Meantime my virtuous wife removed
All weapons from the house away;
My sword, so oft in need approved,
She took from where the bolster lay:
Then opes the palace-door, and calls
Her former lord within the walls,
Thinking, forsooth, so fair a prize
Would blind a dazzled lover's eyes.[errata 1]
And patriot zeal might thus efface
The memory of her old disgrace.
Why lengthen out the tale? they burst
The chamber-door, that twain accurst,
Æolides his comrade, still
The ready counsellor of ill.
Ye gods, to Greece the like repay,
If pious are these lips that pray!
But you, what chance, I fain would know,
Has led you living down below?
Come you by ocean-wanderings driven,
Or sent by warning voice from heaven?
What stress of fortune brings you here
Through sunless regions, waste and drear?'
Thus while they talked, day's car on high
Had passed the summit of the sky;
And so perchance had worn away
The period of the travellers' stay,
But the good Sibyl thus in brief,
As comrade might, bespoke the chief:
'Æneas, night approaches near:
While we lament, the hours career.
Here, at the spot where now we stand,
The road divides on either hand;
The right, which skirts the walls of Dis,
Conducts us to the fields of bliss:
