Page:Virgil (Collins).djvu/54

44 She had another reason, too, for her present jealous feelings. The city of Carthage, where she was especially honoured, she had hoped to make the mistress of the world. And now—so the inexorable Fates have woven it in their web—this new brood from Troy are to destroy it in the years to come. Rome, and not Carthage, the Roman poet would thus convey to his readers, is to have this universal empire.

But they have not reached Latium yet, these hateful Trojans. They never shall. The Queen of Heaven betakes herself to the King of the Winds, where he sits enthroned in his Homeric island of Æolia, controlling his boisterous subjects:—

They with the rock's reverberant roar

Chafe blustering round their prison door:

He, throned on high, the sceptre sways,

Controls their moods, their wrath allays.

Break but that sceptre, sea and land

And heaven's ethereal deep

Before them they would whirl like sand,

And through the void air sweep."

At Juno's request Æolus lets loose his prisoners. Out rush the winds in mad delight.

All in a moment, sun and skies

Are blotted from the Trojans' eyes:

Black night is brooding o'er the deep,

Sharp thunder peals, live lightnings leap:

The stoutest warrior holds his breath,

And looks as on the face of death.

At once Æneas thrilled with dread;

Forth from his breast, with hands outspread,

These groaning words he drew: