Page:Aeneid (Conington 1866).djvu/147

Rh 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 lover's woe.

'Tis night: earth's tired ones taste the balm,

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: