Death-smitten, at the spear she plucks; amidst her bones it lay,
About the ribs, that iron point in baneful wound and deep:
She droopeth bloodless, droop her eyes acold in deadly sleep;
From out her cheeks the colour flees that once therewith were clear.
Then, passing, Acca she bespeaks, her very maiden peer,820
Her who alone of all the rest might share Camilla's rede,
A trusted friend: such words to her the dying mouth doth speed:
"Sister, thus far my might hath gone; but now this bitter wound
Maketh an end, and misty dark are grown all things around:
Fly forth, and unto Turnus bear my very latest words;
Let him to fight, and from the town thrust off the Trojan swords—
Farewell, farewell!"—
And with the word the bridle failed her hold,
And unto earth unwilling now she flowed, and waxen cold
Slowly she slipped her body's bonds; her languid neck she bent,
Laid down the head that death had seized, and left her armament;830
And with a groan her life flew forth disdainful into night.
Then rose the cry and smote aloft the starry golden height,
And with the Queen so felled to field the fight grew young again,
And thronged and serried falleth on the Teucrian might and main,
The Tuscan Dukes, Evander's host, the wings of Arcady.
But Opis, Dian's watch of war, set on the mountain high,
A long while now all unafeard had eyed the battle o'er,
And when far off, amid the cries of maddened men of war,
She saw Camilla win the death by bitter ill award,839
She groaned, and from her inmost heart such words as these she poured:
"Alas, O maid, thou payest it o'ermuch and bitterly,
That thou unto the Teucrian folk the challenge needs must cry.
Ah, nothing it availed thee, maid, through deserts of the deer
To worship Dian, or our shafts upon thy back to bear.
And yet the Queen hath left thee not alone amidst of shame
In grip of death; nor shalt thou die a death without a name
In people's ears; nor yet as one all unavenged be told:
For whosoever wronged thy flesh with wounding overbold
Shall pay the penalty well earned."
Now 'neath the mountains high,
All clad with shady holm-oaks o'er, a mighty mound doth lie,850
The tomb of King Dercennus called, Laurentum's lord of yore;
And thitherward her speedy feet that loveliest Goddess bore,
And there abiding, Arruns spied from off the high-heaped mound
But when the wretch in gleaming arms puffed up with pride she found,
"Why," quoth she, "dost thou turn away? Here, hither wend thy feet;
Come here and perish; take reward for slain Camilla meet!
But ah, for death of such an one is Dian's arrow due?"
Then from the Thracian quiver gilt a wingèd shaft she drew,
And bent the horn-wrought bow withal with heart on slaying set:
Far drew she, till the curving horns each with the other met:860
Alike she strained her hands to shoot; the left hand felt the steel,
The right that drew the string aback her very breast did feel.
Then straightway Arruns heard in one the bow-string how it rung,
And whistle of the wind; and there the shaft within him clung:
His fellows leave him dying there and groaning out his last,
Forgotten in an unknown field, amid the sand downcast;
While to Olympus on the wing straightway is Opis borne.
But now first flees Camilla's band, their Queen and mistress lorn,
And flee the beaten Rutuli, and fierce Atinas flees;
The Dukes of men in disarray, the broken companies870
Now turn their faces to the town, and seek a sheltering place,
Nor yet may any turn with spear upon the Teucrian chase,
That beareth death of men in hand, or bar the homeward road:
Cast back on fainting shoulders now the loose bow hangs a load;
The horny hoofs of four-foot things shake down the dusty mead,
The mirky cloud of rolling dust doth ever townward speed;
And mothers beating of their breasts stand on the watch-towers high,
And cast abroad their woman's wail up to the starry sky.
But they who in their fleeing first break through the open doors,
In mingled tumult on their backs a crowd of foemen pours;880
Nor do they 'scape a wretched death: there, on the threshold-stead,
Within their fathers' walls, amidst the peace of home, they shed
The lives from out their bodies pierced: then some men shut the gate,
Nor durst they open to their friends, or take in them that wait
Praying without; and there indeed is woeful slaughter towards
Of them that fence the wall with swords, and rushers on the swords.
Those shut out 'neath the very eyes of weeping kith and kin,
Some headlong down the ditches roll, by fleeing rout thrust in;
Some blindly and with loosened rein spur on their steeds to meet
As battering-rams the very gates, the ruthless door-leaves beat890
And now, in agony of fight, the mothers on the walls,
E'en as they saw Camilla do, (so love of country calls),
With hurrying hands the javelins cast, and in the iron's stead
Make shift of hardened pale of oak and stake with half-burned head.
Hot-heart they are, afire to die the first their town to save.
Meanwhile to Turnus in the woods sweeps in that cruel wave
Of tidings: trouble measureless doth Acca to him bring,—
The wasting of the Volscian host, Camilla's murdering,
The onset of the baneful foe with favouring Mars to aid;
The ruin of all things; present fear e'en on the city laid,900
He, madly wroth, (for even so Jove's dreadful might deemed good),
Leaveth the hills' beleaguerment and mirky rugged wood.
Scarce was he out of sight thereof, and nigh his camp to win,
When mid the opened pass and bare Æneas entereth in,
Climbeth the ridge, and slippeth through the thicket's shadowy night.
So either toward the city fares with all their battle-might,
And no long space of way indeed there was betwixt the twain,
For e'en so soon as far away Æneas saw the plain
Through dusty reek, and saw withal Laurentum's host afar,
Turnus the fierce Æneas knew in all array of war,910
And heard the marching footmen tramp, and coming horses neigh.
Then had they fallen to fight forthwith and tried the battle-play,
But rosy Phœbus sank adown amidst Iberian flood
His weary steeds, and brought back Night upon the failing day.
So there they pitch before the town and make their ramparts good.