Page:Aeneid (Conington 1866).djvu/468

Shall soar alike o'er earth and skies,
So pious, just, and good:
Nor evermore shall nation pay
Such homage to your shrine as they.'
Saturnia hears with altered mind,
Triumphant now and proud:
The sky meantime she leaves behind,
And quits her chilly cloud.

This done, the Father in his heart
New counsels ponders o'er,
To force Juturna to depart
Nor help her brother more.
Two fiends there are of evil fame,
The Diræ their ill-omened name,
Whom at a birth unkindly Night
With dark Megæra brought to light,
With serpent-spires their tresses twined,
And gave them wings to cleave the wind.
On Jove's high threshold they appear
Before his throne, and lash to fear
Mankind's unhappy brood,
When grisly death the Sire prepares
And sickness, or with battle scares
A guilty multitude.
Such pest as this the Thunderer sent
Down from the Olympian sky,
And bade it, for an omen meant,
Across Juturna fly.
Down swoops the portent, fierce and fast,
With swiftness of a whirling blast:
Not swifter bounds from off the string
The dart that with envenomed sting
The Parthian launches on the wing,
The Parthian or the Crete;