Page:Aeneid (Conington 1866).djvu/108

84 Feels he the hereditary flame

His growing spirit fire

At Hector's and Æneas' name,

His uncle and his sire?'

So poured she her impassioned wail,

Still weeping on without avail,

When girt with royal retinue,

King Helenus appears in view,

Acknowledges his friends of Troy,

And leads us to his home with joy,

And as our fainting hearts he cheers,

With words of welcome mixes tears.

I see a mimic Trojan state,

A Pergamus that apes the great,

A dried-up Xanthus' channel trace,

And other Scæan gates embrace.

Nor less my Trojan comrades share

The monarch's hospitable care:

In spacious cloisters entertained

'Neath the hall's roof the wine they drained,

And goblets for libation hold,

While the rich banquet gleams in gold.

Two days had passed: the favouring gale

Invites the fleet and swells the sail:

Bent on departure, I accost

With words like these our sacred host:

'True son of Troy, whose heaven-taught skill

Perceives the signs of Phœbus' will,

The tripods, and the Clarian bays,

The secret of night's starry maze,

And birds, their voices and their ways,

Speak—for the accordant sense of Heaven

Fair presage for my course has given;

Each God has charged me to explore

In far-off seas Italia's shore;