BOOK VII.
ARGUMENT.
ÆNEAS AND HIS TROJANS TAKE LAND BY THE TIBER-MOUTH, AND KING LATINUS PLIGHTETH PEACE WITH THEM; WHICH PEACE IS BROKEN BY THE WILL OF JUNO, AND ALL MEN MAKE THEM READY FOR WAR.
Thou also, O Æneas' nurse, Caieta, didst avail,
E'en dying, unto these our shores to leave a deathless tale:
And yet thy glory guards the place, thy bones have won it name
Within the great Hesperian land, if that be prize of fame.
But good Æneas, when at last all funeral rites were paid
And the grave heaped, when in a while the ocean's face was laid,
Went on his way with sails aloft, and left the port behind:
The faint winds breathe about the night, the moon shines clear and kind;
Beneath the quivering shining road the wide seas gleaming lie.
But next the beach of Circe's land their swift ships glide anigh,10
Where the rich daughter of the Sun with constant song doth rouse
The groves that none may enter in, or in her glorious house
Burneth the odorous cedar-torch amidst the dead of night,
While through the slender warp she speeds the shrilling shuttle light.
And thence they hear the sound of groans, and wrath of lions dread
Fretting their chains; and roaring things o'er night-tide fallen dead;
And bristled swine and cagèd bears cried bitter-wild, and sore;
And from the shapes of monstrous wolves the howling seaward bore.
These from the likeness of mankind had cruel Circe won
By herbs of might, and shape and hide of beasts upon them done.20
But lest the godly Trojan folk such wickedness should bear,
Lest borne into the baneful bay they bring their keels o'er near,
Their sails did Father Neptune fill with fair and happy breeze,
And sped their flight and sent them swift across the hurrying seas.
Now reddened all the sea with rays, and from the heavenly plain
The golden-hued Aurora shone amidst her rosy wain,
Then fell the winds and every air sank down in utter sleep,
And now the shaven oars must strive amid the sluggish deep:
Therewith Æneas sees a wood rise from the water's face,
And there it is the Tiber's flood amidst a pleasant place,30
With many a whirling eddy swift and yellowing with sand
Breaks into sea; and diversely above on either hand
The fowl that love the river-bank and haunt the river-bed
Sweetened the air with plenteous song and through the thicket fled.
So there Æneas bids his folk shoreward their bows to lay,
And joyfully he entereth in the stream's o'ershadowed way.
To aid, Erato! while I tell what kings, what deedful tide,
What manner life, in Latin land did anciently abide
When first the stranger brought his ships to that Ausonian shore;
Yea help me while I call aback beginnings of the war.40
O Goddess, hearten thou thy seer! dread war my song-speech saith:
It tells the battle in array, and kings full fain of death,
The Tyrrhene host, all Italy, spurred on the sword to bear:
Yea, greater matters are afoot, a mightier deed I stir.
The king Latinus, old of days, ruled o'er the fields' increase,
And cities of the people there at rest in long-drawn peace:
Of Faunus and Laurentian nymph, Marica, do we learn
That he was born: but Faunus came of Picus, who must turn
To thee, O Saturn, for his sire: 'twas he that blood began.
Now, as God would, this king had got no son to grow a man,50
For he who first had dawned on him in earliest youth had waned:
A daughter only such a house, so great a world sustained,
Now ripe for man, the years fulfilled that made her meet for bed:
And her much folk of Latin land were fain enow to wed,
And all Ausonia: first of whom, and fairest to be seen,
Was Turnus, great from fathers great; and him indeed the queen
Was fain of for her son-in-law with wondrous love of heart:
But dreadful portents of the Gods the matter thrust apart.
Amidmost of the inner house a laurel-tree upbore
Its hallowed leaves, that fear of God had kept through years of yore:60
Father Latinus first, they said, had found it there, when he
Built there his burg and hallowed it to Phœbus' deity,
And on Laurentian people thence the name thereof had laid;
On whose top now the gathered bees, O wondrous to be said!
Borne on with mighty humming noise amid the flowing air,
Had settled down, and foot to foot all interwoven there,
In sudden swarm they hung adown from off the leafy bough.
But straight the seer cries out: "Ah me! I see him coming now,
The stranger man; I see a host from that same quarter come
To this same quarter, to be lords amidst our highest home."70