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Rh well-armed footmen of various tribes, whose shields seem to cover the plain.

This pretty picture of Camilla, the Volscian huntress (whom Dryden very ungallantly terms a "virago"), vowed from her childhood to Diana—the prototype of Tasso's Clorinda, but far more attractive—closes at once the warlike pageant and the book:—

Last marches forth for Latium's sake

Camilla fair, the Volscian maid,

A troop of horsemen in her wake

In pomp of gleaming steel arrayed;

Stern warrior-queen! those tender hands

Ne'er plied Minerva's ministries:

A virgin in the fight she stands,

Or wingèd winds in speed outvies;

Nay, she could fly o'er fields of grain

Nor crush in flight the tapering wheat,

Or skim the surface of the main

Nor let the billows touch her feet.

Where'er she moves, from house and land

The youths and ancient matrons throng,

And fixed in greedy wonder stand,

Beholding as she speeds along:

In kingly dye that scarf was dipped:

'Tis gold confines those tresses' flow:

Her pastoral wand with steel is tipped,

And Lycian are her shafts and bow."