Soon as the queen from her watch-tower saw the gray dawn brighten, and the fleet moving on with even canvas, and coast and haven forsaken, with never an oar left, thrice and again smiting her beauteous breast with her 5 hands, and rending her golden locks, "Great Jupiter!" cries she, "shall he go? Shall a chance-comer boast of having flouted our realm? Will they not get their arms at once, and give chase from all the town, and pull, some of them, the ships from the docks? Away! bring fire; 10 quick! get darts, ply oars! What am I saying? Where am I? What madness turns my brain? Wretched Dido! do your sins sting you now? They should have done so then, when you were giving your crown away. What truth! what fealty! the man who, they say, carries 15 about with him the gods of his country, and took up on his shoulders his old worn-out father! Might I not have caught and torn him piecemeal, and scattered him to the waves? destroyed his friends, aye, and his own Ascanius, and served up the boy for his father's meal? But the 20 chance of a battle would have been doubtful. Let it have been. I was to die, and whom had I to fear? I would have flung torches into his camp, filled his decks with flame, consumed son and sire and the whole line, and leapt myself upon the pile. Sun, whose torch shows thee all that is 25 done on earth, and thou, Juno, revealer and witness of these stirrings of the heart, and Hecate, whose name is yelled in civic crossways by night, avenging fiends, and gods of dying Elissa, listen to this! Let your power stoop to ills that call for it, and hear what I now pray! If 30 it must needs be that the accursed wretch gain the haven and float to shore - if such the requirement of Jove's destiny, such the fixed goal-yet grant that, harassed by the sword and battle of a warlike nation, a wanderer from his own confines, torn from his Iulus' arms, he may 35 pray for succour, and see his friends dying miserably round him! Nor when he has yielded to the terms of an unjust peace, may he enjoy his crown, or the life he loves; but may he fall before his time, and lie unburied in the midst

of the plain! This is my prayer these the last accents that flow from me with my life-blood. And you, my Tyrians, let your hatred persecute the race and people for all time to come. Be this the offering you send down to my ashes: never be there love or league between nation and nation. Arise from my bones, my unknown avenger, destined with fire and sword to pursue the Dardanian settlers, now or in after-days, whenever strength shall be given! Let coast be at war with coast, water with wave, army with army; fight they, and their sons, and their 10 sons' sons!"

Thus she said, as she whirled her thought to this side and that, seeking at once to cut short the life she now abhorred. Then briefly she spoke to Barce, Sychæus' nurse, for her own was left in her old country, in the black 15 ashes of the grave: "Fetch me here, dear nurse, my sister Anna. Bid her hasten to sprinkle herself with water from the stream, and bring with her the cattle and the atoning offerings prescribed. Let her come with these; and do you cover your brow with the holy fillet. The 20 sacrifice to Stygian Jove, which I have duly commenced and made ready, I wish now to accomplish, and with it the end of my sorrows, giving to the flame the pile that pillows the Dardan head!" She said: the nurse began to quicken her pace with an old wife's zeal.

25

But Dido, wildered and maddened by her enormous resolve, rolling her bloodshot eye, her quivering cheeks stained with fiery streaks, and pale with the shadow of death, bursts the door of the inner palace, and frantically climbs the tall pile, and unsheathes the Dardan sword, a 30 gift procured for a far different end. Then, after surveying the Trojan garments and the bed, too well known, and pausing awhile to weep and think, she pressed her bosom to the couch, and uttered her last words:

"Relics, once darlings of mine, while Fate and Heaven 35 gave leave, receive this my soul, and release me from these my sorrows. I have lived my life—the course assigned me by Fortune is run, and now the august phantom of

Dido shall pass underground. I have built a splendid city. I have seen my walls completed. In vengeance for a husband, I have punished a brother that hated me blest, ah! blest beyond human bliss, if only Dardan ships 5 had never touched coast of ours!" She spoke and kissing the couch: "Is it to be death without revenge? But be it death," she cries- "this, this is the road by which I love to pass to the shades. Let the heartless Dardanian's eyes drink in this flame from the deep, and let him Io carry with him the presage of my death."

