Page:The Aeneid of Virgil JOHN CONINGTON 1917 V2.pdf/133

 of the plain! This is my prayer—these the last accents that flow from me with my life-blood. And you, my Tyrians, let your hatred persecute the race and people for all time to come. Be this the offering you send down to my ashes: never be there love or league between nation       5 and nation. Arise from my bones, my unknown avenger, destined with fire and sword to pursue the Dardanian settlers, now or in after-days, whenever strength shall be given! Let coast be at war with coast, water with wave, army with army; fight they, and their sons, and their        10 sons' sons!"

Thus she said, as she whirled her thought to this side and that, seeking at once to cut short the life she now abhorred. Then briefly she spoke to Barce, Sychæus' nurse, for her own was left in her old country, in the black       15 ashes of the grave: "Fetch me here, dear nurse, my sister Anna. Bid her hasten to sprinkle herself with water from the stream, and bring with her the cattle and the atoning offerings prescribed. Let her come with these; and do you cover your brow with the holy fillet. The      20 sacrifice to Stygian Jove, which I have duly commenced and made ready, I wish now to accomplish, and with it the end of my sorrows, giving to the flame the pile that pillows the Dardan head!" She said: the nurse began to quicken her pace with an old wife's zeal. 25

But Dido, wildered and maddened by her enormous resolve, rolling her bloodshot eye, her quivering cheeks stained with fiery streaks, and pale with the shadow of death, bursts the door of the inner palace, and frantically climbs the tall pile, and unsheathes the Dardan sword, a        30 gift procured for a far different end. Then, after surveying the Trojan garments and the bed, too well known, and pausing awhile to weep and think, she pressed her bosom to the couch, and uttered her last words:

"Relics, once darlings of mine, while Fate and Heaven       35 gave leave, receive this my soul, and release me from these my sorrows. I have lived my life—the course assigned me by Fortune is run, and now the august phantom of