Page:Aeneid (Conington 1866).djvu/182

158 In equal parts the bands divide,

And gallop off on either side:

Then wheeling round in full career

Charge at a call with levelled spear.

Again, again, they come and go

Through adverse spaces to and fro;

Circles in circles interlock.

And, sheathed in arms, the gazers mock

With mimicry of battle-shock.

And now they turn their backs in flight,

Now put their spears in rest,

And now in amity unite,

And ride the field abreast.

E'en as of old the Cretan maze

With blind blank walls its secret hid,

A tangle of a thousand ways,

Which whoso sought by signs to thrid

Went wandering, baffled and involved,

Through paths returnless and unsolved:

Such tangle make the youths of Troy

As o'er the champaign they deploy,

And deftly weave in sportive play

A mingled web of fight and fray,

As dolphins at their sport with ease

The expanse of ocean sweep

'Twixt Libyan and Carpathian seas

And gambol o'er the deep.

This pageantry of mimic strife

Ascanius called again to life,

What time with wall and rampart strong

He girdled Alba, named the Long,

And to the elder Latins showed

The celebration and the mode

Which erst he practised when a boy,

And, 'neath his lead, the youth of Troy.