
But me, outworn with many cares and weighed adown with sleep,520
The hapless bride-bed held meanwhile, and on me did there press
Deep rest and sweet, most like indeed to death's own quietness.
Therewith my glorious wife all arms from out the house withdrew,
And stole away from o'er my head the sword whose faith I knew,
Called Menelaüs to the house and opened him the door,
Thinking, forsooth, great gift to give to him who loved so sore,
To quench therewith the tale gone by of how she did amiss.
Why linger? They break in on me, and he their fellow is,
Ulysses, preacher of all guilt.—O Gods, will ye not pay
The Greeks for all? belike with mouth not godless do I pray.530
—But tell me, thou, what tidings new have brought thee here alive?
Is it blind strayings o'er the sea that hither doth thee drive,
Or bidding of the Gods? Wherein hath Fortune worn thee so,
That thou, midst sunless houses sad, confused lands, must go?"
But as they gave and took in talk, Aurora at the last
In rosy wain the topmost crown of upper heaven had passed,
And all the fated time perchance in suchwise had they spent;
But warning of few words enow the Sibyl toward him sent:
"Night falls, Æneas, weeping here we wear the hours in vain;
And hard upon us is the place where cleaves the road atwain;540
On by the walls of mighty Dis the right-hand highway goes,
Our way to that Elysium: the left drags on to woes
Ill-doers' souls, and bringeth them to godless Tartarus."
Then spake Deïphobus: "Great seer, be not o'erwroth with us:
I will depart and fill the tale, and unto dusk turn back:
Go forth, our glory, go and gain the better fate I lack!"
And even with that latest word his feet he tore away.
But suddenly Æneas turned, and lo, a city lay
Wide-spread 'neath crags upon the left, girt with a wall threefold;
And round about in hurrying flood a flaming river rolled,550
E'en Phlegethon of Tartarus, with rattling, stony roar:
In face with adamantine posts was wrought the mighty door,
Such as no force of men nor might of heaven-abiders high
May cleave with steel; an iron tower thence riseth to the sky:
And there is set Tisiphone, with girded blood-stained gown,
Who, sleepless, holdeth night and day the doorway of the town.
Great wail and cruel sound of stripes that city sendeth out,
And iron clanking therewithal of fetters dragged about.
Then fearfully Æneas stayed, and drank the tumult in:
"O tell me, Maiden, what is there? What images of sin?560
What torments bear they? What the wail yon city casts abroad?"