The Æneids of Virgil, Done into English Verse. Virgil

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СКАЧАТЬ Thrice have the twin horns of the moon fulfilled the circle clear

       While I have dragged out life in woods and houses of the deer,

       And gardens of the beasts; and oft from rocky place on high

       Trembling I note the Cyclops huge, hear foot and voice go by.

       And evil meat of wood-berries, and cornel's flinty fruit649

       The bush-boughs give; on grass at whiles I browse, and plucked-up root

       So wandering all about, at last I see unto the shore

       Your ships a-coming: thitherward my steps in haste I bore:

       Whate'er might hap enough it was to flee this folk of ill;

       Rather do ye in any wise the life within me spill.'

      And scarcely had he said the word ere on the hill above

       The very shepherd Polypheme his mountain mass did move,

       A marvel dread, a shapeless trunk, an eyeless monstrous thing,

       Who down unto the shore well known his sheep was shepherding;

       A pine-tree in the hand of him leads on and stays his feet;

       The woolly sheep his fellows are, his only pleasure sweet,660

       The only solace of his ill.

       But when he touched the waters deep, and mid the waves was come,

       He falls to wash the flowing blood from off his eye dug out;

       Gnashing his teeth and groaning sore he walks the sea about,

       But none the less no wave there was up to his flank might win.

       Afeard from far we haste to flee, and, having taken in

       Our suppliant, who had earned it well, cut cable silently,

       And bending to the eager oars sweep out along the sea.

       He heard it, and his feet he set to follow on the sound;

       But when his right hand failed to reach, and therewithal he found670

       He might not speed as fast as fares the Ionian billow lithe,

       Then clamour measureless he raised, and ocean quaked therewith

       Through every wave, and inwardly the land was terrified

       Of Italy, and Ætna boomed from many-hollowed side.

       But all the race of Cyclops stirred from woods and lofty hills,

       Down rushes to the haven-side and all the haven fills;

       And Ætna's gathered brethren there we see; in vain they stand

       Glowering grim-eyed with heads high up in heaven, a dreadful band

       Of councillors: they were as when on ridge aloft one sees

       The oaks stand thick against the sky, and cone-hung cypresses,680

       Jove's lofty woods, or thicket where Diana's footsteps stray.

      Then headlong fear fell on our folk in whatsoever way

       To shake the reefs out spreading sail to any wind that blew;

       But Helenus had bid us steer a midmost course and true

       'Twixt Scylla and Charybdis, lest to death we sail o'er-close:

       So safest seemed for backward course to let the sails go loose.

       But lo, from out Pelorus' strait comes down the northern flaw,

       And past Pantagia's haven-mouth of living stone we draw,

       And through the gulf of Megara by Thapsus lying low.

       Such names did Achemenides, Ulysses' fellow, show,690

       As now he coasted back again the shore erst wandered by.

      In jaws of the Sicanian bay there doth an island lie

       Against Plemyrium's wavy face; folk called it in old days

       Ortygia: there, as tells the tale, Alpheus burrowed ways

       From his own Elis 'neath the sea, and now by mouth of thine,

       O Arethusa, blendeth him with that Sicilian brine.

       We pray the isle's great deities, e'en as we bidden were:

       And thence we pass the earth o'erfat about Helorus' mere;

       Then by Pachynus' lofty crags and thrust-forth rocks we skim,

       And Camarina showeth next a long way off and dim;700

       Her whom the Fates would ne'er be moved: then comes the plain in sight

       Of Gela, yea, and Gela huge from her own river hight:

       Then Acragas the very steep shows great walls far away,

       Begetter of the herds of horse high-couraged on a day.

       Then thee, Selinus of the palms, I leave with happy wind,

       And coast the Lilybean shoals and tangled skerries blind.

      But next the firth of Drepanum, the strand without a joy,

       Will have me. There I tossed so sore, the tempests' very toy,

       O woe is me! my father lose, lightener of every care,

       Of every ill: me all alone, me weary, father dear,710

       There wouldst thou leave; thou borne away from perils all for nought!

       Ah, neither Helenus the seer, despite the fears he taught,

       Nor grim Celæno in her wrath, this grief of soul forebode.

       This was the latest of my toils, the goal of all my road,

       For me departed thence some God to this your land did bear."

      So did the Father Æneas, with all at stretch to hear,

       Tell o'er the fateful ways of God, and of his wanderings teach:

       But here he hushed him at the last and made an end of speech.

BOOK IV.

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ARGUMENT.

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