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Celæno's harpy voice alone
Makes prodigies and vengeance known
And famine's foulest horror—say,
What perils first beset my way?
What counsel following may I cope
With toils so great in manful hope?'
Then Helenus with slaughtered kine
Appeases first the powers divine,
The fillets from his head
Unbinds, and to Apollo's fane
Conducts me, while in every vein
I feel the presence dread:
And thus from his prophetic tongue
The message of the future rung:
'O Goddess-born!—for broad and clear
The augury of your proud career,
So lie the lots in Jove's dark urn:
So the dread Three their spindles turn—
Now listen, while, to give you ease
In wandering o'er yon stranger seas
And help you to the port you seek,
A fragment of your fate I speak:
Unknown to Helenus the rest,
Or Juno locks it in his breast.
Learn first that Italy, which seems
So near, you grasp it in your dreams,
And think to anchor in its bay,
As though within,your ken it lay,
A pathless path o'er leagues of foam
Divides from this our distant home.
First in Trinacrian water plied
Your oar must tug against the tide,
First must your weary galleys keep
Long vigils on the Ausonian deep,
Must pass the lurid lake of ghosts
And skirt Ææan Circe's coasts,