Page:Virgil (Collins).djvu/118

108 The paroxysms increase after she has entered the cave, and is in the agonies of inspiration:—

The seer, impatient of control,

Raves in the cavern vast,

And madly struggles from her soul

The incumbent power to cast.

He, mighty Master, plies the more

Her foaming mouth, all chafed and sore,

Tames her wild heart with plastic hand,

And makes her docile to command."

At last all the hundred doors fly open at once, and the voice of destiny comes forth. The wanderers shall reach Latium safely, but they shall wish they had never reached it.

War, dreadful war, and Tiber flood

I see incarnadined with blood;

Simois and Xanthus, and the plain

Where Greece encamped shall rise again:

A new Achilles, goddess-born,

The destinies provide,

And Juno, like a rankling thorn,

Shall never quit your side.

The old, old cause shall stir the strife—

A stranger bed, a foreign wife.

Yet still despond not, but proceed

Along the path where Fate may lead."

Æneas hears,—undismayed. He is a true hero so far, that he is always equal to his fate. One request he makes of the Sibyl,—that he may visit the shades below, the entrance to which is said to lie here, within the prophetess's domain, and there see again the face of