Page:The Aeneid of Virgil JOHN CONINGTON 1917 V2.pdf/132

 Soon as the queen from her watch-tower saw the gray dawn brighten, and the fleet moving on with even canvas, and coast and haven forsaken, with never an oar left, thrice and again smiting her beauteous breast with her hands, and rending her golden locks, "Great Jupiter!" 5 cries she, "shall he go? Shall a chance-comer boast of having flouted our realm? Will they not get their arms at once, and give chase from all the town, and pull, some of them, the ships from the docks? Away! bring fire; quick! get darts, ply oars! What am I saying? Where       10 am I? What madness turns my brain? Wretched Dido! do your sins sting you now? They should have done so then, when you were giving your crown away. What truth! what fealty!—the man who, they say, carries about with him the gods of his country, and took up on        15 his shoulders his old worn-out father! Might I not have caught and torn him piecemeal, and scattered him to the waves?—destroyed his friends, aye, and his own Ascanius, and served up the boy for his father's meal? But the chance of a battle would have been doubtful. Let it have        20 been. I was to die, and whom had I to fear? I would have flung torches into his camp, filled his decks with flame, consumed son and sire and the whole line, and leapt myself upon the pile. Sun, whose torch shows thee all that is done on earth, and thou, Juno, revealer and witness       25 these stirrings of the heart, and Hecate, whose name is yelled in civic crossways by night, avenging fiends, and gods of dying Elissa, listen to this! Let your power stoop to ills that call for it, and hear what I now pray! If it must needs be that the accursed wretch gain the haven       30 and float to shore—if such the requirement of Jove's destiny, such the fixed goal—yet grant that, harassed by the sword and battle of a warlike nation, a wanderer from his own confines, torn from his Iulus' arms, he may pray for succour, and see his friends dying miserably round       35 him! Nor when he has yielded to the terms of an unjust peace, may he enjoy his crown, or the life he loves; but may he fall before his time, and lie unburied in the midst