Page:Virgil (Collins).djvu/70

60 the serpent who comes forth after casting its winter slough, is fine in the original, and finely translated:—

"Full in the gate see Pyrrhus blaze,

A meteor, shooting steely rays:

So flames a serpent into light,

On poisonous herbage fed,

Which late in subterranean night

Through winter lay as dead:

Now from its ancient wounds undressed,

Invigorate and young,

Sunward it rears its glittering breast,

And darts its three-forked tongue."

And the fate of the unhappy Priam is an equally beautiful picture, of a different tone:—

Perhaps you ask of Priam's fate:

He, when he sees his town o'erthrown,

Greeks bursting through his palace-gate,

And thronging chambers once his own,

His ancient armour, long laid by,

Around his palsied shoulders throws,

Girds with a useless sword his thigh,

And totters forth to meet his foes."

Hecuba, who with her women is clinging to the altar, rebukes her husband for this mad attempt to match his feeble strength against the enemy. Still, when Pyrrhus rushes into the hall in pursuit of one of Priam's sons, Polites, and slays him full in the father's sight, the old man hurls a javelin at the Greek chief, with a taunting curse upon his cruelty. But it is

A feeble dart, no blood that drew;

The ringing metal turned it back,

And left it clinging, weak and slack."