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Rh Celæno's harpy voice alone

Makes prodigies and vengeance known

And famine's foulest horror—say,

What perils first beset my way?

What counsel following may I cope

With toils so great in manful hope?'

Then Helenus with slaughtered kine

Appeases first the powers divine,

The fillets from his head

Unbinds, and to Apollo's fane

Conducts me, while in every vein

I feel the presence dread:

And thus from his prophetic tongue

The message of the future rung:

'O Goddess-born!—for broad and clear

The augury of your proud career,

So lie the lots in Jove's dark urn:

So the dread Three their spindles turn—

Now listen, while, to give you ease

In wandering o'er yon stranger seas

And help you to the port you seek,

A fragment of your fate I speak:

Unknown to Helenus the rest,

Or Juno locks it in his breast.

Learn first that Italy, which seems

So near, you grasp it in your dreams,

And think to anchor in its bay,

As though within,your ken it lay,

A pathless path o'er leagues of foam

Divides from this our distant home.

First in Trinacrian water plied

Your oar must tug against the tide,

First must your weary galleys keep

Long vigils on the Ausonian deep,

Must pass the lurid lake of ghosts

And skirt Ææan Circe's coasts,