Page:The Aeneid of Virgil JOHN CONINGTON 1917 V2.pdf/54

 port, or entering the haven with sails full spread. Only go on, and where the way leads you direct your steps."

She said, and as she turned away, flashed on their sight her neck's roseate hue; her ambrosial locks breathed from her head a heavenly fragrance; her robe streamed down     5 to her very feet; and in her walk[o] was revealed the true goddess. Soon as he knew his mother, he pursued her flying steps with words like these:—"Why wilt thou be cruel like the rest, mocking thy son these many times with feigned semblances? Why is it not mine to grasp     10 thy hand in my hand, and hear and return the true language of the heart?" Such are his upbraidings, while he yet bends his way to the town. But Venus fenced them round with a dim cloud as they moved, and wrapped them as a goddess only can in a spreading mantle of mist, that     15 none might be able to see them, none to touch them, or put hindrances in their path, or ask the reason of their coming. She takes her way aloft to Paphos,[o] glad to revisit the abode she loves, where she has a temple and a hundred altars, smoking with Sabæan[o] incense, and fragrant with     20 garlands ever new.

They, meanwhile, have pushed on their way, where the path guides them, and already they are climbing the hill which hangs heavily over the city, and looks from above on the towers that rise to meet it. Æneas marvels at the     25 mass of building, once a mere village of huts; marvels at the gates, and the civic din, and the paved ways. The Tyrians are alive and on fire—intent, some on carrying the walls aloft and upheaving the citadel, and rolling stones from underneath by force of hand; some on making     30 choice of a site for a dwelling, and enclosing it with a trench. They are ordaining the law and its guardians, and the senate's sacred majesty. Here are some digging out havens; there are others laying deep the foundation of a theatre, and hewing from the rocks enormous columns,     35 the lofty ornaments of a stage that is to be. Such are the toils that keep the commonwealth of bees[o] at work in the sun among the flowery meads when summer is