Page:Aeneid (Conington 1866).djvu/326

No movement deign they of reply,
But swifter to the forest fly,
And make the night their friend.
With fatal speed the mounted foes
Each avenue as with network close,
And every outlet bar.
It was a forest bristling grim
With shade of ilex, dense and dim:
Thick brushwood all the ground o'ergrew:
The tangled ways a path ran through,
Faint glimmering like a star.
The darkling boughs, the cumbering prey
Euryalus's flight delay:
His courage fails, his footsteps stray:
But Nisus onward flees;
No thought he takes, till now at last
The enemy is all o'erpast,
E'en at the grove, since Alban called,
Where then Latinus' herds were stalled:
Sudden he pauses, looks behind
In eager hope his friend to find:
In vain; no friend he sees.
'Euryalus, my chiefest care,
Where left I you, unhappy? where?
What clue may guide my erring tread
This leafy labyrinth back to thread?'
Then, noting each remembered track,
He thrids the wood, dim-seen and black.
Listening, he hears the horse-hoofs' beat,
The clatter of pursuing feet:
A little moment—shouts arise,
And lo! Euryalus he spies,
Whom now the foemen's gathered throng
Is hurrying helplessly along,
While vain resistance he essays,
Trapped by false night and treacherous ways.