Page:Aeneid (Conington 1866).djvu/95

Rh 'Why thus my frame, Æneas, rend?

Respect at length a buried friend,

Nor those pure hands pollute.

Trojan, not alien, is the blood

That oozes from the uptorn wood.

Fly this fell soil, these greedy shores:

The voice you hear is Polydore's.

From my gored breast a growth of spears

Its murderous vegetation rears.'

I heard, fear-stricken and amazed,

My speech tongue-tied, my hair upraised.

This Polydore erewhile by stealth

With store of delegated wealth

Unhappy Priam in despair

Sent to the Thracian monarch's care

When first Troy felt her prowess fail,

Encompassed by the leaguering pale.

There, when our star its light withdraws,

False to divine and human laws,

The traitor joins the conqueror's cause,

Lays impious hands on Polydore,

And grasps by force the golden store.

Fell lust of gold! abhorred, accurst!

What will not men to slake such thirst?

Soon as my blood regains its heat,

The direful portent I repeat

To Troy's chief lords, and first my sire,

And then' collective voice enquire.

All vote to fly from friendship's grave,

Quit the curst soil, and cross the wave.

So then to Polydore we pay

New rites, and heap his mound with clay:

Raised to the dead, two altars stand

With cypress wreathed and woollen band:

Around them Trojan matrons go,

Their hair unbound in sign of woe: