Page:The Aeneid of Virgil JOHN CONINGTON 1917 V2.pdf/126

 fires when I am far away: and when cold death shall have parted soul and body, my shade shall haunt you everywhere. Yes, wretch, you shall suffer, I shall hear it—the news will reach me down among the dead." So saying, she snaps short her speech, and flies with loathing     5 from the daylight, and breaks and rushes from his sight, leaving him hesitating, and fearing, and thinking of a thousand things to say. Her maidens support her, and carry her sinking frame into her marble chamber, and lay her on her bed.      10

But good Æneas, though yearning to solace and soothe her agonized spirit, and by his words to check the onset of sorrow, with many a groan, his whole soul upheaved by the force of love, goes nevertheless about the commands of Heaven, and repairs to his fleet. The Teucrians redouble     15 their efforts, and along the whole range of the shore drag their tall ships down. The keels are careened and floated. They carry oars with their leaves still on, and timber unfashioned as it stood in the woods, so strong their eagerness to fly. You may see them all in motion, streaming     20 from every part of the city. Even as ants when they are sacking a huge heap of wheat, provident of winter days, and laying up the plunder in their stores; a black column is seen moving through the plain, and they convey their booty along the grass in a narrow path: some are     25 putting their shoulders to the big grains, and pushing them along; others are rallying the force and punishing the stragglers; the whole track is in a glow of work. What were your feelings then, poor Dido, at a sight like this! How deep the groans you heaved, when you looked out     30 from your lofty tower on a beach all seething and swarming, and saw the whole sea before you deafened with that hubbub of voices! Tyrant love! what force dost thou not put on human hearts? Again she has to condescend to tears, again to use the weapons of entreaty, and bow her     35 spirit in suppliance under love's yoke, lest she should have left aught untried, and be rushing on a needless death.

"Anna, you see there is hurrying all over the shore—*