Page:The Aeneid of Virgil JOHN CONINGTON 1917 V2.pdf/341

 But when Juturna knew from far the rustling of those Fury pinions, she rends, hapless maid, her dishevelled tresses, marring, in all a sister's agony, her face with her nails, her breast with her clenched hands: "What now, my Turnus, can your sister avail? what more remains for              5 an obdurate wretch like me? by what expedient can I lengthen your span? can I face a portent like this? At last, at last I quit the field. Cease to appal my fluttering soul, ye birds of ill omen: I know the flapping of your wings and its deathful noise; nor fail I to read great                10 Jove's tyrannic will. Is this his recompense for lost virginity? why gave he me life to last for ever? why was the law of death annulled? else might I end this moment the tale of my sorrows, and travel to the shades hand in hand with my poor brother. Can immortality, can aught                 15 that I have to boast give me joy without him? Oh, that earth would but yawn deep enough, and send me down, goddess though I be, to the powers of the grave!" So saying, she shrouded her head in her azure robe, with many a groan, and vanished beneath the river of her deity. 20

Æneas presses on, front to front, shaking his massy, tree-like spear, and thus speaks in the fierceness of his spirit: "What is to be the next delay? why does Turnus still hang back? ours is no contest of speed, but of stern soldiership, hand to hand. Take all disguises you can;               25 muster all your powers of courage or of skill: mount on wing, if you list, to the stars aloft, or hide in the cavernous depth of earth." Shaking his head, he replied: "I quail not at your fiery words, insulting foe: it is Heaven that makes me quail, and Jove my enemy." No more he                       30 spoke: but, sweeping his eyes round, espies a huge stone, a stone ancient and huge, which chanced to be lying on the plain, set as some field's boundary, to forefend disputes of ownership: scarce could twelve picked men lift it on their shoulders, such puny frames as earth produces            35 now-a-days: he caught it up with hurried grasp and flung it at his foe, rising as he threw, and running rapidly, as hero might. And yet all the while he knows not that