Ere long she soars on high:
Upon the ground she plants her tread,
Her forehead in the sky.
Wroth with Olympus, parent Earth
Brought forth the monster to the light,
Last daughter of the giant birth,
With feet and rapid wings for flight.
Huge, terrible, gigantic Fame!
For every plume that clothes her frame
An eye beneath the feather peeps,
A tongue rings loud, an ear upleaps.
Hurtling ’twixt earth and heaven she flies
By night, nor bows to sleep her eyes:
Perched on a roof or tower by day,
She fills great cities with dismay;
How oft soe’er the truth she tell,
She loves a falsehood all too well.
Such now from town to town she flew
With rumours mixed of false and true:
Tells of Æneas come to land,
Whom Dido graces with her hand:
Now, lost to shame, the enamoured pair
The winter in soft dalliance wear,
Nor turn their passion-blinded eyes
On kingdoms rising or to rise.
Such viperous seed, where’er she goes,
On tongue and lip the Goddess sows:
Then seeks Iarbas, stirs his ire,
And fans resentment into fire.
From Garamantian Nymph’s embrace,
Had raised within his wide domains
To parent Jove a hundred fanes:
There hallowed to his mighty sire
For ever lives the vigil fire;
Fresh victim- blood makes rich the ground,
And with gay wreaths the doors are crowned.
And he, ’tis said, with fierce disdain,
The rumour maddening in his brain,
’Mid altars charged with princely gifts
To Jove in prayer his hands uplifts:
‘Great Sire, to whom beneath my reign
The Moors reclined on purple grain
Lenæan offerings pour,
Behold’st thou this? or when the spheres
Thou shak’st, are ours but empty fears?
Do lightnings cleave the skies in vain,
And thunders idly roar?
A dame, who, on my frontier thrown,
Bought leave to build a puny town,
To whom ourselves, as lords, allow
A strip of barren coast to plough,
Has spurned our proffered hand, and ta’en
Æneas o’er her realm to reign.
And now this Paris, with his band
Of gallants, like himself, unmanned,
His essenced hair in Lydian wise
With turban bound, enjoys the prize:
We kneel in temples known as thine,
And nurse a fame we dream divine.’
The Father heard his prayer,
And, turning, Carthage town surveyed,
And that besotted pair:
Then summons Mercury to fulfil
The charge of his almighty will:
‘Go forth, my son, command the gales,
And spread for flight thy feathery sails;
Haste to the Dardan chief who waits
In Carthage, heedless of the fates
That grant him other crowns, and bear
My mandate through the bounding air.
No recreant his fair mother swore
Our eyes should see in him she bore
Twice from the grasp of doom:
No; but a chief of force to sway
Italia, charged with battle-fray,
With empire in its womb,
The pride of Teucer’s blood maintain,
And bow all nations to his reign.
If zeal no more his soul inflame
To labour for his own fair fame,
Yet can the sire behold his child
Of Rome’s imperial hills beguiled?
What prospect lures him, day by day,
Thus ’mid a hostile race to stay,
Blind to the hopes by fate decreed,
Lavinium’s realm, Ausonia’s seed?
No, let him sail: that word in one
Says all: be thus our errand done.’
And first around his feet he ties
His golden wings, that take the breeze
And waft him high o’er earth or seas:
Then grasps his rod that calls to light
Pale ghosts, or plunges them in night,
Induces sleep or bids it fly,
And opes again the dead man’s eye.
That rod in hand, he drives the gales,
Or cleaves his way through misty veils.
Now the tall peak and sides he spies
Of Atlas, who supports the skies—
Of Atlas, o’er whose pine-crowned head
An awful haze of clouds is spread,
While wintry blast and driving sleet
For ever on his temples beat:
The snow-drift robes his shoulders bleak:
The torrent courses down his cheek,
And points, as winds its waters warp,
His beard with ice-flakes, keen and sharp.
Poised on his wings, here Hermes stood;
Then stooped him headlong to the flood,
E’en as a bird that skims the tide,
Low coasts and fishy rocks beside.
So ’twixt the earth and heaven he sails,
So parts the sand-beach from the gales,
As from his mother’s sire he fares,
Cyllene’s God, through Libyan airs.
On Carthaginian ground alight,
He sees Æneas full in view
Planning fresh towers and dwellings new.
His sword-hilt gleamed with jasper-stone:
A scarf was o’er his shoulders thrown
Of Tyrian purple: Dido’s loom
Had streaked with gold its glowing bloom.
The God begins:—‘And here you stay,
Content the obsequious lord to play,
And beautify your lady’s town,
Indifferent to your own renown!
He, he, the Sire, enthroned on high,
Whose nod strikes awe through earth and sky,
He sends me down, and bids me bear
His mandate through the bounding air.
What make you here? what cherished scheme
Tempts you in Libyan land to dream?
If zeal no more your soul inflame
To labour for your own fair fame,
Let young Ascanius claim your care:
Regard the promise of your heir,
To whom, by warranty of
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