Page:The Aeneid of Virgil JOHN CONINGTON 1917 V2.pdf/161

 waves: is that your will? I place my faith on this fickle monster? What? trust Æneas to lying gales and fair skies, whose fraud I have rued so often?" So he said, and went on cleaving and clinging, never dropping his hand from the rudder, nor his eye from the stars. When     5 lo! the god waves over his two temples a bough dripping with Lethe's[o] dews, and drugged by the charms of Styx, and in his own despite closes his swimming eyes. Scarce had sudden slumber begun to unstring his limbs, when the power, leaning over him, hurled him headlong into the      10 streaming waves, tearing away part of the vessel's stern and the rudder as he fell, with many a cry for help that never came, while Sleep himself soared high on his wings into the yielding air. Safely, nevertheless, rides the fleet over the water, travelling undaunted in the strength of      15 Neptune's royal promise. And now it was nearing the cliffs of the Sirens'[o] isle, cliffs unfriendly in days of old, and white with many a seaman's bones, and the rocks were sounding hollow from afar with the untiring surge, when the great Father perceived the unsteady reel of the masterless     20 ship, and guided it himself through the night of waters, groaning oft, and staggering under the loss of his friend: "Victim of faith in the calm of sky and sea, you will lie, Palinurus, a naked[o] corpse on a strand unknown."