Page:The Aeneid of Virgil JOHN CONINGTON 1917 V2.pdf/84

 won by vengeance on a woman, no laurels to be reaped from a conquest like this, yet the extinction of so base a life and the exaction of vengeance so merited will count as a praise, and it will be a joy to have glutted my spirit with the flame of revenge and slaked the thirsty ashes of those    5 I love.' Such were the wild words I was uttering, such the impulse of my infuriate heart, when suddenly there appeared to me, brighter than I had ever seen her before, and shone forth in clear radiance through the night, my gracious mother, all her deity confessed, with the same      10 mien and stature by which she is known to the dwellers in heaven. She seized me by the hand and stayed me, seconding her action with these words from her roseate lips; 'My son, what mighty agony is it that stirs up this untamed passion? What means your frenzy? or             15 whither has fled your care for me? Will you not first see where you have left your father Anchises, spent with age as he is? whether your wife, Creusa, be yet alive, and your child, Ascanius? All about them the Grecian armies are ranging to and fro, and were not my care exerted to      20 rescue them, ere this they had been snatched by the flame, devoured by the foeman's sword, It is not the hated beauty of the daughter of Tyndareus, the Spartan woman—not the reviled Paris. No, it is heaven, unpitying heaven that is overturning this great empire and levelling    25 Troy from its summit. See here—for I will take away wholly the cloud whose veil, cast over your eyes, dulls your mortal vision and darkles round you damp and thick—do you on your part shrink in naught from your mother's commands, nor refuse to obey the instructions       30 she gives. Here, where you see huge masses rent asunder, and stones wrenched from stones, and blended torrents of smoke and dust, is Neptune with his mighty trident shaking the walls and upheaving the very foundations; here is Juno, cruellest of foes, posted at the entry of the    35 Scæan gate, and summoning in tones of fury from the ships her confederate band, herself girt with steel like them. Look behind you—there is Tritonian Pallas, seated al