Still hounds her in a nightly chase;
And still companionless she seems
To tread the wilderness of dreams,
And vainly still her Tyrians seek
Through desert regions, ah, how bleak!
Like frantic Pentheus when he sees
The dragon-eyed Eumenides,
And two red suns appear to rise,
And Thebes looks double to his eyes:
Or as the Atridan matricide
Runs frenzied o’er the scene,
What time with snakes and torches plied
He flees the murdered queen,
While at the threshold of the gate
The sister-fiends expectant wait.
That thought of frenzy to her breast,
The time and manner she decides:
Then in her look the purpose hides,
And, calling hope into her cheeks,
Her sorrowing sister thus bespeaks:
‘My Anna, I have found a way
(Rejoice o’er Dido’s love!)
My spell upon his sense to lay,
Or his from mine remove.
On ocean’s marge, where suns descend,
A spot there lies, the Ethiops’ end,
Where Atlas on his shoulders rears
The starry fabric of the spheres.
Men show me there, in that far place,
A priestess of Massylian race,
Who kept the Hesperian temple’s pale,
And gave the dragon his regale,
Guarding the tree’s immortal boughs
With honey-dew and poppy-drowse.
Her charms can cure what souls she please,
Rob other hearts of healthful ease,
Turn rivers backward to their source,
And make the stars forget their course,
And call up ghosts from night:
The ground shall bellow ’neath your feet:
The mountain-ash shall quit its seat,
And travel down the height.
By heaven I swear, and your dear life,
Unwillingly these arts I wield,
And take, to meet the coming strife,
Enchantment’s sword and shield.
You in the inner court prepare
A lofty pile ’neath open air:
There duly be the armour placed
Left by the traitor in his haste,
The doffed apparel of our foe,
The bridal bed that wrought my woe:
Whate’er was his is doomed to fire:
So magic bids, and I desire.’
She paused: a paleness as of death
Her ghastly features dyes:
Yet Anna dreams not that beneath
These rites a funeral lies:
The frenzy-pitch of love and pride
She knows not, dreams not worse may tide
Than in the hour Sychæus died:
So on her bidding hies.
The pile was rising, heaped on high
With oak and pinewood tree:
The queen enwreathes it round, and weaves
Long chaplets of funereal leaves:
There lays, devoted to the fire,
The sword forgot, the doffed attire,
And chief, the traitor’s effigy,
Well knowing what should be.
The blazing altars stand around:
The priestess, with her hair unbound,
Three hundred gods proclaims,
Grim Erebus and Chaos old,
And Hecat-Dian, power threefold,
Three faces and three names.
Around the lustral stream she flings,
Drawn, so she feigns, from Stygian springs
And poison-plants by moonlight shorn
She fetches, not unsought:
And love’s mysterious token, torn
From forehead of a foal new-born,
Ere by the mother caught.
Before the altars Dido stands
With ritual cake and stainless hands,
One foot unshod, unchecked by bands
Her vesture’s ample flow:
There calls on Heaven, or ere she die,
And on the starry host on high
That fate’s deep counsels know:
And makes her passionate appeal
To gods, if gods there be, that feel
For ill- matched lovers’ woe.
The precious balm of sleep,
And in the forest there is calm,
And on the savage deep:
The stars are in their middle flight:
The fields are hushed: each bird or beast
That dwells beside the silver lake
Or haunts the tangles of the brake
In placid slumber lies, released
From trouble by the touch of night:
All but the hapless queen: to rest
She yields not, nor with eye or breast
The gentle night receives:
Her cares redouble blow on blow:
Love storms, and, tossing to and fro,
With billowy passion heaves.
And thus she breathes the thoughts that roll
Tumultuous through her lonely soul:
‘What shall I do? make proof once more
Of those who sought my love before,
In suppliance to the Nomads turned,
Whose proffered hand so oft I spurned?
Or shall I tread the Trojan deck,
A menial slave at each one’s beck?
As though of gratitude they reck,
Or think of favours done!
Nay, though I wished, what haughty lord
Would take a humbled queen on board?
And know you not, ah wretch forlorn,
The treachery of the seed forsworn
Of false Laomedon?
Then shall I join the shouting crew
Alone, or with my Tyrians true
Attach me to their train,
And hurry those, whom scarce I tore
From Sidon’s town, to tempt once more
The perils of the main?
No; die as you deserve, and heal
This anguish with the sharp sure steel.
’Twas you, my sister, first, who, swayed
By my weak tears, my peace betrayed
And gave me to the foe.
Ah! had I lived estranged from love,
Like some wild ranger of the grove,
Nor tampered with this woe,
Or kept at least the faith I vowed
To my Sychæus’ funeral shroud!’
Such plainings burst from that lone heart:
Æneas, ready to depart,
Slept, in his vessel laid,
When Mercury in his dreams was seen
Returning with the self-same mien,
And this monition made
(The voice, the hair, the blooming cheek,
The graceful limbs the god bespeak):
‘What? with such perilous deed in hand,
Infatuate, can you sleep,
Nor see what dangers round you stand,
Nor hear the Zephyrs from the
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