Page:Aeneid (Conington 1866).djvu/243

Rh Much favoured of the queen, who strove

With, earnest zeal to speed his love:

But prodigies with dire alarms

Deny the maiden to his arms.

Within the palace' centre bred

An ancient tree of laurel stood:

Long years of reverential dread

Had gathered round its sacred wood:

Men say 'twas by Latinus found

When first he traced the castle's bound:

He reared it from its native sod,

Devoted to the Delphian god,

And taught his settlers thence to claim

For their new town Laurentum's name.

To its high top a swarm of bees

Came warping on the summer breeze:

And, linking feet with feet, they sway

In pendent cluster from the spray.

'A stranger comes' exclaimed the seer

'A foreign host: I see them near:

The same the quarter of their flight,

The same the region where they light:

E'en now in plenitude of power

They hold the city's topmost tower.'

Then too, as standing by her sire

Lavinia tends the altar-fire,

Her tresses—prodigy untold—

Catch the fierce flame with eager hold,

And on her beauteous head-tire preys

The crackling stream of torrent blaze.

Her royal locks are all alight,

Her coronal, with jewels bright:

Till, wrapt in smoke and glare, she showers

Live sparkles through the palace bowers.

With mingled wonder and affright

The boding seers proclaimed the sight: