Page:Aeneid (Conington 1866).djvu/145

Rh 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.

So when, resolved on death, she pressed

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.