And looks as on the face of death.
At once Æneas thrilled with dread,
Forth from his breast, with hands outspread,
These groaning words he drew:
‘O happy, thrice and yet again,
Who died at Troy like valiant men,
E’en in their parents’ view!
O Diomed, first of Greeks in fray,
Why pressed I not the plain that day,
Yielding my life to you,
Where stretched beneath a Phrygian sky
Fierce Hector, tall Sarpedon lie:
Where Simois tumbles ’neath his wave
Shields, helms, and bodies of the brave?’
While thus he moans him, strikes his sail:
The swelling surges climb the sky;
The shattered oars in splinters fly;
The prow turns round, and to the tide
Lays broad and bare the vessel’s side;
On comes a billow, mountain-steep,
Bears down, and tumbles in a heap.
These stagger on the billow’s crest;
Those to the yawning depth deprest
See land appearing ’mid the waves,
While surf with sand in turmoil raves.
Three ships the South has caught and thrown
On scarce hid rocks, as Altars known,
Ridging the main, a reef of stone.
Three more fierce Eurus from the deep,
A sight to make the gazer weep,
Drives on the shoals, and banks them round
With sand, as with a rampire-mound.
One, which erewhile from Lycia’s shore
Orontes and his people bore,
E’en in Æneas’ anguished sight
A sea down crashing from the height
Strikes full astern: the pilot, torn
From off the helm, is headlong borne:
Three turns the foundered vessel gave,
Then sank beneath the engulfing wave.
There in the vast abyss are seen
The swimmers, few and fat between,
And warriors’ arms and shattered wood
And Trojan treasures strew the flood.
And now Ilioneus, and now
Aletes old and grey,
Abas and brave Achates bow
Beneath the tempest’s sway;
Fast drinking in through timbers loose
At every pore the fatal ooze,
Their sturdy barks give way.
The tempest loosened from its chain,
The waters of the nether deep
Upstarting from their tranquil sleep,
On Neptune broke: disturbed he hears,
And quickened by a monarch’s fears,
His calm broad brow o’er ocean rears.
Æneas’ fleet he sees dispersed,
Whelmed by fierce wave and stormy burst:
Nor failed a brother’s eye to read
Junonian rancour in the deed.
Forthwith he summoned East and West,
And thus his kingly wrath expressed:—
‘How now? presume ye on your birth
To blend in chaos skies and earth,
And billowy mountains heavenward heave,
Bold Winds, without my sovereign leave?
Whom I—but rather were it good
To pacify you troubled flood.
Offend once more, and ye shall pay
Upon a heavier reckoning-day.
Back to your master instant flee,
And tell him, not to him but me
The imperial trident of the sea
Fell by the lot’s award:
His is that prison-house of stone,
A mansion, Eurus, all your own:
There let him lord it to his mind,
The jailor-monarch of the wind,
But keep its portal barred.’
Allays the surge, brings back the sun:
Triton and swift Cymothoe drag
The ships from off the pointed crag:
He, trident-armed, each dull weight heaves,
Through the vast shoals a passage cleaves,
Makes smooth the ruffled wave, and rides
Calm o’er the surface of the tides.
As when sedition oft has stirred
In some great town the vulgar herd,
And brands and stones already fly—
For rage has weapons always nigh—
Then should some man of worth appear
Whose stainless virtue all revere,
They hush, they hist: his clear voice rules
Their rebel wills, their anger cools:
So ocean ceased at once to rave,
When, calmly looking o’er the wave,
Girt with a range of azure sky,
The father bids his chariot fly.
Strain for the nearest land,
And turn their vessels from the sea
To Libya’s welcome strand.
Deep in a bay an island makes
A haven by its jutting sides,
Whereon each wave from ocean breaks,
And parting into hollows glides.
High o’er the cove vast rocks extend,
A beetling cliff at either end:
Beneath their summit far and wide
In sheltered silence sleeps the tide,
While quivering forests crown the scene,
A theatre of glancing green.
In front, retiring from the wave,
Opes on the view a rock-hung cave,
A home that nymphs might call their own,
Fresh springs, and seats of living stone:
No need of rope or anchor’s bite
To hold the weary vessel tight.
Such haven now Æneas gains,
With seven lorn ships, the scant remains
Of what was once his fleet:
Forth leap the Trojans on the sand,
Lay down their brine-drenched limbs on land,
And feel the shore is sweet.
And first from flints together clashed
The latent spark Achates flashed,
Caught in sere leaves, and deftly nursed
Till into flame the fuel burst.
Then from the hold the crews o’ertoiled
Bring
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