Page:The Aeneid of Virgil JOHN CONINGTON 1917 V2.pdf/183

 Soon as he saw Æneas advancing through the grass to meet him, he stretched out both his hands with eager movement, tears gushed over his cheeks, and words escaped his lips: "And are you come at last? has love fulfilled a father's hopes and surmounted the perils of the       5 way? is it mine to look on your face, my son, and listen and reply as we talked of old? Yes; I was even thinking so in my own mind. I was reckoning that it would be, counting over the days. Nor has my longing played me false. Oh, the lands and the mighty seas from which       10 you have come to my presence! the dangers, my son, that have tossed and smitten you! Oh, how I have feared lest you should come to harm in that realm of Libya!" The son replied: "Your shade it was, father, your melancholy shade, that, coming to me oft and oft, constrained          15 me to knock at these doors: here, in the Tyrrhene deep my ships are riding at anchor. Let us grasp hand in hand: let us, my father! Oh, withdraw not from my embrace!" As he spoke, the streaming tears rolled down his face. Thrice, as he stood, he essayed to fling his     20 arms round that dear neck: thrice the phantom escaped the hands that caught at it in vain, impalpable as the wind, fleeting as the wings of sleep.

Meanwhile Æneas sees in the retired vale a secluded grove with brakes and rustling woods, and the river of      25 Lethe,[o] which floats along by those abodes of peace. Round it were flying races and tribes untold: even as in the meadows when bees in calm summer-tide settle on flower after flower, and stream over the milk-white lilies, the humming fills the plain. Startled at the sudden         30 sight, Æneas wonderingly inquires what it means, what are those waters in the distance, or who the men that are thronging the banks in crowds so vast. To him his father Anchises: "They are spirits to whom Destiny has promised new bodies, there at the side of Lethe's water, drinking     35 the wave of carelessness, and the long draught of oblivion. In truth I have long wished to tell you of them and show them before you, to recount the long line of my kindred,