Page:Aeneid (Conington 1866).djvu/257

Aye, well I know, the first fair gale
Shall see the faithless pirate sail,
And bear from home the weeping maid,
The prize of his triumphant raid.
Not thus, forsooth, the Phrygian swain
Made stealthy progress o'er the main,
To Sparta won his way, and bore
Fair Helen to the Idæan shore.
Where now your sacred promise? where
The love you wont your own to bear,
Or where that hand, whose friendly grasp
The hand of Turnus oft would clasp?
If nought will serve for Latium's need
But bridegroom sprung from foreign seed,
And father Faunus' solemn hest
Sits heavy on your anxious breast,
All climes that own not our command,
So read I Fate, are foreign land.
And Turnus, if enquiry trace
The first beginnings of his race,
Counts with his grandsires Argive kings,
And from Mycenæ's midmost springs.'

But when, essaying oft, she sees
Latinus proof against her pleas,
And now the deadly poison thrills
Her veins, and all the woman fills,
Then, maddened with its furious heats,
She rages through the crowded streets,
Like top that whirling 'neath the thong
Is scourged by eager boys along
Bent on their gamesome strife:
With eddying motion it careers
Round empty courts in circling spheres;
The beardless troop in strange amaze
Upon the winged boxwood gaze:
The lashes lend it life.