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When sudden on man's feeble frame
From tainted skies a sickness came,
On trees and crops a poisonous breath,
A year of pestilence and death.
Their pleasant lives the sufferers yield,
Or drag their languid limbs with pain:
The dogstar burns the grassy field,
And sickening crops withhold the grain.
Back to Ortygia's shrine my sire
O'er ocean bids us go,
There sue for favour, and enquire
The limit of our woe,
What succour weary souls should try,
And whither, if we must, to fly.

'Twas night: all life in sleep was laid,
When lo! our household gods, the same
Whom through the midmost of the flame
From falling Ilium I conveyed,
Appeared before me while I lay
In slumber, bright as if in day,
Where through the inserted window stream
The glories of the full moonbeam;
Then thus their gentle speech addressed,
And set my troubled heart at rest:
'The word that Phœbus has to speak,
Should you his Delian presence seek,
He of his unsought bounty sends
E'en by the mouth of us, your friends.
We, who have followed yours and you
Since Ilium was no more,
We, who have sailed among your crew
The swelling billows o'er,
Your seed as demigods will crown,
And make them an imperial town.