Page:Aeneid (Conington 1866).djvu/257

Rh Aye, well I know, the first fair gale

Shall see the faithless pirate sail,

And bear from home the weeping maid,

The prize of his triumphant raid.

Not thus, forsooth, the Phrygian swain

Made stealthy progress o'er the main,

To Sparta won his way, and bore

Fair Helen to the Idæan shore.

Where now your sacred promise? where

The love you wont your own to bear,

Or where that hand, whose friendly grasp

The hand of Turnus oft would clasp?

If nought will serve for Latium's need

But bridegroom sprung from foreign seed,

And father Faunus' solemn hest

Sits heavy on your anxious breast,

All climes that own not our command,

So read I Fate, are foreign land.

And Turnus, if enquiry trace

The first beginnings of his race,

Counts with his grandsires Argive kings,

And from Mycenæ's midmost springs.'

But when, essaying oft, she sees

Latinus proof against her pleas,

And now the deadly poison thrills

Her veins, and all the woman fills,

Then, maddened with its furious heats,

She rages through the crowded streets,

Like top that whirling 'neath the thong

Is scourged by eager boys along

Bent on their gamesome strife:

With eddying motion it careers

Round empty courts in circling spheres;

The beardless troop in strange amaze

Upon the winged boxwood gaze:

The lashes lend it life.