She spoke, and even while she was yet speaking, her attendants see her fallen on the sword, the blade spouting blood, and her hands dabbled in it. Their shrieks rise to the lofty roof; Fame runs wild through the convulsed city. 15 With wailing and groaning, and screams of women, the palace rings; the sky resounds with mighty cries and beating of breasts even as if the foe were to burst the gates and topple down Carthage or ancient Tyre, and the infuriate flame were. leaping from roof to roof among the 20 dwellings of men and gods.

Her sister heard it. Breathless and frantic, with wild speed, disfiguring her cheeks with her nails, her bosom with her fists, she bursts through the press, and calls by name on the dying queen: "Was this your secret, 25 sister? Were you plotting to cheat me? Was this what your pile was preparing for me, your fires, and your altars? What should a lone heart grieve for first? Did you disdain your sister's company in death? You should have called me to share your fate the same keen sword-pang, 30 the same hour, should have been the end of both. And did these hands build the pile, this voice call on the gods of our house, that you might lie there, while I, hardhearted wretch, was away? Yes, sister, you have destroyed yourself and me, the people and the elders of Sidon, 35 and your own fair city. Let in the water to the wounds; let me cleanse them, and if any remains of breath be still flickering, catch them in my mouth!" As she thus spoke, she was at the top of the lofty steps, and was em

bracing and fondling in her bosom her dying sister, and stanching with her robe the black streams of blood. Dido strives to raise her heavy eyes, and sinks down again, the deep stab gurgles in her breast. Thrice, with an effort, she lifted and reared herself up on her elbow; 5 thrice, she fell back on the couch, and with helpless wandering eyes aloft in the sky, sought for the light and groaned when she found it.

Then Juno almighty, in compassion for her lengthened agony and her trouble in dying, sent down Iris from 10 Olympus to part the struggling soul and its prison of flesh. For, as she was dying, not in the course of fate, nor for any crime of hers, but in mere misery, before her time, the victim of sudden frenzy, not yet had Proserpine° carried off a lock of her yellow hair, and thus doomed her head to 15 Styx and the place of death. So then Iris glides down the sky with saffron wings dew-besprent, trailing a thousand various colours in the face of the sun, and alights above her head. "This I am bidden to bear away as an offering to Pluto, and hereby set you free from the body." 20 So saying, she stretches her hand and cuts the lock: at once all heat parts from the frame, and the life has passed into air.

ΙΟ

BOOK V

ENEAS, meantime, was well on his road, holding with set purpose on the watery way, and cutting through billows gloomed by the North wind, with eyes ever and anon turned back to the city, which poor Elissa's funeral flame 5 now began to illumine. What cause has lit up a blaze so mighty they cannot tell; but as they think of the cruel pangs which follow outrage done on great love, and remember what a frantic woman can do, the Teucrian hearts are swept through a train of dismal presage.

Soon as the ships gained the mid-ocean, and no land met the view any more · waters everywhere and everywhere skies a dark rain-cloud arose and stood over the hero's head, charged with night and winter tempest, and darknessruffled the billow's crest. Palinurus himself, the pilot, 15 was heard from the lofty stern:-"Ah! why has such an army of storms encompassed the heaven? What hast thou for us now, old Father Neptune?" No sooner said than he bids them gather up the tackle and ply the lusty oar, and shifts the sheet to the wind, and speaks thus: 20 "Noble Æneas, though Jove himself were to pledge me his faith, I could not hope to reach Italy with a sky like this. The winds shift and storm crosswise, ever rising from the blackening West, and the mist is being massed into clouds. We cannot make head against them, or 25 struggle as we should. Well, since Fortune exerts her tyranny, let us follow, and turn our faces as she pulls the rein. I take it, too, we are not far from the friendly brother-coast of your Eryx, and the havens of Sicania, if my memory serves me as I retrace the stars I watched 30 long ago." To him good Æneas: - "I have seen myself