Page:Aeneid (Conington 1866).djvu/200

176 The seer, impatient of control,

Raves in the cavern vast,

And madly struggles from her soul

The incumbent power to cast:

He, mighty Master, plies the more

Her foaming mouth, all chafed and sore,

Tames her wild heart with plastic hand,

And makes her docile to command.

Now, all untouched, the hundred gates

Fly open, and proclaim the fates:

'O freed at length from toils by sea!

But worse on land remain.

The warrior-sons of Dardany

Lavinium's realm shall gain;

That fear dismiss; but fortune cross

Shall make them wish their gain were loss.

War, dreadful war, and Tiber flood

I see incarnadined with blood.

Simois and Xanthus and the plain

Where Greece encamped shall rise again:

A new Achilles, goddess born,

The destinies provide,

And Juno, like a rankling thorn,

Shall never quit your side,

While you, distressed and desolate,

Go knocking at each city's gate.

The old, old cause shall stir the strife,

A stranger bed, a foreign wife.

Yet still despond not, but proceed

Along the path where Fate may lead.

The first faint gleam that gilds your skies

Shall from a Grecian city rise.'

Such mystic oracles divine

Shrills forth the priestess from her shrine,