And still companionless she seems
To tread the wilderness of dreams,
And vainly still her Tyrians seek
Through desert-regions, ah, how bleak!
Like frantic Pentheus when he sees
The dragon-eyed Eumenides,
And two red suns appear to rise,
And Thebes looks double to his eyes:
Or as the Atridan matricide
Runs frenzied o'er the scene,
What time with snakes and torches plied
He flees the murdered queen,
While at the threshold of the gate
The sister-fiends expectant wait.
So when, resolved on death, she pressed
That thought of frenzy to her breast,
The time and manner she decides:
Then in her look the purpose hides,
And, calling hope into her cheeks,
Her sorrowing sister thus bespeaks:
'My Anna, I have found a way
(Rejoice o'er Dido's love!)
My spell upon his sense to lay,
Or his from mine remove.
On ocean's marge, where suns descend,
A spot there lies, the Ethiops' end,
Where Atlas on his shoulders rears
The starry fabric of the spheres.
Men show me there, in that far place,
A priestess of Massylian race,
Who kept the Hesperian temple's pale,
And gave the dragon his regale,
Guarding the tree's immortal boughs
With honey-dew and poppy drowse.
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