Virgil
The Æneids of Virgil, Done into English Verse
Published by Good Press, 2019
EAN 4057664638885
Table of Contents
THE ÆNEIDS OF VIRGIL.
BOOK I.
ARGUMENT.
ÆNEAS AND HIS TROJANS BEING DRIVEN TO LIBYA BY A TEMPEST, HAVE GOOD WELCOME OF DIDO, QUEEN OF CARTHAGE.
Lo I am he who led the song through slender reed to cry, And then, come forth from out the woods, the fields that are thereby In woven verse I bade obey the hungry tillers' need: Now I, who sang their merry toil, sing Mars and dreadful deed.
I sing of arms, I sing of him, who from the Trojan land
Thrust forth by Fate, to Italy and that Lavinian strand
First came: all tost about was he on earth and on the deep
By heavenly might for Juno's wrath, that had no mind to sleep:
And plenteous war he underwent ere he his town might frame
And set his Gods in Latian earth, whence is the Latin name,
And father-folk of Alba-town, and walls of mighty Rome.
Say, Muse, what wound of godhead was whereby all this must come,
How grieving, she, the Queen of Gods, a man so pious drave
To win such toil, to welter on through such a troublous wave:10
—Can anger in immortal minds abide so fierce and fell?
There was a city of old time where Tyrian folk did dwell,
Called Carthage, facing far away the shores of Italy
And Tiber-mouth; fulfilled of wealth and fierce in arms was she,
And men say Juno loved her well o'er every other land,
Yea e'en o'er Samos: there were stored the weapons of her hand,
And there her chariot: even then she cherished the intent
To make her Lady of all Lands, if Fate might so be bent;
Yet had she heard how such a stem from Trojan blood should grow,
As, blooming fair, the Tyrian towers should one day overthrow,20
That thence a folk, kings far and wide, most noble lords of fight,
Should come for bane of Libyan land: such web the Parcæ dight.
The Seed of Saturn, fearing this, and mindful how she erst
For her beloved Argive walls by Troy the battle nursed—
—Nay neither had the cause of wrath nor all those hurts of old
Failed from her mind: her inmost heart still sorely did enfold
That grief of body set at nought in Paris' doomful deed,
The hated race, and honour shed on heaven-rapt Ganymede—
So set on fire, that Trojan band o'er all the ocean tossed,
Those gleanings from Achilles' rage, those few the Greeks had lost,30
She drave far off the Latin Land: for many a year they stray
Such wise as Fate would drive them on by every watery way.
—Lo, what there was to heave aloft in fashioning of Rome!
Now out of sight of Sicily the Trojans scarce were come
And merry spread their sails abroad and clave the sea with brass,
When Juno's heart, who nursed the wound that never thence would pass,