Page:Aeneid (Conington 1866).djvu/386

362 'My son! and held I life so sweet,

That I, your sire, could let you meet

For me the foeman's steel,

By your last gasp preserve my breath,

Kept living' by my darling's death?

Aye, now is exile's woe complete,

Now, now my wound I feel!

Dear child! I stained your glorious name

By my own crimes, driven out to shame

From my ancestral reign:

My country's vengeance claimed my blood:

Ah! had that tainted, guilty flood

Been shed from every vein!

Now 'mid my kind I linger still

And live: but leave the light I will.'

Thus as he pours the bitter cry

He rears him on his crippled thigh,

And, though the deep wound slacks his speed,

Calls proudly for his warrior steed;

The warrior steed he wont to ride,

His consolation and his pride,

Which ever still, at fall of night,

Had borne him conqueror from the fight:

And thus bespeaks in kindly tone

The beast whose sorrow matched his own:

'Long have we lived, if long the date

Conferred on aught of mortal state:

Now, Rhæbus, will we twain to-day

A glorious trophy bear away,

The Trojan's arms and severed head,

In vengeance for my Lausus dead:

Or if the vantage be denied,

We twain will perish side by side:

For ne'er, I ween, my gallant horse,

Will soul so generous stoop perforce